I have a leak in my game and it's costing me dearly. I've identified the source and, sadly, it's something about which I can do absolutely nothing. It's called dumbass donkey luck.
I mentioned previously that Full Tilt thought I was pretty so they gave me a $50 bonus. I'd been trying to work it off playing 6-max NL, but the going was incredibly slow. Last night I broke down and went back to the full ring limit tables.
My FTP bankroll is not huge and it has been moving in the wrong direction for quite some time, so I'm still playing in the shallow end of the pool. Last night was 1/2 limit. Donkeys reign supreme at this level.
If not for hands won by people who had no business even seeing the flop, I'd have had a reasonably successful evening. Instead, the idiots called me down with ridiculous odds and got lucky at the river. Again and again. I cleared as much bonus in a couple hours as I did in the previous week at NL, but I lost four times as much playing as I cleared bonus.
I know this is really nothing new, but I've grown weary of it. And I don't know what to do other than simply stop playing limit.
29 March 2007
26 March 2007
Poker and Politics
Before I get to tonight's main theme, let me discuss the weekend. Last week Full Tilt sent me a "we love you and want to give you money" offer that was impossible to resist. $50, for free. No deposit required. Just clear the bonus under the normal terms. I just can't get away from these damn bonuses. I keep trying, hoping that I've seen the last of ring limit. But the bonuses just keep coming.
This time I've made an effort to clear the bonus playing NL rather than limit. It's slow going, partly because I'm trying to play it safe with my FTP bankroll and swimming only in the shallow end of the pool, and partly because I can't multi-table shorthanded NL. Well, maybe I could, but I'm not willing to try just yet.
I've played for probably four hours and have just cleared the first $5 of the bonus. I have this week to clear the rest. It's not looking good.
I had a rough time of it Thursday, losing a couple buy-ins, though it's some small consolation that I made the right move on both big losses and the other guy just got lucky. Friday I ended with a small profit after a couple hits in the early going.
Sunday I played a couple tournaments. Early in the afternoon there was the ITH league tournament. I followed last week's victory at HORSE with a very premature departure when my nut flush ran into a full house. I obviously knew the full house was a possibility, but given the way the betting had gone on the hand there was no way it was likely. I mean, seriously, who the hell slowplays pocket jacks? Three limpers and then the BB with pocket jacks just checks? That's seriously twisted. And then jams the pot when they hit the nut full house? So it goes.
Sunday evening was the latest installment in the WPBT series. I bubbled the points in the last event, finishing one place below the halfway point. I've never had any delusions of winning anything in this league, but I did want to get my name on the leaderboard, so just missing the points was a big disappointment.
This time we played Razz, one of my strongest games... NOT. I managed to actually catch some cards in this one and was doing pretty good in the early going. Through a fine combination of minimal skill and near-maximum luck I came in sixth. My best WPBT finish to date. I just wish I felt there was a bigger skill factor involved in this.
Now, on to our main theme for this entry. And it's probably not what you think. From time to time I come upon some politically related thing I think the world at large should know about and, this blog being my only communication channel with the world at large, I'm tempted to post about it here.
The point would not generally be to voice my opinion on politics, regardless of how silly I think it is to outlaw incandescent light bulbs, but to simply point out where others have presented some information or what I think to be an informed opinion. But then I think, "This is a poker blog. Politics are a divisive topic. No matter what I say, I'm likely to piss off about half the already very small audience I have." Thankfully, to date, I've avoided the temptation to post anything on politics other than that which is directly related to poker.
There used to be a cable TV network called TechTV. I was a regular viewer of several shows on that network, my favorite being "The Screensavers". Our friend Wil Wheaton, host of the WWdN tournaments, made a few appearances on that show. I always recorded "The Screensavers" on my ReplayTV and it was almost always the first thing I watched when I got home from work. (This was before I discovered online poker.)
On one particular show, Leo Laporte was interviewing some guy. I think he was a science fiction writer. As part of the introductory chatter before they got to the meat of the interview Leo asked the guy about his vacation in France. That was the summer of the big heat waves in Europe that allegedly resulted in a lot of deaths. Leo asked the author if he thought the heat wave was a result of global warming. The guy replied, "Of course it was." I hit the FF button.
This author had just said something so stupid that in my mind it cast into serious doubt the worth of anything else that might come out of his mouth. I was no longer interested in anything he had to say on any topic.
(Just so we're clear, global warming is a climate thing. It affects the planet as a whole. The heat wave in Europe was a weather thing. It affected just Europe. The two are almost completely unrelated and the less than one degree Celsius increase in the earth's average temperature over the last century did not cause the European heat wave.)
When I read other poker blog postings about politics I realize how smart I was to not give in to the temptation to post such things myself. Other than to record for posterity my journey through pokerdom, I have some small hope that a few gems of poker wisdom may eventually emanate from these pages. For those gems to be of any use, somebody has to read them.
If I want people to stay around to maybe pick up the odd gem of wisdom, I need to keep from annoying them with my poorly considered views on non-poker topics with which I'm ill informed. (At least the ones that haven't already hit the FF button due to my saying global warming didn't cause the heat wave in Europe.)
Most blogs are personal things and people are free to post whatever they want. But when you post opinions on political topics you run the very clear risk of alienating a big portion of your audience. Just as you have the right to post whatever you want, I have the right to ignore it, and everything else you have to say, just as you have the right to ignore this and everything that might come after.
And that's all I have to say about poker and politics.
Tonight is the MATH at PokerStars. I probably won't be there, but that just means the way is free for all of you who are now boycotting me for taking a stand on mixing poker with politics. 10 pm EDT. Password is hammer.
This time I've made an effort to clear the bonus playing NL rather than limit. It's slow going, partly because I'm trying to play it safe with my FTP bankroll and swimming only in the shallow end of the pool, and partly because I can't multi-table shorthanded NL. Well, maybe I could, but I'm not willing to try just yet.
I've played for probably four hours and have just cleared the first $5 of the bonus. I have this week to clear the rest. It's not looking good.
I had a rough time of it Thursday, losing a couple buy-ins, though it's some small consolation that I made the right move on both big losses and the other guy just got lucky. Friday I ended with a small profit after a couple hits in the early going.
Sunday I played a couple tournaments. Early in the afternoon there was the ITH league tournament. I followed last week's victory at HORSE with a very premature departure when my nut flush ran into a full house. I obviously knew the full house was a possibility, but given the way the betting had gone on the hand there was no way it was likely. I mean, seriously, who the hell slowplays pocket jacks? Three limpers and then the BB with pocket jacks just checks? That's seriously twisted. And then jams the pot when they hit the nut full house? So it goes.
Sunday evening was the latest installment in the WPBT series. I bubbled the points in the last event, finishing one place below the halfway point. I've never had any delusions of winning anything in this league, but I did want to get my name on the leaderboard, so just missing the points was a big disappointment.
This time we played Razz, one of my strongest games... NOT. I managed to actually catch some cards in this one and was doing pretty good in the early going. Through a fine combination of minimal skill and near-maximum luck I came in sixth. My best WPBT finish to date. I just wish I felt there was a bigger skill factor involved in this.
Now, on to our main theme for this entry. And it's probably not what you think. From time to time I come upon some politically related thing I think the world at large should know about and, this blog being my only communication channel with the world at large, I'm tempted to post about it here.
The point would not generally be to voice my opinion on politics, regardless of how silly I think it is to outlaw incandescent light bulbs, but to simply point out where others have presented some information or what I think to be an informed opinion. But then I think, "This is a poker blog. Politics are a divisive topic. No matter what I say, I'm likely to piss off about half the already very small audience I have." Thankfully, to date, I've avoided the temptation to post anything on politics other than that which is directly related to poker.
There used to be a cable TV network called TechTV. I was a regular viewer of several shows on that network, my favorite being "The Screensavers". Our friend Wil Wheaton, host of the WWdN tournaments, made a few appearances on that show. I always recorded "The Screensavers" on my ReplayTV and it was almost always the first thing I watched when I got home from work. (This was before I discovered online poker.)
On one particular show, Leo Laporte was interviewing some guy. I think he was a science fiction writer. As part of the introductory chatter before they got to the meat of the interview Leo asked the guy about his vacation in France. That was the summer of the big heat waves in Europe that allegedly resulted in a lot of deaths. Leo asked the author if he thought the heat wave was a result of global warming. The guy replied, "Of course it was." I hit the FF button.
This author had just said something so stupid that in my mind it cast into serious doubt the worth of anything else that might come out of his mouth. I was no longer interested in anything he had to say on any topic.
(Just so we're clear, global warming is a climate thing. It affects the planet as a whole. The heat wave in Europe was a weather thing. It affected just Europe. The two are almost completely unrelated and the less than one degree Celsius increase in the earth's average temperature over the last century did not cause the European heat wave.)
When I read other poker blog postings about politics I realize how smart I was to not give in to the temptation to post such things myself. Other than to record for posterity my journey through pokerdom, I have some small hope that a few gems of poker wisdom may eventually emanate from these pages. For those gems to be of any use, somebody has to read them.
If I want people to stay around to maybe pick up the odd gem of wisdom, I need to keep from annoying them with my poorly considered views on non-poker topics with which I'm ill informed. (At least the ones that haven't already hit the FF button due to my saying global warming didn't cause the heat wave in Europe.)
Most blogs are personal things and people are free to post whatever they want. But when you post opinions on political topics you run the very clear risk of alienating a big portion of your audience. Just as you have the right to post whatever you want, I have the right to ignore it, and everything else you have to say, just as you have the right to ignore this and everything that might come after.
And that's all I have to say about poker and politics.
Tonight is the MATH at PokerStars. I probably won't be there, but that just means the way is free for all of you who are now boycotting me for taking a stand on mixing poker with politics. 10 pm EDT. Password is hammer.
19 March 2007
I'm Baaaaaaccckkkkkkkkk!!!!
After a long string of less than stellar tournament performances (or being the victim of massive donkouts, you decide), I spent last week away from poker. I watched a lot of TV, played with my radios (heard a navigation beacon from Colombia -- that was exciting), and just generally tried to not consider anything related to poker.
Yesterday I broke my abstinence by playing in the Internet Texas Hold'em poker league event at PokerStars. It was HORSE this week. Against all expectations and very much against indications after the first hour, I won! It was a cheap event so the money didn't amount to much, but this is about the competition and the thrill of victory.
The tournament is kind of a blur in my mind. I do remember I stayed basically even for quite a while. Then luck did it's usual thing and I hit a long string of very promising starts that did nothing but cost me chips.
Pardon the interruption, but while checking the hand histories I just noticed something very odd. PokerStars puts the various games of a HORSE tournament into separate hand history files and appends to those files when that game is played next. This makes it extremely difficult to follow the action by looking at the HH after the fact. Bad, PokerStars, very bad.
I was at the bottom of the active players on the leaderboard, just about resigned to it soon being all over. Then I tripled up. And doubled up after that. In the span of about three hands I went from the bottom of the leaderboard to second place, with a huge lead over the player in third. (Fortunately, the player in first was at another table.) I had more than twice as many chips as the next closest player at my table. And I took advantage of it.
At the final table there was one other player in the same vicinity stack-wise, with everyone else having significantly fewer chips. I was lucky to get some decent cards and was able to use my stack to my advantage on many occasions. I went into heads-up play at a very slight chip disadvantage. We see-sawed back and forth a few times. Eventually I got a well disguised monster. Having observed the other player the entire tournament, I was pretty sure he'd do the betting for me if I let him, and I was right. The blinds were high enough by this point that he bluffed himself out of most of his stack by the time I put in a raise on the river. He was seriously crippled after that hand and it was over a couple hands later.
In the WSOP HORSE event, at least the one I watched on TV last year, they switched to all hold'em at the final table. I'm conflicted on whether this is a good idea or not. On one hand, if you're playing HORSE then it seems like you should play HORSE all the way to the end. On the other hand, the RSE games, IMNSHO, are very heavily luck based, so it kind of makes sense to drop them when the blinds get huge. This, of course, is a good argument for leaving them out altogether, but then it isn't HORSE.
I guess what it comes down to is that I don't think Razz and Stud make good tournament games. They're okay as cash games, but not as tournament games. For that matter, I don't think limit games in general make for good tournament play, at least not at the level speed typical of online play. Maybe in a deep stack situation where you get an hour or two at each blind level. Then you have a bit more of a chance for skill to have an impact. But with 15 minute or shorter levels, the early rounds of limit play are almost meaningless. There is a round or two in the middle where there seems to be a good balance between stack size and blind level, then the blinds jump again and you're forced to commit a huge chunk of your stack to even see the flop.
The only limit tournament I've ever played that I thought was kind of reasonable was a deep stacks event at PokerStars. Eight hours after I started I finished in something like 27th. I'm not anxious to repeat that experience, particularly not without eating something first.
I'm not sure if I'm going to play any of the blogger tournaments this week or not. I had said before I was going to put my focus on cash games and I'm still leaning in that direction. We'll see how I feel before Mondays At The Hoy starts tonight.
Correction: In a post a couple weeks ago I said something about "Why You Lose at Poker" having examples that were next to impossible to follow. I mixed up my titles. I meant to slam "How Good Is Your Limit Hold'em?", which has the most difficult to follow example hands of any poker book I've ever read. I think I can even leave off the poker book qualifier and just leave it as the most difficult to follow examples in the history of mankind.
My apologies about the confusion. I have some criticisms about "Why You Lose At Poker", which I may get to in a future post, but not concerning their examples. They do just fine in that regard.
Yesterday I broke my abstinence by playing in the Internet Texas Hold'em poker league event at PokerStars. It was HORSE this week. Against all expectations and very much against indications after the first hour, I won! It was a cheap event so the money didn't amount to much, but this is about the competition and the thrill of victory.
The tournament is kind of a blur in my mind. I do remember I stayed basically even for quite a while. Then luck did it's usual thing and I hit a long string of very promising starts that did nothing but cost me chips.
Pardon the interruption, but while checking the hand histories I just noticed something very odd. PokerStars puts the various games of a HORSE tournament into separate hand history files and appends to those files when that game is played next. This makes it extremely difficult to follow the action by looking at the HH after the fact. Bad, PokerStars, very bad.
I was at the bottom of the active players on the leaderboard, just about resigned to it soon being all over. Then I tripled up. And doubled up after that. In the span of about three hands I went from the bottom of the leaderboard to second place, with a huge lead over the player in third. (Fortunately, the player in first was at another table.) I had more than twice as many chips as the next closest player at my table. And I took advantage of it.
At the final table there was one other player in the same vicinity stack-wise, with everyone else having significantly fewer chips. I was lucky to get some decent cards and was able to use my stack to my advantage on many occasions. I went into heads-up play at a very slight chip disadvantage. We see-sawed back and forth a few times. Eventually I got a well disguised monster. Having observed the other player the entire tournament, I was pretty sure he'd do the betting for me if I let him, and I was right. The blinds were high enough by this point that he bluffed himself out of most of his stack by the time I put in a raise on the river. He was seriously crippled after that hand and it was over a couple hands later.
In the WSOP HORSE event, at least the one I watched on TV last year, they switched to all hold'em at the final table. I'm conflicted on whether this is a good idea or not. On one hand, if you're playing HORSE then it seems like you should play HORSE all the way to the end. On the other hand, the RSE games, IMNSHO, are very heavily luck based, so it kind of makes sense to drop them when the blinds get huge. This, of course, is a good argument for leaving them out altogether, but then it isn't HORSE.
I guess what it comes down to is that I don't think Razz and Stud make good tournament games. They're okay as cash games, but not as tournament games. For that matter, I don't think limit games in general make for good tournament play, at least not at the level speed typical of online play. Maybe in a deep stack situation where you get an hour or two at each blind level. Then you have a bit more of a chance for skill to have an impact. But with 15 minute or shorter levels, the early rounds of limit play are almost meaningless. There is a round or two in the middle where there seems to be a good balance between stack size and blind level, then the blinds jump again and you're forced to commit a huge chunk of your stack to even see the flop.
The only limit tournament I've ever played that I thought was kind of reasonable was a deep stacks event at PokerStars. Eight hours after I started I finished in something like 27th. I'm not anxious to repeat that experience, particularly not without eating something first.
I'm not sure if I'm going to play any of the blogger tournaments this week or not. I had said before I was going to put my focus on cash games and I'm still leaning in that direction. We'll see how I feel before Mondays At The Hoy starts tonight.
Correction: In a post a couple weeks ago I said something about "Why You Lose at Poker" having examples that were next to impossible to follow. I mixed up my titles. I meant to slam "How Good Is Your Limit Hold'em?", which has the most difficult to follow example hands of any poker book I've ever read. I think I can even leave off the poker book qualifier and just leave it as the most difficult to follow examples in the history of mankind.
My apologies about the confusion. I have some criticisms about "Why You Lose At Poker", which I may get to in a future post, but not concerning their examples. They do just fine in that regard.
08 March 2007
I been kicked by the wind, robbed by the sleet...
Had my head stoved in at The Mookie, but I'm still on my feet and I'm still... willin'.
It was one of those nights at The Mookie, which more closely resembled a donkament than any blogger event I've ever played. It even outdid the generally wild WWdN. 150 chips in the pot and somebody pushes all-in for 1200 more? Did I stumble into a $1 rebuy? These are poker bloggers? Did I miss the virtual kegger before tournament time?
I think it was four times somebody pushed all-in on me when I made a perfectly normal 3BB raise before the flop with reasonable starting cards. We're not talking short stack play or anything like that. Level 2 blinds, nobody hurting in the chip area, and people are hugely overbetting the pot with all their chips.
I knew the last all-in was coming before I even put the raise in. He'd done it to me once before and made some inane comment about not stepping on his blinds. I understand blind defense. Going nuclear with blind defense in Level 3 is not smart poker in my book. So I waited until I had far above average cards before raising his blind again. Just my bad luck that he happened to have even better cards. There was a suckout, then a re-suck, and it ended the way it began -- him in the lead and me feeling very picked on and unlucky. Boo-hoo.
I totally donked out of the Monday's At The Hoy this week. In hand #9 of the tournament I ran my flopped set of 7's headlong into a flopped set of K's. The outcome was predictable and ugly, at least from my perspective.
I did a bit better in the WWdN this week, finishing 11th out of something like 47. Still no final table and no money.
My lack of success at tournament play has made me re-evaluate my poker priorities. I like to win, and I haven't won at tournament poker in so long I can't remember when the last win was. I cashed in some tournament at Full Tilt a week or two ago, but that was chump change for making like the final four tables. I even tried the nightly Ticket Tournaments after Hoyazo recommended them as being extremely easy. Managed to bubble even in that one. (I do have to generally agree with his assessment.)
So I've been spending a lot more time at NL 6-max ring. Since my bankroll is far less flexible than it once was, I've been playing way down in the shallow end of the pool so I run little risk of drowning. My results have not been fantastic, but that's mostly been the result of a small number of hands where I got my money in with way the best of it and just got unlucky. I think in the long run this will be profitable. Not like I'm going to become a full-time player at $0.10/$0.25 NL, but I'm at least hoping it will get my bankroll moving in the right direction again.
I doubt that I'll completely give up tournament play, but I am going to cut back and will probably not play as many of the blogger events.
It was one of those nights at The Mookie, which more closely resembled a donkament than any blogger event I've ever played. It even outdid the generally wild WWdN. 150 chips in the pot and somebody pushes all-in for 1200 more? Did I stumble into a $1 rebuy? These are poker bloggers? Did I miss the virtual kegger before tournament time?
I think it was four times somebody pushed all-in on me when I made a perfectly normal 3BB raise before the flop with reasonable starting cards. We're not talking short stack play or anything like that. Level 2 blinds, nobody hurting in the chip area, and people are hugely overbetting the pot with all their chips.
I knew the last all-in was coming before I even put the raise in. He'd done it to me once before and made some inane comment about not stepping on his blinds. I understand blind defense. Going nuclear with blind defense in Level 3 is not smart poker in my book. So I waited until I had far above average cards before raising his blind again. Just my bad luck that he happened to have even better cards. There was a suckout, then a re-suck, and it ended the way it began -- him in the lead and me feeling very picked on and unlucky. Boo-hoo.
I totally donked out of the Monday's At The Hoy this week. In hand #9 of the tournament I ran my flopped set of 7's headlong into a flopped set of K's. The outcome was predictable and ugly, at least from my perspective.
I did a bit better in the WWdN this week, finishing 11th out of something like 47. Still no final table and no money.
My lack of success at tournament play has made me re-evaluate my poker priorities. I like to win, and I haven't won at tournament poker in so long I can't remember when the last win was. I cashed in some tournament at Full Tilt a week or two ago, but that was chump change for making like the final four tables. I even tried the nightly Ticket Tournaments after Hoyazo recommended them as being extremely easy. Managed to bubble even in that one. (I do have to generally agree with his assessment.)
So I've been spending a lot more time at NL 6-max ring. Since my bankroll is far less flexible than it once was, I've been playing way down in the shallow end of the pool so I run little risk of drowning. My results have not been fantastic, but that's mostly been the result of a small number of hands where I got my money in with way the best of it and just got unlucky. I think in the long run this will be profitable. Not like I'm going to become a full-time player at $0.10/$0.25 NL, but I'm at least hoping it will get my bankroll moving in the right direction again.
I doubt that I'll completely give up tournament play, but I am going to cut back and will probably not play as many of the blogger events.
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