Heads-Up Play and the Rake

So, it seems that lately Heads-Up (HU) play is all the rage. I have viewed a couple of videos of people playing HU (sample videos from Deuces Cracked, a few posted videos on 2+2) and man is it a different game. Watching it may cause me to be an even bigger showdown monkey shorthanded than I already am.

But actually the most striking thing about the whole deal was not the wacky hands and hyper-aggro play - it was the money that gets taken off the table in rake. In "regular" play (whether 6-max or FR) you tend not to notice how much money is being taken off the table in rake, but in a HU freezeout match, this effect is right in your face.

For example, in the video I finished watching today, two players players faced off at $2/$4 starting with $200 stacks. About 90 minutes later, one of the players was bust and the other had only $311 sitting in front of them. That is $89 in rake - almost $60/hr in the pockets of the casino! And this for nearly no marginal cost of having an extra table in the lobby. Looks like I need to look into opening one of these poker site thingies..... :-)

Anyways, looking at it from the player's position and not the casino, how large a drain is this rake? Well, by the PokerTracker stats that were shown, near the end of the match they had played 326 hands. Admittedly this only seemed to update every 5 minutes or so, so the number may be a bit higher than that. Call it 340 hands, which comes out to about 220 hands per hour. Seems about right. In those 340 hands, they paid 22.25 BB in rake for a rake rate of 6.5 BB/100!!!! That just seems insane. I don't recall off my head what the corresponding rake is for $2/$4 full ring (and it depends on your playing style), but IIRC it is somewhere in the neighborhood of 2-3 BB/100. Short-handed was somewhere around 3-5 BB/100 in rake.

Can 6.5 BB/100 be beaten? I'm sure it can, given the right opponent - table selection becomes paramount. However, it seems to me that two good HU players are just trading their money back and forth until the house gets it all.

My $5/$10 shot, and What Is Next?

I just realized I had never given anyone the results of my 25 BB shot at $5/$10 during the last two days of my bonus clearing. Probably for the obvious reason - because it didn't end positively. I lost $170, but wouldn't have played any of the hands any differently in hindsight - this was 17 BB of pure variance as far as I am concerned. I did learn that 3 outers hurt a bit at $5/$10 though.....

I still cashed out for $2,300+ which is still an amazing run having started at $500 only three months previous. I got the check yesterday, and it will be interesting to see if there is any problems depositing it, given that there was an insert in the envelope saying (essentially) IF THERE IS ANY PROBLEM CASHING THIS CHECK, PLEASE CALL THIS TOLL FREE NUMBER IMMEDIATELY. Not exactly the most confidence-inspiring message. But it appears to be drawn on a bank in the U.S. (Las Vegas, in fact) so hopefully there will be no issue.

So what's next? I think I'm going to take a mini-break (only playing Stars Steps tournaments with FPPs or playing $0.25/$0.50 limit) until the beginning of next year. Then I'll likely roll a significant fraction of my withdrawal back into another Cake skin to continue playing $2/$4 and $3/$6 under a bonus or bonus / rakeback combination.

Unless something horribly interesting comes up while in my mini-break, I wouldn't imagine there will be much to post about until the new year. Happy Holidays, all!

$2,500 and a shot at $5/$10 ???

Last night continued my streak of running crazy-well at Cake and I surpassed $2,500 with two days to go on my bonus.

So it got me to thinking - since I started on the site playing a bankroll of 250 BB ($500 playing $1/$2) and I've tended to add a table at a higher level when I hit 250 BB for that level (I started dabbling at $3/$6 when I hit $1,500), is it time for me to take a shot at $5/$10? Just the thought of it sounds crazy to me - I was grinding out for one-tenth those stakes not that long ago. It is also a psychological thing - being a red-chip game and seeing the sizes of the pots can be a bit offsetting.

But if I look at it rationally, the step from $3/$6 to $5/$10 is less drastic than the doubling of levels from $0.50/$1 to $1/$2 or $1/$2 to $2/$4. Plus, based on recent history of me peeking into the $5/$10 game the play is looser than at the levels I've been playing - VPIPs in the high 30's to low 40's rather than high 20's. Then again, the play is probably better and they can get away with playing more hands.

All that being considered, I've decided to carve out $250 and take a 25 BB run at $5/$10 if the conditions are right in the next two nights. What is the worst that could happen? I lose it all, generate about $20 worth of bonus, and still be sitting on $2,270? I think I can handle that.

If anyone wants to talk me off this ledge, they don't have much time.

A Few Milestones

Short post to mention a few milestones I hit in the past 24 hours:

• Passed $7,000 earned online total
  
• Passed $1,000 earned through limit poker play
  
• Passed $2,000 Cake bankroll (although I ended the evening at $1,978 after two top pair hands ran into AA overpair both times)

It has taken quite a bit of work to get to here, especially given the time off and the lack of really good bonuses to clear - for reference, I passed $5,000 over a year ago.

Quite some time ago I also (nearly) reached $1,000 through limit play right before my massive downswing which left me with negative profit through play. It turns out almost my entire limit earn ($1,020.34, listed at right) is equal to my Cake earn alone in the last 10 weeks: $1,007.84.

Not much else to say. Just felt like a mini-celebration from where I had been. Go me.

How Good Is It Possible To Be?

So, a thought that runs through my head every once in a while: how good of a winrate could you sustain? And not with some sort of able-to-see-your-hole-cards ability like on Absolute Poker, but against a table full of opponents that are bad. Maybe not any-two-cards-bad, but at least as bad as what you see in a live casino.

I know what you're expecting - some mathematical treatment of how you would fare against a table full of players who played top 60% hands. If I had the time and a clear idea of how to do this, I would. However, I do not. But I do have a close alternative - the results of my playing Hold'em on my Palm Pilot, something I tend to do while bored in meetings (yes, Lou, that's what I'm doing. Surprise.)

The AI players in this game are bad. Live game bad, and maybe a bit worse. So, how badly have I hit the game up for?

In 10,401 hands, I am up 2890.9 BB for a winrate of 27.8 BB/100. When I first started writing this article a few weeks ago, I was actually above 30 BB/100, so I am evidently on some sort of downswing. :-)

I (unfortunately) do not have stats that will allow me to calculate VPIP, W$SD, etc. but the adjustments I make for this game that actually carry over to live play are:

1) Open WAY up in late position. I would imagine I'm playing 35-40% of my hands in the cutoff and on the button. This is partially a no brainer, and partially because of the fact that the c/r was not programmed into the AI at all - if the computer checks to you and you bet, the worst you will be faced with is a call. Lesson - against bad, non-tricky opponents you can play a lot of hands with position.

2) Make a ton of river valuebets. When checked to on the river, it is amazing the number of hands you can valuebet if you do not fear a c/r. Again, the lesson is against non-tricky opponents, you can valuebet a lot thinner on the river than you might otherwise think you can.

Now, let me dream that I could run at 30 BB/100 double-tabling $3/$6 at PlayersOnly, thus making somewhere in the neighborhood of $180/hr......

The Strangest Hand I've Ever Seen

Was at the table (not involved) for this hand, which has to be one of the weirdest hands I've seen.

$2/$4, Cake Poker skin, Full Ring, 9 players.

UTG calls, UTG+1 folds, UTG+2 calls, MP1 calls, HJ raises , CO calls, Button calls, SB folds, BB calls, UTG 3-bets, UTG+2 calls, MP1 folds, HJ calls, CO calls, Button caps, all 5 players remaining call.

Yes, if you are counting that is:

• 6 ways capped preflop (with some dead money from MP1 and SB to boot!)
• An UTG limp-re-raiser
• A button coldcall-capper

Flop: K22, two-tone

BB checks, UTG checks, UTG+2 checks, HJ checks, CO bets, Button folds, BB folds, UTG calls, UTG+2 folds, HJ folds.

Yes, if you are still counting, that is:

• CO betting into the coldcall-capper
• The coldcall-capper folding to a single bet into a 25-ish bet pot on a K-high flop.
• That single CO bet getting four folds in a 25-ish bet pot, with only the UTG LRR-er calling

The turn and river were a blank T and a J which completed the flush. UTG check/called the turn and check/folded the river.

Yes, in addition to everything else in the hand:

• CO won a 15 BB pot without a showdown, with a single bet on the river.

WTF? Collusion? Or just overall stupidity?

To further cloud the possible issue around collusion (I will use the labels LRR-er and CC-capper to label the players below):

• The very next hand, LRR-er and CC-capper put 4 bets in preflop (trapping one player in the middle) and LRR-er folded the T72 two-tone flop for a single bet.
• Another hand transipered about 1 revolution later where a 17 BB pot was won without a showdown, with a single bet on the river (LRR-er was one of the folders on the river, CC-capper not involved)

Quadman and Hevad Khan

What do these two have in common? Nothing, really, other than Quadman doing things like:

UTG raises, Quadman is UTG+1 with 77 and folds. Board develops KJ7-7-3.
The very next hand Quadman is UTG with QQ and raises. This time the board develops QT9-Q-J.

and then chatting with me about Hevad Khan (a 2007 WSOP Main Event Final Table finisher) and his legendary multi-tabling abilities:

Newspaper article about him

Specifically, when you play that many tables, surely you've got to have a premium hand most of the time, right? Well, me being the guy I am, decided to apply some math to the situation, trying to clarify "how premium" and "how often." I used 40 tables since that was the number quoted in the article above.

The stats on your best hand (of the 40 that you have) at any given time:

11% of the time, you will have an AA
30% of the time, you will have an AA, KK or QQ (abbreviated QQ+ ala PokerStove for all future lines)
50% of the time, you will have a hand in the range TT+,AKs
90% of the time, you will have a hand in the range 88+,ATs+,KTs+,QJs,AJo+

OK, so that's roughly what you'd expect - with 40 hands there is a lot of opportunity for decent hands. But what about hands at other tables? What are your chances of having another big hand at the same time? I'm glad you asked:

1.5% of the time, you will have AA on two tables at the same time
10% of the time, you will have QQ+ on two tables at the same time
50% of the time, you will have 99+,AQs+,AKo on two tables at the same time
90% of the time, you will have 88+,ATs+,KTs+,QTs+,AJo+,KQo on two tables at the same time

1.7% of time, you will have QQ+ on three tables at the same time
30% of time, you will have 99+,AJs+,KQs,AKo on three tables at the same time
50% of the time, you will have 88+,ATs+,KJs+,AQo+ on three tables at the same time
90% of the time, you will have 77+,A8s+,K9s+,QTs+,JTs,ATo+,KJo+ (top 13.1% of hands) on three tables at the same time

That is a lot of playable hands at a decent number of tables at the same time, especially when you consider probably 10 of the tables are very short handed or heads up at any given time, where your starting hands have to relax quite a bit.

Bankroll Update

So I finally decided to do a bankroll update. Since my hands are not PT-importable at Cake, I can no longer split out full-ring vs. 6-max.

I am actually up about $500 overall from the last time I did an update in February, which is kind of a shock considering how much ground I had to make up. Go me.

That is all. I'm tired and haven't yet watched the season premiere of Family Guy. A man has to have his priorities.....

Some Cake Hands

Couple of interesting / fun hands from last night.

Cake Poker, Limit: $2/$4 (full ring), 10 players

Pre-flop: Hero is UTG+2 with A♦ K♦
UTG calls, UTG+1 folds, Hero raises, 2 folds, CO calls, button folds, SB folds, BB calls, UTG 3-bets, Hero calls, CO calls, BB calls.

I hate limp-reraisers, especially UTG limp-reraisers. This is only my second button rev, and UTG has been throwing their money around a bit recklessly but I don't know what a LRR means out of him. I decide to call his 3-bet rather than cap. Probably close / debatable.

Flop: K♥ Q♣ J♠ (12 SB, 4 players)
BB checks, UTG bets, Hero raises, CO folds, BB folds, UTG 3-bets, Hero calls.

Nice flop for me, but if his LRR meant AA, KK, or QQ then I am toast here. However, against this guy I am definitely committed to a showdown, even without my 4 outs to broadway. I am spending one bet per street to see a showdown, and (obviously) raising if I hit a T.

Turn: 8♣ (9 BB, 2 players)
UTG bets, Hero calls.

River: 3♦ (11 BB, 2 players)
UTG bets, Hero calls.

Results: Final pot: 13 BB
UTG shows K♣ 5♦
Hero shows A♦ K♦

I don't even know what to say, other than I'm going to be chasing this guy all around the site now.

Cake Poker, Limit: $1/$2 (full ring), 10 players
Pre-flop: Hero is HJ with A♦ A♠
3 folds, MP calls, Hero raises, 3 folds, BB calls, MP calls.

Flop: Q♠ 8♥ 3♦ (6 SB, 3 players)
BB checks, MP bets, Hero raises, BB folds, MP calls.

About as non-threatening flop for AA as you will ever see. Flop raise is a no-brainer.

Turn: 4♠ (5 BB, 2 players)
MP bets, Hero raises, MP folds.

I've seen a lot of this donk-into-the-aggressor stuff lately. This one is weird - it is obvious that I am not raising on the draw as there are no draws on that flop. The vast majority of the time this donk isn't a big hand like a set (although some will play this way, afraid I will check behind on the turn). But I also think this is an easy turn raise. I have no idea what hand he would have taken this flop/turn line with.

Cake Poker, Limit: $1/$2 (full ring), 9 players
Pre-flop: Hero is BB with 7♥ 4♣
2 folds, EP calls, 1 fold, HJ calls, 2 folds, SB calls, Hero checks.

Quality hand, eh?

Flop: J♦ 7♦ 4♥ (4 SB, 4 players)
SB checks, Hero bets, EP calls, HJ calls, SB calls.

Would love to have protected my very vulnerable bottom-two but didn't have any indication of who would bet. So, get money in the pot while I can.

Turn: 9♦ (4 BB, 4 players)
SB checks, Hero bets, MP raises, HJ calls, SB folds, Hero calls.

If I am behind I have 4 outs, getting 9-1 on my final call. This is not quite enough, but all I need to do is make up 1 BB in implieds on the river if I hit. Very easy to do given my position on the raiser. Plus, I may be ahead of someone getting frisky with one-pair and the NFD. Easy call.

River: 4♠ (10 BB, 3 players)
Hero checks, MP bets, HJ raises, Hero 3-bets, MP caps, HJ calls, Hero calls.

Sweet river card, but HJ woke up when the board paired? Hmmmmm. I decide the chance I'm up against JJ or 99 or 77 is pretty damn low and gas it.

Results: Final pot: 22 BB
MP shows K♦ Q♦
HJ shows A♦ 3♦
Hero shows 7♥ 4♣

Yes, I river good. But HJ played their hand horribly - easy raise for them on the flop. And, as played, if HJ 3-bets the turn, I am forced out of the pot. Slowplaying the nuts not often a good idea.

Cake Poker, Limit: $1/$2 (full ring), 9 players
Pre-flop: Hero is HJ with 7♠ 7♦
4 folds, Hero raises, 2 folds, SB calls, BB calls.

Flop: 9♣ 6♥ 5♦ (6 SB, 3 players)
SB checks, BB bets, Hero raises, SB folds, BB calls.

BB would donk with a wide range here, and I'm glad he did, as it gave me a chance to leverage SB out of the pot.

Turn: 9♥ (5 BB, 2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks.

This is the key point in the hand. I really want to show this down, really don't want to pay a lot to do so in case I'm against a 9, and don't want to give the BB a chance to c/r me making me pay 2 bets for my 6 outs (if behind). I am calling most any river card, as I realize I am inducing a bluff by this line.

River: 4♥ (5 BB, 3 players)
BB bets, Hero calls.

Results: Final pot: 7 BB
BB shows Q♦ 6♣
Hero shows 7♠ 7♦

Seems standard.

Cake Poker Results

Well, I managed to get a blog post within 4 months of a previous posting of mine. Go me.

Instead of just guessing how well I was doing at Cake, I decided to break out a combination of "find in file" and some scripts to gather some basic information about how I'm doing. As of last night.....

My bankroll on the site is $1,349.54, consisting of $500 deposit, $20 initial bonus, $50 instant bonus, $120 cleared bonus, $659.54 in profit.

I have played 4830 hands, broken down as follows:

$0.50/$1 : 589 hands
$1/$2: 3682 hands
$2/$4: 559 hands

However, in order to get a "true" BB/100, I would need my individual $ won broken down by levels, but that would require some scripting skill that I simply do not have nor want to learn. So how should I estimate?

Well, if my win rate (in BB/100) is the same across all the levels, then the following equation should hold.

589 /100 * WR * 1 + 3682 /100 * WR * 2 + 559 /100 * WR * 4 = 659.54.

I am absolutely positive my win rate is not the same across all levels, but lets run with it - it at least seems reasonable. Solving the above equation for WR (yes, algebra does come in handy sometimes), I get a win rate of 6.47 BB/100, so about what I had estimated before. Nice to know my estimating skills haven't gotten too rusty.

If I make the assumption that my win rate is less at the higher levels due to the better players there (LOL), then my win rate actually must be higher than 6.47 BB/100. Just as a test example of this, assume that my win rate at $1/$2 is 80% of my $0.50/$1 win rate and my $2/$4 win rate is 80% of that. Then I get the following:

589 /100 * WR * 1 + 3682 /100 * 0.8 * WR * 2 + 559 /100 * 0.8 * 0.8 * WR * 4 = 659.54.

giving a win rate of just over 8.3 BB/100.

In either case, I'll take it. Whether it is just running sick-hot over 5000 hands or beating up on the feebs I'm not quite sure but the money sure spends the same either way.

4 Months of Cricket Sounds

Wow - I wanted to write a quick update and looked at the date of my last post. I knew it had been a while, but 4 months since my last post and 6 months since the post before that? How time flies.....

Neteller announced our ability to get our money back on July 30, and I submitted my withdrawal request early that morning. Amazingly enough, the money had arrived in my bank account less than 24 hours later. Quite surprising, given how many people must have been trying to pull their money out at the same time, and how much trouble everyone had gone through getting their money out before.

I had already withdrawn most of my money off individual poker sites, leaving only a "seed" amount of $300-ish at Stars and Full Tilt. I haven't played at either site in quite some time, primarily due to.....

The Cake Poker Network. Otherwise known as The Home of the Softest Games on the Internet.

During the Neteller fiasco and my hiatus from playing due to my 300+ BB downswing I got separate emails for $20 no-deposit free money at each of two Cake Poker skins. On the first skin I have built that $20 up to $160, as described in my last post. On the second skin, I had barely built the $20 to $30 when they had an incredible deposit bonus: 200% deposit bonus + 10% instant bonus. The 200% bonus clears slowly, but it is hard to pass up that kind of money especially given the softness of the games. The only issue is the traffic on the site is rather slow - often there are only a few games going on at the limits I want to play even during 'prime time.' But I decided to take the plunge - my plan was to take $500 of my Neteller money, deposit, and start out at $1/$2 and see where I wound up.

I deposited my $500 on August 15, and am currently sitting on $1,150 - consisting of my original $20 original bonus, $50 instant bonus, $80 in cleared bonus, and $500 of profit. My current game selection lies across the $1/$2 games (both full-ring and short-handed) and $2/$4 full-ring, although there is often not a single $2/$4 full-ring table going. Yes, the site is that deserted at times. I have taken select shots at $2/$4 short-handed when the tables look particularly juicy, but don't want to add $2/$4 SH into my regular mix until the bankroll hits $1,500 or so.

Believe it or not, I actually haven't played that much to get to this point - likely somewhere between 2500 and 3000 hands. This is an estimate since the site is not PokerTracker compatible, but I'm pretty sure this is a correct range. That works out to an (estimated) 6-7 BB/100 - a combination of running hot and the site being that soft. I have 2 months to clear the rest of the bonus, and given that I've only cleared $80 in the first month I think clearing the rest of the $920 is right out. But if I can make $2/$4 my main game next month and (if I continue well) $3/$6 my game the following month I could clear an additional $400 or so.

No, I have not yet updated my bankroll status since February. Maybe that will be the topic of the next blog post.

Lastly, the 4th season of High Stakes Poker has started on GSN. Still the best poker show on TV, by far.

Now we'll see if it will be another 4 months before my next update......

I'm Back

Well, to be honest, I've actually been "back" for about a month now but have only now gotten around to writing about it. Thus my break from the game lasted for about 7 weeks - a bit shorter than the three months I anticipated.

So what brought me back?

Something very simple, actually. I got a $20 no-deposit bonus at one of the smaller rooms and decided to play with just that money, more as a diversion than anything. And if I lost it all, then oh well - it was not part of my bankroll. So I was treating it like "found" money.

The bad parts of the site:

1. The traffic there is very low - the most tables at $0.25/$0.50 I have ever seen is two 10-max games and three 6-max games running simultaneously. Often, however, there is either no table at all or only one table running at that level.
2. The site does not support Poker Tracker or any heads-up display.
3. The lowest stakes they had (at the time) were $0.25/$0.50 so I was starting out with a 40 BB bankroll - just a bad session or two away from losing it all.

The good part about the site:

1. The players there suck like no other suckage I have seen before.

I have taken that $20 bonus and have ran it up to $120 solely playing $0.25/$0.50. As I mentioned, I have no specific PT stats, but I can at least find out the number of hands I've played to get to that point: 3230 hands. Well, if you do the math, that turns out to be 6.2 BB/100. Ordinarily, I'd say that is way-beyond sustainable (and due only to running hot over this sample size), but for two things:

1. My poker "coach" has shown that he can sustain 6+ BB/100 over 100K+ hands. Whether I am that good remains to be seen but it at least shows it is possible.
2. These players really do suck in ways I can't even begin to describe. Perhaps I ought to drag some hands out for future posts to demonstrate this, otherwise you can take my word for it.
3. I don't "feel" like I'm running that hot. I know, this is very non-scientific without stats to back it up, but this does not feel like a hot streak - just beating up on the weakies.

One very interesting strategy I've adopted due to the low traffic and (to be honest) because I am playing way below the stakes I am "used" to playing is to sit down at an empty table and wait for the fishies to come to me. I wish this was my idea, but is part of the "Wookie Table Selection Mechanism" from a 2+2 post, but I had never had the confidence to pull it off. This has worked out very well for me - I think with the exception of maybe one player, everyone to sit down and play me heads-up has been horrible. Sometimes the table fills up quickly, and other times I play heads-up or 3-handed for quite some time - something I've learned to enjoy.

I've also found that I don't mind not having a heads-up display. It certainly makes you pay more attention instead of just doing a numbers-based read. I still am not as good as I should be about keeping notes on players - all of my reads are session-reads and (except for the fishiest of the fishies that I remember) do not persist from one session to another via notes. I need to fix that.

So where do I go from here? Do I just sit around at the quarter tables and beat up on the fish for kicks? Maybe, but I don't think that would satisfy me long-term. I've taken a peek at some of the higher limit games (up to 3/6) and they seem very, very soft as well. In fact, one peek at the 20/40 game showed some obvious soft-spots as well. :-) The site actually has a few good things going for it to make it a semi-permanent home for me:

1. A good signup bonus (100% up to $1K, clearing in $10 increments, with months to clear in total)
2. Rakeback (at standard rates of 30-ish percent)
3. Ability to deposit from U.S. using a credit card

So, my tentative plan is to get my Neteller funds (which should be available to me within a month or two), make a deposit, and see if I can hit up some of the higher-level fishies for some money.

My only concern with that plan is that now that this latest stint has shown me that poker can be fun again that increasing the stakes will kill some of this enjoyment, at least during the downswings. I guess all I can do is be aware of that possibility, and try not to let it happen - to play poker like it should be played, as if the money and results don't matter. We'll see.

The End, For Quite Some Time

The last I posted (about online play, anyway) I was lamenting about how bad I had been running at $2/$4 and had determined to drop down to $1/$2 to retool my game. As it turns out, I have done as bad (if not worse) at $1/$2 in the week-and-a-half since then than I ever had at $2/$4. I even came back from my Casino Windsor experience with some confidence that I didn't completely suck as a player. Then I played Sunday night and dropped 60 BB in 277 hands to dispel any notion that I know what I'm doing. The sick graph of all of my $1/$2 and $2/$4 6-max hands are below.


That's right - that is a 300 BB drop in 3K hands after running at 2.55 BB/100 for my first 11K hands. Sick. It is literally to the point where I hope that I am dealt horrible cards so I have to fold them and not even have the opportunity to lose any more money. That's a bad, bad sign. I don't even enjoy sitting down anymore - I just get a feeling of dread with every hand that I play.

So, I'm through. That's right, just like that. I'm not even going to bother clearing the rest of my PPA bonus. Not another single hand of poker for an indefinite amount of time, but in my mind this period of time is at least three months. Done. Finished. I'm tempted to not even do a last Bankroll Update but the detail oriented part of me will probably win and I'll do one final update with the sobering numbers. In reality, though, doing that may help keep my recent loss in perspective as I've still made an incredible amount of money even after this downswing.

Will I play again after three months? It is very likely, as I cannot simply quit - not that I am a compulsive gambler (far from it), but that I simply can't walk away from this challenge a failure. I know I can succeed, but this downswing has put me in a psychological place that is not healthy, and I at least have the self-awareness to realize it and back off for now. When I play again, I hope to have a different, better attitude towards the game than I currently do.

So, what will I do with my time? Well, I'm glad you asked. It has always been a life goal of mine to write a book. So, seems like a good use of the time I will have freed up from poker, right? And, as you likely expect from me, I will blog about the writing of the book at one of my other blogs (as found in my profile). So, au revoir from this blog for a while, and I'll see you over at The Money Geek.

Another Night at Casino Windsor

Well, in the midst of my massive downswing (200+ BB - I'm sure a topic of an upcoming post) I decided to venture over to Casino Windsor again with poker1eh. When I got to the casino at about 4:30 in the afternoon (nice!), there were about 5 people in line for the $3/$6 game and (get this) 33 people in line for a $1/$2 No Limit game. Wow. Nobody seems to want to play limit hold-em live anymore. Later in the evening they even started a $5/$10, $500 minimum buyin NL cash game. A bit too rich for my blood....

Anyways, so I get seated a bit before 5:00 and await for the fun to start. The first few button revs were primarily pots won by huge, huge hands, including a ton of boats. The fish were the usual fish: cold calling 2 (and even 3) bets with total garbage. However, in contrast to my previous experiences, there was a lot more raising both preflop and on the flop generating some pretty big pots.

Some hands of note:

6 limpers to me in the SB with KK. I raise, all call. 7 ways to the flop for 14 SB. I declare "I bet $3 blind" before the flop came out. I have no idea why (maybe to try to get people to fold to my obvious monster - I had already lost earlier with KK vs. TT when someone flopped a ten). Anyways, the flop is QJ6 (or so). My bet is called once, it gets around to poker1eh in mid-ish position and he raises. Folded around to the button, populated by an extremely passive woman (who I don't think I'd seen bet all night, much less raise).

She 3-bets.

Holy crap. I pause, stare at them both and say "what in the hell do you guys HAVE???" I knew for sure the lady had to have a set, but didn't really know what poker1eh was on. Confused, I call, figuring the pot was huge enough to peel (although I didn't count it out) with my 2 outs and backdoor straight draw, poker1eh calls. 3 to the turn for 12 BB or so.

Turn is a K. A beautiful K. I check, poker1eh checks, lady bets and I raise. poker1eh calls 2 and the lady calls. 3 to the river for 18 BB or so.

River was a blank 3, completing no draws. I bet, get called in both places and take a post-rake pot of about $120 down with my 2-out suckout on the turn. The lady said she indeed had a set and poker1eh was on a flopped 2 pair. Ouch. poker1eh said later he knew his calldown was wrong and should have folded on the turn, but just couldn't lay it down on the off chance I was on AK.

After not much longer, the passive lady was replaced by the fishiest old guy I have ever seen. Never made an bet himself, but called down with anything. Yum. I'm in the BB with TT and there are eleventy-billion limpers to me, including the old guy. I check, figuring to play this for set value instead of trying to push my edge preflop. Flop is J44 and the old guy in the SB bets out for possibly the first time of the evening into the semi-infinite field remaining. Easiest insta-fold of TT on a ragged flop I've ever made. In fact, he folded the whole field with that bet, so it wasn't just me who had noticed his "tendency." And remember these are people who have shown a tendency to call with anything on the flop.......

I was in early position and limped 99. About 5 or 6 callers, BB checks. Flop 555, SB bets out, BB folds and it is on me. My mind screamed "this is the easiest raise EVER" to blow out the field behind me (and it wasn't like I had been shy in making these raises at other points in the evening with as little as second pair, much less a boat), but then another part of my mind said "you know, you really can't blow out anyone with a raise on such an obvious flop - everyone is going to stick around trying to hit their overcard. Wait until a safe turn card and THEN blow them out with a raise." OK, maybe a reasonable argument until you ask - what the hell is a safe turn card in a giant field of limpers? Any card T or above is potential death for my hand. But I don't think that far ahead and merely call. The whole field calls. The turn is the K and the SB bets out again. OK, the only worse card there would have been an A (OK, maybe a 5 would have been worse......). I fold to the SB's bet, figuring someone had to have a K. It turns out not. Everyone folded and the SB flipped 33. DAMN!!!!!!! I played that like crap. If there is any solace in that hand, it "only" cost me $6.

I had KQ offsuit in MP and limped behind (what I thought) were two limpers. Turns out, it was an UTG raise and a cold-caller. My only options were to fold and forfeit my $3 or call the $6. So, I call the $6. Something like 6 people to the flop for 2 bets apiece. Flop ATx, giving me a gutshot to the nuts. Looks like I'm sucked into this one assuming it is only one bet to me on the flop, which it is. We may have lost one player, but pot size going into the turn is 8-9 BB Turn is a blank. A bet and a few calls into me and I still have a gutshot to the nuts and odds to draw to it. I call. River blanks off and I have to fold. Well there is a $15 lesson in paying attention - I'd have never been in the hand in the first place if I wasn't spacing.

I have QQ on the button. Some limpers into me, I raise, UTG calls, and I think I had 1-2 more callers. Flop Qxx single suited. Checked to me, I bet, only UTG calls. Turn A, putting 4-to-a-flush on the board and UTG bets into me. Fuck me. Admittedly this is a scare card, but it seems live people tend to bet their hands. This particular guy was not as super-straightforward as all of them, but I've got to put him on either an ace taking a stab or a big flush. I decide to call and try to spike my boat. River blanks off and he bets into me again. I agonize for a bit and fold face up (probably a mistake, but I was frustrated). He claims he did indeed have the nut flush. I believe him, if for no other reason than my sanity. With fortuitous timing, though, I pick up AA the very next hand. A combination of looking like I'm on tilt and having the (recently shown!) capability of laying down a big hand on the river nets me a decent sized pot.

Two (or so) limpers into poker1eh in MP who raises. Folded to me in the BB and I look down at KK. I 3-bet and I think we get one caller between us. Flop QJx. I bet out, guy calls, around to poker1eh who raises me. OK, here I go brain dead. I do the whole "he knows that my 3-betting range out of the BB is insanely tight - what can he possibly have that he can raise me with?" I go completely weak-tight and shut down, putting him immediately on AA, QQ, or JJ. I call his raise, check-call the turn, the river goes check-check, and he shows me AQ and I feel like an idiot. Of course, if I raise him on the turn (which I actually considered for a second before I realized I had no gonads) he has an easy fold, so I don't think I make any more money out of the hand, but I still played it like crap.

One more hand - the details aren't horribly important, but I wound up on the button with a runner-runner second nut flush on the river, with the CO and both blinds still in. SB and BB checked to the CO who bet. I (with 100% certainty) knew I had the best hand, but actually had the presence of mind to think "am I going to make more money by going for overcalls from the donks behind me, or raising?" I determined the overcall route was the way to go. Unfortunate, because both blinds folded, but I think it was definitely the correct play in that situation.

There was one freaky hand that I wasn't involved in where a guy's 5 kicker played and won him the pot: A guy's A5 won on a A4288 board against another guy's A3. Not every day you see a 5 kicker matter, much less be the best kicker.......

For the evening, I played my draws pretty strongly (raising them where appropriate) and felt pretty good about that. I also did the whole "raise to thin the field" with marginal hands well with the exceptions noted above. But in general, I still think I wimp out on river value bets, and check behind in position FAR more often than I should. The key that I have to keep remembering is that they will simply call with anything and will not check-raise the river (for example, I had a guy catch his 2-outer set on the river and merely check-called me. And this was not a guy shy about raising either.) So I don't have to worry about losing 2 bets on the river the vast majority of the time.

Overall it seemed like I got more than my share of premium pairs (AA, KK 4 times, QQ once) and also hit more than my fair share of draws. There were (of course) the nasty suckouts but those are to be expected in a loose-passive game. I was actually up $100-ish reasonably quickly (primarily due to the 2-outer KK hand above) but I gave it all back and at one point was down about $4 or so. But then got it almost all back and wound up $95 on the night after playing a bit past 2:00 AM. Up about 16 BB in 8-ish hours of play. That'll do - definitely my biggest win live, and a decent boost for the confidence.

Whew - this was much longer than I expected. My apologies to poker1eh - both for whaling on him both times with my KK and for the nasty suckouts he experienced at the end of the night. Brutal.

I am the Worst Poker Player on the Planet

OK, maybe not, but man do I feel beaten down. I'll let the graph speak for itself:

Yup, that is nearly 150 BB ($600 - a significant chunk of my bankroll) down in 5500 hands. And while I never claim to play perfectly, I do not think I am playing badly at all. In fact, a significant fraction of the hands at $2/$4 are single-tabled so that I can truly focus on the players and reads, and (if anything) I am more diligent at seat/table selection than I am at $1/$2. It just seems I am getting suckout after suckout. Just as an example, from my 222 hands last night, which left me down a total of $148.50 (yes, by far my worst night so far....)

• I open-raise AQo in the CO, SB calls, BB 3-bets, all call. Flop AQ6. SB hits runner runner 2 and 3 to make a straight with his 54s.
• I openraise AJo UTG (6-max), called by the SB and BB. Flop KQT (2 suited) so for now, I've got the nuts. The turn and river come K and Q for a final board of KQTKQ to turn my hand into trash.
• I have Q9 on a board of x9TJK. Opponent has AQ.

as well as the "usual" QQ vs AA on a T-high board, and AA being beaten by a rivered flush. I only won one pot of any significant size (KK that remained an overpair and somehow didn't get sucked out on by my 2 opponents).

In comparison, here is my $1/$2 results:


Quite a difference. I simply don't understand the wildly divergent results I am getting between the two levels. As I've said before, I think the $2/$4 games are softer in some ways (especially preflop raising) than the $1/$2 games, although the opponents are probably better at hand reading and other postflop skills at $2/$4.

I understand variance and to focus on the correct decisions rather than results but being down nearly 150 BB at the highest level I've played seems to make that application of that a bit hard. Maybe it is time to step down to $1/$2 to "re-tool" my game, but I honestly don't know what this will accomplish - I don't think my game is in massive need of overhaul, but perhaps the reduced stakes will make the losses a bit easier to take.

Perhaps I need to visit the Psychology forum on 2+2 - I know I've got a bit more of my ego tied up in these results than I should ("I know I'm a better poker player than this!"), and perhaps there is some decent advice on how to work through it. Any other advice my legion of readers have would also be much appreciated......

A Year In Useless Stats, Part IV - Hand Values

Well, my "Year In...." posts seemed to have come to a screeching halt with the last one. Due to the fact that I got really, really busy and the subject material for this post turned out to not be as interesting as I thought it would be, it has been 3 weeks since the last post.

Luckily for all involved, it will also likely be the last.

This post is very similar to one of my previous posts about hand values (http://thepokergeek.blogspot.com/2006/05/basic-hand-statistics-after-3-months.html) but with more hands (almost 40K full ring hands) under my belt.

The following 6 hands are the only hands in full-ring that are worth more than a blind steal:

• KK: 2.015 BB/hand
• AA: 1.9336
• QQ: 1.7265
• AKs: 1.2494
• JJ: 1.0245
• AQo: 0.7699

Still quite weird to me that AA is not my best hand, but has gained quite a bit of ground from the last time, where it was actually my fifth-place hand. Also, last time I had one additional hand (AQs) more profitable than a a blind steal, but it didn't "make the cut" this time.

Here are my worst 5 hands:

• Q9s: -0.1761 BB/hand
• J8s: -0.1644
• K2s: -0.1628
• J9s: -0.1619
• 32s: -0.1567

This is far different from last time where I had 5 hands worse than -0.30 BB/hand, and my worst hand was actually a pocket pair: 88 was losing me a big fat 0.50 BB everytime I played it.

Here is my entire range as a graph, and as a table:

The graph looks pretty much the same as last time, except for the lack of the huge tailoff at the end that corresponded to my 88 and other horrible hands. The green shading in the table correspnds to hands more profitable than a blind-steal, the blue shading on the graph are hands that are profitable, but less so than a blind steal, and the red hands are hands that are losing at a rate of worse than (somewhat arbitrarily) -0.15 BB/hand.

If you look at the table, it reinforces a point that I made in the previous post - very, very few offsuit hands are profitable - and even fewer profitable by more than a marginal amount. Pretty much just A-big and KQo are the big hitters and the other two-Broadway card combinations are marginally profitable. In the suited realm, however, many more hands become profitable - most suited Aces, big suited Kings and suited connectors can be seen in addition to the 2-Broadway cards. I (evidently) have a weakness in the suited 9 category (Q9s, J9s, T9s all solidly unprofitable).

In terms of raw numbers, 47 of my 169 hands are profitable. Of these 47 hands, only 10 of them are offsuit, and all but 98o are combinations of two broadway cards.

Just for the heck of it, I'll include some 6-max hand values, although I really don't have enough hands to make them worthwhile. My 9 hands that are better than a blind steal are:

• AA: 2.8582
• KK: 2.4052
• QQ: 1.8455
• JJ: 1.3927
• A9s: 1.3029
• QJs: 1.1676
• AKo: 0.9027
• AQo 0.8986
• A6s 0.7699

That's more like it, with the 4 premium pairs being my top 4 hands (in order, even!) but there is obviously some small-sample-size issues when you see hands like A9s, QJs and A6s being in such exalted company. Interestingly enough, Big Slick (AKs) misses my better-than-a-blind-steal list in both full ring and 6-max. Interesting.

The worst hands are likely not worth looking at - all are suited hands that just due to the combinatorics, I haven't seen enough times for their averages to be representative of their true value.

Well, that's it. Now that it is finally March, I suppose I can leave last year's play where it belongs (in the past) and get on with this year's play.

A Year In Useless Stats, Part III - Best / Worst Days and Weeks

Now, as promised, the best/worst days and weeks along with a couple other random stats that don't lend themselves well to fit any other place.

It is very easy to focus on the $6K+ that I earned this year but for the purposes of the below statistics the numbers to keep in mind are my earns from actual play, rather than any of the bonuses and freerolls. To be specific, that means $686 made through actual poker play (a number that would have been $1002 if I had never played a single hand of $2/$4, but that's another story). Also of note was that in terms of BB, my yearly earn was just under 700 BB.

The first set of statistics will be measured in BB:

Most BB won, day:
4/8/2006: 70.6 BB
6/17/2006: 63.8 BB
5/5/2006: 53.1 BB

I have had 5 other days in excess of +40 BB, but I have had NONE of them since July 2006! For whatever reason, I simply don't seem to get on big daily rushes anymore. I don't know whether that is because I don't play enough hands in a typical day or some other reason. Kinda frustrating, though.

Most BB lost, day:
7/21/2006: -53.8 BB
10/31/2006: -47.7 BB (Halloween Curse)
6/21/2006: -47.4 BB

I have had only 2 other days in excess of -40 BB, so it is at least nice to know that not only don't I have big positive rushes, I don't go on very large negative plunges either.

Most BB won, week:
5/1/2006 - 5/7/2006: 94.7 BB
9/4/2006 - 9/10/2006: 78.4 BB
12/18/2006 - 12/24/2006: 78.0 BB

I have had 8 other weeks in excess of +40 BB as well.

Most BB lost, week:
3/27/2006 - 4/2/2006: -84.0 BB
5/15/2006 - 5/21/2006: -55.8 BB
1/22/2007 - 1/28/2007: -38.9 BB

I have had no other week worse than -35 BB, which tells a very nice story when combined with the previous statistic: 11 weeks of +40 BB or more, and only 3 weeks of -35 BB or worse. Gotta love that - a week is a pretty short amount of time to have expected my play to have "evened out" to this level.

Next, all the same statistics but measured in dollars. This will (obviously) show a great bias towards my end-of-year play where I am playing for stakes more than 10 times (!!!) the level that I started.

Most $$ won, day:
2/3/2007: $92.00
6/17/2006: $81.00
7/22/2006: $74.25

I have had 11 other days in excess of $50. I am amazed that I haven't had bigger days than the June and July days, as I am playing a level or two higher than I was then. This is a reflection of the "I don't seem to go on rushes since last July" statistic from above. I would certainly expect that if I continue to play $2/$4 for any appreciable amount of time these records will topple, as even a "mere" 25 BB day will exceed than any of the days listed above.

Most $$ lost, day:
10/31/2006: -$107.35 (Halloween Curse)
12/15/2006: -$103.25
1/24/2007: -$85.00

I have also had 11 other days in excess of -$50. Somewhat concerning / interesting that I've had a -$100 day (twice, even!) but never a +$100 day. Hmmmmmm.

Most $$ won, week:
1/29/2007 - 2/4/2007: $177.00
12/18/2006 - 12/24/2006: $146.75 (Merry Christmas!)
10/23/2006 - 10/29/2006: $98.85

I have had 10 other weeks in excess of $50. Interstingly enough, if you take my $6K earn for the year (including all sources) it works out to about $115/week. So if I want to match my $6K for next year, I will need to have some of these "best weeks" almost every week, since many of these sources for the $6K have dried up in the interim.

Most $$ lost, week:
1/22/2007 - 1/28/2007: -$166.75
12/11/2006 - 12/17/2006: -$157.25
3/27/2006 - 4/2/2006: -$85.87

I have had 2 other weeks in excess of -$50, so again I see a nice story of my game when grouped into week long spans: 13 weeks of +$50 or more, but only 5 weeks corresponding to the same number but in the negative column. Interestingly enough, the top two worst weeks above were immediately followed by the two best weeks above. Maybe going on a downswing motivates me to play better to get out of that hole. Or maybe the doomswitch just gets turned off at that point....

The magnitude of these dollar numbers are sobering when compared to my yearly earn - my best/worst days are in excess of 15% of my yearly earn and my best/worst weeks are up to 25% of that amount. An amazing amount of variance to be sure. Having the cushion of the bankroll allows me to push my (apparent) edge without the variance threatening to make me go busto.

Now, for the stat that doesn't seem to fit any other place - most hands played. For reference, I played just short of 51,000 hands for the year - so about 1,000 hands per week on average.

Most hands played, day:
12/1/2006: 1079
2/19/2006: 883
9/10/2006: 737

Most hands played, week:
2/13/2006 - 2/19/2006: 2158
12/18/2006 - 12/24/2006: 1808
5/15/2006 - 5/21/2006: 1745

I am actually surprised I don't have any weeks where I have 3-4 times the average number of hands. Having my "peak" day be only double the average implies a very flat distribution:


Other than playing a bit more at the start and not playing that much in the summer months, this is (reasonably) constant.

The last post "yearly" post I have actual plans for is a "value of each hand" post, both for full ring and 6-max. After that, I'd better get back to playing instead of writing about playing......

A Year In Useless Stats, Part II - Suckouts

OK, I lied. I had planned on the next post being about best days / weeks but it turns out all the stats I compiled for that are on another computer, so I present to you instead some suckouts until I can get around to the other posts.

This is somewhat a difficult post to write, as there is no way to go into PokerTracker and query it to display the largest suckouts. I am therefore reliant on my memory to try to remember some of the biggest. It was very, very easy for me to remember the biggest suckout I laid on someone, but it took a little bit of hunting to find the biggest suckout foisted upon me. There is no guarantee that what I found was the worst, but if there is a worse one, I simply don't want to remember it.

Worst suckout I laid on someone:

Party Poker, Limit: $0.50/$1 (6-max), 5 players

Pre-flop: (5 players) Hero is Button with J♦ J♥
UTG folds, CO calls, Hero raises, SB 3-bets, BB folds, CO calls, Hero caps, SB calls, CO calls.

Flop: 2♠ A♥ J♣ (13SB, 3 players)
SB checks, CO checks, Hero bets, SB calls, CO folds.

Turn: J♠ (7.5BB, 2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets, SB raises, Hero 3-bets, SB caps, Hero calls (14.5:1).

River: 4♠ (15.5BB, 2 players)
SB bets, Hero raises, SB 3-bets, Hero caps, SB calls.

Results: Final pot: 23.5BB
Hero shows J♦ J♥
SB doesn't show A♦ A♠

Wow. Nice one-outer on the flopped nuts vs. second-nuts. On the flop, here was my equity:

AA: 95.657%
JJ: 4.343%

Not that it matters, but when he check-raised me on the turn, I was 95% sure he had AA. When he capped it, there was no doubt. I wonder how many bets he'd have gone with the (now) second-nuts on the river if betting was uncapped?

The worst / most memorable suck-outs on me:

Full Tilt Poker, Limit: $1/$2 (full-ring)

Pre-flop: (7 players) Hero is BB with 6♦ 6♣
UTG calls, 4 folds, SB calls, Hero checks.

Flop: 6♥ J♣ 2♠ (3SB, 3 players)
SB checks, Hero bets, UTG calls, SB folds.

Turn: T♣ (2.5BB, 2 players)
Hero bets, UTG calls.

River: 8♦ (4.5BB, 2 players)
Hero bets, UTG raises, Hero 3-bets, UTG calls.

Results: Final pot: 10.5BB
Hero showed 6♦ 6♣
UTG showed Q♦ 9♦

This hand was actually part of the screaming monkey tilt post I previously wrote. Villain was 54 / 0 / 0.3 and he called on the flop with no pair, no draw, and only one backdoor draw (the one that came in!), giving an equity of:

66: 96.768%
Q9: 3.232%

so this is even worse equity than my 1-outer above. The three-bet on the river was probably spew, especially against this guy, but his fishiness is shown clearly in that he didn't cap me in the river, even though he held the nuts. About two button revolutions later, he rivered a boat against my turned nut straight. Fun.

Worst performance of two consecutive premium hands:

This is also a hard one to do, but due to the fact it just happened to me, I'll include it as a category. I may have had two consecutive hands that were worse, but I simply don't remember them. First (and last) button revolution at the table.

Hand 1:
Poker Stars, Limit: $2/$4 (full-ring)

Pre-flop: (9 players) Hero is MP2 with A♦ A♣
UTG folds, UTG+1 calls, MP1 calls, Hero raises, 4 folds, BB calls, UTG+1 calls, MP1 calls.

Flop: Q♠ T♣ K♠ (8.5SB, 4 players)
BB checks, UTG+1 checks, MP1 bets, Hero raises, BB calls, UTG+1 calls, MP1 calls.

Turn: 2♦ (8.25BB, 4 players)
BB checks, UTG+1 checks, MP1 checks, Hero bets, BB calls, UTG+1 calls, MP1 calls.

River: T♠ (12.25BB, 4 players)
BB checks, UTG+1 bets, MP1 calls, Hero calls (14.25:1), BB calls.

Results: Final pot: 16.25BB
UTG+1 showed J♦ T♥
MP1 showed A♠ 4♠
BB mucks 6♠ 2♠
Hero mucks A♦ A♣

If I was better, I probably get away for the last bet on the river when the board pairs and the flush draw comes in and UTG+1 wakes up and MP1 calls. I was actually 4th best at the end.

Very next hand:

Poker Stars, Limit: $2/$4 (full-ring)

Pre-flop: (9 players) Hero is MP1 with K♦ K♥
UTG calls, UTG+1 folds, Hero raises, 4 folds, SB 3-bets, 2 folds, Hero caps, SB calls.

Flop: 3♣ J♣ 5♣ (10SB, 2 players)
SB bets, Hero raises, SB calls all-in $2.

Turn: A♥ (7BB, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: 7BB)

River: 9♦ (7BB, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: 7BB)

Results: Final pot: 7BB
SB showed A♣ 9♥
Hero mucks K♦ K♥

Fun.

And just for the fun of it, I recently exceeded my previous "biggest pot" although I suppose that can be expected now that I've re-taken up $2/$4 full-ring and the pots tend to be a bit bigger than their 6-max cousins.

Biggest pot, biggest profit: $85 with $54 profit

Poker Stars, Limit: $2/$4 (full-ring)

Pre-flop: (10 players) Hero is BB with K♠ K♣
UTG folds, UTG+1 calls, UTG+2 folds, MP1 calls, 5 folds, 5 folds, Hero raises, UTG+1 calls, MP1 calls.

Flop: 9♠ Q♦ K♥ (6.5SB, 3 players)
Hero bets, UTG+1 calls, MP1 raises, Hero 3-bets, UTG+1 caps, MP1 calls, Hero calls (17.5:1).

Turn: 3♦ (9.25BB, 3 players)
Hero checks, UTG+1 bets, MP1 raises, Hero calls (12.25:2), UTG+1 3-bets, MP1 calls, Hero calls (17.25:1).

River: 9♣ (18.25BB, 3 players)
Hero bets, UTG+1 calls, MP1 calls.

Results: Final pot: 21.25BB

Hero showed K♠ K♣
UTG+1 mucks J♠ T♥
MP1 mucks K♦ Q♥

Flopped straight vs. top set vs. top two pair - the nuts vs. second nuts vs. fifth nuts. Wicked. UTG+1's flat-call / cap on the flop was very obviously JT so I I went into calldown mode and prayed desperately for the board to pair. Also on the river once it paired, I would have loved to have check-raised but I really didn't want to risk it being checked through (I thought it was pretty obvious what I had as well) so I donked it out. For once I was the lucky one, although the greedy bastard in me wishes the river had been a Q so I could have gotten the max out of the boat-over-boat action. :-)

Next post (I promise) - best / worst days and weeks.

A Year In Useless Stats, Part I - Big Pots

Well, it has been a full year since I started playing cards on the Internet for money. I started out on February 7, 2006 with a $75 Instant Bankroll promotion, a bit of book knowledge, and a lot of hope. Almost 51,000 hands and $6,000 later, I think I'm pretty happy with the way things went.

Since I'm a numbers / stats guy, the next series of posts will deal with some of the "records" that happened in the first year. Most of these have no redeeming values but are fun for me to look at, so you're all stuck for the next few posts. You don't like it, start your own blog. :-)

Many of these "records" will be separated into dollar records and BB records so as to not ignore my play at the lower levels.

Biggest Pot Won ($$): $68

1/18/2007, Full Tilt Poker, Limit: $2/$4 (6-max)

Pre-flop: (6 players) Hero is Button with Q♠ Q♣
UTG folds, UTG+1 calls, CO calls, Hero raises, SB 3-bets, 2 folds, CO calls, Hero caps, SB calls, CO calls.

Flop: A♣ 9♦ 4♣ (14SB, 3 players)
SB checks, CO checks, Hero bets, SB raises, CO calls, Hero calls (19:1).

Turn: Q♥ (10BB, 3 players)
SB bets, CO calls, Hero raises, SB calls, CO folds.

River: 2♠ (15BB, 2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets, SB calls.

Results: Final pot: 17BB
Hero showed Q♠ Q♣
SB mucks A♥ K♠

Hand Comments:
Well it was obviously a nice suckout on the turn, but given the 19:1 odds I was getting to call the final bet on the flop, I actually had odds to draw to my 2-outer. I knew I was behind, and got lucky. Looking back at it, I wouldn't change the way I played this hand at all, which will not be the case for most of the other hands in this post.

Biggest Profit From One Pot ($$): $42

2/6/2007, Full Tilt Poker, Limit: $2/$4 (6-max)

Pre-flop: (6 players) Hero is CO with 9♥ 7♥
UTG folds, UTG+1 calls, Hero calls (2.5:1), Button calls, SB raises, BB calls, UTG+1 calls, Hero calls (8:1), Button calls.

Flop: 7♣ Q♣ 9♠ (7.5SB, 5 players)
SB bets, BB raises, UTG+1 calls, Hero 3-bets, 2 folds, BB calls, UTG+1 calls.

Turn: A♦ (8.75BB, 3 players)
BB checks, UTG+1 checks, Hero bets, BB calls, UTG+1 calls.

River: 3♦ (11.75BB, 3 players)
BB checks, UTG+1 checks, Hero bets, BB calls, UTG+1 calls all-in $3.

Results:
Final pot: 14.5BB ($63 pre-rake, Hero's net is $42)
Hero showed 9♥ 7♥
BB mucks Q♠ 8♥
UTG+1 mucks J♦ 9♣

Hand Comments:
Nice to have my biggest net profit in a pot come on the very last day of my 365 day year of playing. This is a "flop bottom two pair and hold on for your life" hand. No change to the way I'd play this hand either. Of possible interest, UTG+1 was a complete tard with stats of (get this) 92 / 0.7 / 0.4. Nice seat, huh?

Biggest Pot Lost and Biggest Loss in One Pot ($$): $99 pot, Hero's loss of $32

1/8/2007, Full Tilt Poker, Limit: $2/$4 (full-ring)

Pre-flop: (8 players) Hero is MP2 with A♠ J♥
UTG calls, UTG+1 calls, MP1 folds, Hero raises, 4 folds, UTG calls, UTG+1 calls.

Flop: 3♠ J♠ 4♠ (7.5SB, 3 players)
UTG bets, UTG+1 raises, Hero calls (10.5:2), UTG 3-bets, UTG+1 caps, Hero calls (19.5:2), UTG calls.

Turn: A♣ (9.75BB, 3 players)
UTG bets, UTG+1 raises, Hero 3-bets, UTG caps, UTG+1 calls, Hero calls (21.75:1).

River: Q♥ (21.75BB, 3 players)
UTG bets, UTG+1 calls, Hero calls (23.75:1).

Results: Final pot: 24.75BB
UTG+1 showed 9♠ 8♠
UTG showed T♠ 5♠
Hero mucks A♠ J♥

Hand Comments:
Well, this one certainly did suck. I played this incredibly wrong, although the same result was bound to happen. I think the "right" way to play this once I flopped TPTK and the nut flush draw was to 3-bet the flop (and call the inevitable cap that would have come), and then call the turn with plenty good odds to draw to my nut flush and 4 full house outs. The river is a toughy - I simply don't know that I'm good enough to fold top two pair for a single bet in a 24 BB pot closing the action. It might have been -EV but +sanity in case those clowns would have both shown up with hands I could beat.

Biggest Profit From One Pot (BB): 27 BB

5/28/2006, Paradise Poker, Limit: $0.50/$1 (full-ring)

Pre-flop: (10 players) Hero is CO with J♣ T♣
2 folds, UTG+2 calls, MP1 folds, MP2 calls, MP3 calls, Hero calls (4.5:1), Button calls, SB calls, BB checks.

Flop: 9♣ 8♠ 5♦ (7SB, 7 players)
SB checks, BB bets, UTG+2 raises, MP2 folds, MP3 calls, Hero calls (12:2), Button calls, SB calls, BB calls.

Turn: Q♥ (9.5BB, 6 players)
SB bets, BB calls, UTG+2 raises, MP3 3-bets, Hero caps, Button folds, SB calls, BB calls, UTG+2 calls, MP3 calls.

River: T♦ (29.5BB, 5 players)
SB bets, BB calls, UTG+2 calls, MP3 calls, Hero calls (33.5:1).

Results: Final pot: 34.5BB
MP3 shows 7♥ 6♥
Hero shows J♣ T♣
SB shows Q♣ T♥
BB shows 9♥ 8♦
UTG+2 shows 8♣ 8♥

Hand Comments:
Now that is multiway action - flopped straight vs. turned straight vs. top two pair on the river vs. flopped top two pair vs. a flopped set.

Regardless of the outcome, I played this hand wrong on at least two streets. The flop is an easy 3-bet for value, and the river is an super easy raise. I have the second nuts, and there is simply no way someone hung around that long with KJ. Not raising this river is a crime, and I missed out on at least another 3-4 BB by failing to do so.

Biggest Loss in One Pot (BB): 10 BB

2/19/2006, Party Poker, Limit: $0.15/$0.3 (full-ring)

Pre-flop: (8 players) Hero is CO with Q♦ Q♠
UTG calls, UTG+1 calls, MP1 calls, MP2 folds, Hero raises, Button 3-bets, SB caps, BB calls, 2 folds, MP1 calls, Hero calls (19:2), Button calls.

Flop: 9♦ Q♣ K♥ (22SB, 5 players)
SB bets, BB folds, MP1 raises, Hero 3-bets, Button caps, SB calls, MP1 calls, Hero calls (37:1).

Turn: 3♣ (19BB, 4 players)
SB checks, MP1 checks, Hero bets, Button raises, SB calls, MP1 calls, Hero calls (26:1).

River: 8♠ (27BB, 4 players)
SB checks, MP1 checks, Hero bets, Button raises, SB folds, MP1 3-bets, Hero calls (33:2), Button caps, MP1 calls, Hero calls (38:1).

Results: Final pot: 39BB
Button shows J♣ T♠
MP1 mucks K♣ 8♥
Hero mucks Q♦ Q♠

Hand Comments:
Where to start? I (evidently) totally disregarded the button's cold-cap on the flop. The turn and river are pure spew. I should have checked/called the turn drawing to by full house, then checked the river. When I would have been faced with 2 bets back to me and not closing the action on the river I think I can safely lay down my set. Or so it seems. Even as played, I should have laid it down for 2 back to me, not closing the action. :-) I'll chalk this one up to it being within the first two weeks of starting play - I sucked more back then than I do now.

Well, that's all for the "big pots" post. Next post - best and worst days of the year.

2007 goals

Well, this post was originally going to be me working through my own thought processes on what my 2007 goals are and some of the concrete steps I can take to achieve them. But due to the recent upheaval due to Neteller and other payment processors leaving the market, I don't know how far into 2007 I can even look ahead to plan. At best, I can vow to remove known leaks in my game and to "get better" in general but setting any kind of "earn goal" seems out of reach now. I don't know what the game selection will be like, what bonuses I will even be able to take advantage of, or whether I'll even be able to play (or want to play) come 6 months from now.

It may just be a timing coincidence (or not), but it seems there has been a "ripple effect" of the Neteller exit from the poker market on the quantity and quality of the games at Full Tilt. To give two examples:

1. I hopped online one evening this last weekend to get a few hours of play in. The site traffic was decent, but out of the 40-ish tables of 1/2 and 2/4 (both full ring and 6-max) I could not find a single table that I was interested in sitting at. Full Tilt has always been somewhat on the tight-TAGGY side, but I can usually find at least 3-4 tables that are worth getting on the waiting list for, if I can at least get the right seat. That night, not only was there not any obvious lucrative tables, there didn't even appear to be any mediocre tables with possible decent seats. It was that bad. The next night wasn't much better.
   
2. I sometimes try to hop onto Full Tilt before work to get a quick 30 minutes on play in. The opposition at that time of day seems softer than the evening crew, and out of the 10-15 tables for me to choose from (at the levels previously mentioned), I almost never have any issue finding a selection of decent-to-great tables with 2-3 fish apiece. This morning I logged in to find only 7 total tables occupied, and all but one of them I had absolutely no interest in sitting at. The one semi-decent table was only such because there was one obvious fish sitting.
   

I'll check back in over the next few mornings and evenings, but this certainly does not bode well. Perhaps Stars has remained a bit looser, but I have my doubts.

Anyway, on to the original point of the posts - my 2007 goals, such that I can make them.

Dig out of my $2/$4 full ring hole

As you all know, I decided to take a 40 BB challenge at $2/$4 FR, ran horribly, but decided to stay there since I had convinced myself the games were softer than the corresponding $1/$2 games.

• Bad News: I'm currently down about 50 BB at this level.
• Good News: This is up from my "bottom" of 85 BB.
• Bad News: I haven't seen a good $2/$4 FR table in weeks.
  

I will not sit at a bad $2/$4 table just to prove I can dig out of this hole, but it does truly bug me that this my only level in PokerTracker that I have lost money at.

Work on river value betting.

In general, I leave a LOT of money on the table on the river. Many times, I seem content to check a hand down on the river to see if my hand is good, especially if a scare card hit the river. I tend to give my opponents too much credit on the river for good hands regardless of whether my reads throughout the hand support them having that hand. I also seem to fear the river checkraise (even from non-tricky opponents), resulting in me checking hands as strong as top two pair when checked to me after the flush card hit on the river (for example). This is obviously bad the majority of the time. Sure, sometimes he'll have the flush and I'll have to pay off a c/r, but the majority of the time he'll have a second-best hand that he'll pay off with, leaving me in the positive overall. Other examples like this abound. I really need to learn to trust my reads and extract value where appropriate.

Blind defense

I am better at blind defense than I used to be (especially in the BB), but I still have at least one big hole: I tend not to 3-bet out of the blinds vs. probable steal raisers without monsters. For example, it is folded around to a TAGGY cutoff and he open-raises. If I have 77 in the SB, this should be an easy 3-bet and an auto-bet on most flops, but in the past I have been hesitant to make this raise. Being on the receiving end of such plays shows exactly how strong a move this is, and I don't do enough of it myself. Taking the initiative by 3-betting pre-flop has a lot of value with more hands than just big pocket pairs and AK and I need to learn to take advantage of this.

Opening up my game preflop

My current VPIP/PFR preflop statistics look like:

16/9 (full-ring)
19/12 (6-max)

These are both tighter than what I think is ideal. If I am truly a good player (or at least, better than my opponents at the table), I should be seeking to play more pots against these opponents, especially in position.

I'd like to see my FR stats look like my current 6-max stats (19/12), and my 6-max stats to be somewhere in the 25/15 range. It is estimated on 2+2 that the maximum profitable stats for a 6-max player is something like 30/20, but I'm not that good. Yet.

Note that the difference between where I am at full ring (16/9) and where I think I should be (19/12) is entirely in the amount that I raise preflop - if I can "squeeze out" an extra 3% raise percentage, it brings me to where I want. Therefore, I need to look for more preflop raising opportunities. In the 6-max case, the gap between 19/12 and 25/15 consists of an additional 3% raises and 3% calls preflop.

In order to do accomplish these, I need to do at least the following:

Isolation-raise more often. When a weak player (or two) limps in behind me, I need to raise it up with weaker hands than I might have ordinarily done so in the past. Middle pairs, suited aces, or other A-big are ideal for this sort of play. These hands have an equity advantage over the two (presumably) almost random hands the fish are playing and I have position and I have dead money from the blinds. As an extreme example of this, if a fish limps, I have the button and the blinds are tight it may be right to raise it up with a hand as weak as K9s or so to isolate.

Steal more often. My attempt to steal % is pretty low by "good" player standards - I believe I am somewhere in the 25% range, and I need to get that up into the 30-40% range. There's no solution to this other than "pick more hands to steal with in late position" and then play poker postflop if called.

3-bet from the blinds more often. I've already covered this in a previous paragraph.

Loosen up a tad bit with "limp behind" hands in 6-max, especially on the button. Position rules, especially in 6-max. I certainly don't wan to overdo it, but I think connectors (mostly suited, but some unsuited too) a bit weaker than I currently play in late position would suffice for this. Typically 6-max is a high card game, as there are not enough people in to pad the odds for your draw, but if that situation arises, I need to take advantage of it.

I had medium and long term goals sketched out (in terms of what levels I want to play by the end of the year and some earnings goals making some assumptions about number of hands played, earn rate, bonuses, etc.) but I think the current state of online poker is murky enough that I'll put off those specific goals until the situation becomes clearer.

One of my next post will be a retrospective of my Year In Poker - as of February 7 it will be a year since I took the plunge to play poker online for money. knowing me, there'll be more graphs and random trivia than you can shake a stick at.

2006 - Year in Review

First of all, sorry to my small (but growing to at least 5!) list of readers if you subscribe to this blog via an RSS feed - I recently did a conversion of my blog to the "new" Blogger and it evidently mixed up the order of my articles in the RSS feed. Hopefully this is a one-time issue.

On to the real content - I've reached the end of my first calendar year playing Internet poker for real money. It has been quite a rush - over 46,000 hands , over 40 blog posts, and (as you can see by the bankroll update to the right) nearly $6,000. It'll be interesting (for me, anyways) to look back on how 2006 looked from a few categories. I'll start out with the category that makes me look Really Good then move down from there so if you get tired of reading by the end, you'll at least think I'm better than I actually am! Now on to a blog post chock-full of charts and graphs.....

Overall 2006 results

The title pretty much says it all - here is a graph that shows all the hands I've played in 2006 at all sites, all levels:

The winrate is a bit lower than I'd have liked (1.35 BB/100) , has a few 150-ish BB slides at the start, and has a stretch of about 10,000 hands (between 18K and 28K) where I just broke even. Even so, this seems to be a slow steady climb implying that I pretty much rock at poker, right? After all 620 BB can't be all bad. Well, let's look at the same graph, but measured in dollars instead of BB:


A bit more variance there at the end (including a few $200-ish drops) but it still doesn't look too outrageously bad. Maybe instead of "rocking" at poker, maybe I'm merely "good". But let's move on to see if that's true....

6 max

Below is a graph of all 6-max hands I played this year, in BB:

Now that's a much nicer rate: 2.61 BB/100 over nearly 13,000 hands. Again, there are a couple of 60-80 BB downswings in there but this seems to look pretty good. Somewhat troubling is the 6,000 hand breakeven stretch in the middle (almost half the hands I've played!) but in general, I can't complain about 330 BB earned at that rate. The story looks even nicer when expressed in dollars:


A nasty $200 slide in the middle, but not much to be worried about.

I find it really quite strange that I seem to have less swings at 6-max than at full ring, as conventional wisdom has it that 6-max is a much "swingier" game. Maybe I'm just lucky at it or (conversely) unlucky at full ring.

OK, now I'm back to thinking I rock at poker. What's next?

Full Ring

Well, simple math should tell you if I'm up 620 BB overall, and 330 BB at 6-max, then I should be up 290 BB at full ring. Ding-ding-ding! You win a prize:

This is where the trouble starts to manifest, perhaps. Three separate 130 BB downswings (including one right at the end of the year), and as of the end of the year I hadn't made any net BB since about my 17,000th hand, meaning for the last 17,000 hands (half my full ring hands played for the entire year!) I have been breakeven in terms of BB. Not good. But wait, it gets worse when expressed in dollars. Avert your eyes if you have a squeamish stomach:

OUCH! Yes, you read that graph correctly - I actually went from being up about $380 to down $50 (a $430 swing!) in about 4,000 hands. I am barely positive in dollar terms for full ring in all of 2006, and that is only due to that little uptick way at the end of the year. This is (primarily) due to the killing that I've been taking at $2/$4 that I've been complaining about in other recent blog posts. The amazing thing about it is that I (evidently) was running so good at $1/$2 6-max at the same time I was hemorrhaging this money at $2/$4 that the "overall" graphs in the first section don't look so bad!

Now, instead of thinking I rock at poker, I get to think I suck. And quite badly.

Monthly and Site-by-Site results

Here is the breakdown by level, by month:

I made money at every level except for $2/$4, and never really had a "bad" month, as most of the months where I was negative were "only" negative by less than 20 BB or so at the primary level I was playing at the time. You can clearly see, however, that my December was saved primarily due to my $1/$2 6-max results when netted against the $2/$4 carnage.

Here are my results when grouped by site, by month:

At least I am net positive on every site, although that was certainly not the case for Full Tilt for quite some time - I was actually down over $150 overall at Full Tilt at one point before going on a "late run" to pull positive for my whole time there. In fact, I went from highly positive there (+$220) to that -$150 in only a little over 2,000 hands. RIGGED! :-)

Live Play

No nifty graphs for this section - only the (depressing) statistic I can give is that I'm down $333 (Canadian) while playing live $3/$6 against competition that seems to be weaker than any I've ever encountered online. Admittedly this is "only" about 55 BB over an estimated 800 hands or so but still disappointing.

In terms of tournaments, I have entered three of the $50+$5 No Limit tournaments there and (although I've reached the final table in two of those three) have not cashed yet. So, another $165 CDN down the tubes.....

Final Thoughts

I was going to make a "2007 Goals" section but, frankly, I'm tired of typing. I'll likely leave that for another blog post soon.

When I started this online journey in February, I would never have imagined that I'd be where I am from a profit perspective. I have a lot of work to do on my game and finding good bonuses in 2007 will be significantly harder after the October legislation, but I'll have fun doing both.

Happy New Year!