30 April 2008

I love play pokah

Chau Giang loves poker. I heard him say so, and his reported behavior certainly bears it out. He's well known for playing literally days on end. At one tournament, I think it was a WPT event, after playing all day to make the final table, he went and played high stakes ring games all night, showing up at the tournament final table without getting any sleep at all.

He first came on my radar during a WSOP Omaha final table when he stood up, brushed his hands up and down over his nipples (through his shirt) and said, "I love play pokah." Funniest thing I've ever seen around a poker table. (I don't mean to make fun of him. Giang is one of the world's best and I should be so lucky as to ever sit at a table with him. But it was incredibly funny. See the video.)

I mention this because an odd thing happened this morning. I woke up at 5am. And it wasn't one of those wake up, look at the clock, roll over and go back to sleep awakenings. It was the eyes pop open and whole body says, "I'm awake!", kind of awakenings. This is very, very rare for me. I'm more of the hit the snooze button five or six times and eventually drag my ass out of bed kind of person. After hitting the bathroom, and realizing I was really awake, one of the first thoughts to come into my head was to go see if there was any action in the shallow end of the NL pool at Stars.

I had intended to continue The Quest last night but I fell asleep on the sofa and didn't wake up until way past bed time. Still, even if I went one night without my poker fix, I don't recall ever having the urge to play poker at 5am.

Despite this odd 5am poker urge, it has occurred to me that, unlike Chau Giang, I don't love playing poker so much as I love winning at poker. My current streak of 14 winning poker days in a row is what's stoking my desire to keep playing. When I'm running good I can't get enough poker. It continually tries to work its way into my thoughts during the day and sometimes even fills my dreams at night.

But when I'm running bad I find myself almost hating the game. I'm sure this is why I've taken so many long breaks over the last year. I'll do particularly poorly in a few tournaments and have some big losing sessions at ring games and it will occur to me that there are at least a dozen things I'd rather be doing than sitting in front of the computer getting sucked out on one more time.

Given what I know of poker outcomes and having had some very bad runs, I'm not sure what this says of my long term prospects with poker. I'm probably destined to a series of extended breaks after bad runs, followed by a renewed interest after the time away. Or maybe I just need to schedule periodic vacations from poker.

Regardless of what happens in the long run with my poker "career", I do know one thing. I love win pokah.

Edit: Photo added

28 April 2008

Games gone by

Recently I mentioned my early online poker days of bonus chasing. Truth be told, I made far more money off bonuses than off play of the cards. I was good enough to play even most of the time against other decent players and could take serious advantage of the occasional fish that would swim by. Except at Party. The schooling of the fishes there would often seriously kick my ass.

Back in the good old days, if you had the bankroll to sit $2/$4 limit, the mad skillz to break even, and the time to spend tedious hours four-tabling, you could easily clear $500 a month in bonus. In the glory days, when new poker sites were coming online at the rate of about one an hour and had tons of start-up promotional cash and no one on board who had a clue about a sustainable business plan, that monthly bonus rate could easily top $1,000.

Eventually, reality started to set in. Bonus amounts came down out of the stratosphere, clearance requirements moved up to a point that was sustainable for the site and near torture for the player, and a far less profitable (for the bonus whore) equilibrium was reached.

I still get email from a few of the sites I used to play but have now declined my action thanks to asshat Bill Frist pandering to what he thought was his constituency. (That worked out well in those mid-term elections, eh, Bill?) One such site sent me a message recently that they'd upped their monthly bonus to $200. This was one of the Cryptologic sites. I went to check it out.

It seems the good old days are back, at least if you don't live in the land of free and the home of the brave. Many of the Cryptos are now offering a $200 per month bonus. William Hill is also still offering their usual £5 per hour (for the first five hours) bonus along with a £100 per month bonus. The two bonuses clear in parallel.

There are eight of these sites offering roughly $200 per month in bonuses (some are in £'s, but the exchange rate makes it very close to $200), plus the additional £25 from William Hill for sitting there picking your butt for five hours. $1650 per month, and that's just the Cryptos.

The clearance rates on these bonuses vary a bit from site to site, but are in the range of 8x to 10x. The bigger problem is likely to be getting sufficient action. I just checked and there are 803 players online. Admittedly, it's the wee hours of the night in Europe right now, but that's still a pathetic number considering the population from which they're drawing. And, unless they've eliminated the micro-limit tables that got them in trouble in the first place, most of those players will be at tables where it's virtually impossible to clear the bonus.

So I guess it's good news, bad news. Great bonuses that will be almost impossible to clear.

Another decent night on The Quest. Up $1.75 bringing the bankroll to $44 and change.

Life is like poker

It is, perhaps, a sign of spending too much time playing and thinking about poker that one sees poker parallels in almost every real life circumstance. I'm sure my co-workers are quite tired of my poker analogies to practically everything. On the other hand, I'm quite certain poker has made me far more accepting of many of real life's little trials and tribulations. Suckouts happen. Going on tilt because of one doesn't help at the poker table or in real life.

On the drive to work today I saw some vultures trying to go after a rather small bit of road kill in the middle of the street. There were just enough cars coming through that they couldn't grab it before the next car came by. As I drove past I looked in the rear view mirror and saw two of the vultures go toward the tasty morsel at the same time. They saw each other coming from opposite directions and both stopped short of the prize. As they stood there eyeballing each other, each waiting for the other to make the first move, a third vulture swooped down, grabbed the prize right from between the two of them, and flew away. You connect the dots.

Sunday I played two sessions. The first went quite well, finishing up not quite $2. The second was much more of a roller coaster. I was at one of those tables with a couple huge over-bettors. When questioned about his $0.50 non-all-in flop bet into a $0.12 pot, one player responded that he wanted to price out the flush draws. Four times the pot. Yeah, I think you priced them out. And risked a big chunk of your stack against somebody having flopped a small set against your TP.

I see so many basic mistakes like this and have this urge to provide a bit of guidance. Not that it would be appreciated or heeded. And, really, who could blame them. Would you take advice from someone sitting at the $0.01/$0.02 table? So far I've resisted the temptation, mostly.

Anyway, the second session was up and down. At one point I was close to having to add more chips but managed to double up and get healthy again. Finished the session up about $0.80 or so, giving me a profit of $2.48 on the day.

This endeavor is starting to remind me of my early online days when I was actively bonus chasing and making money at $2/$4 limit. The key then was to identify the bad players and pounce on any opportunity to pillage them. Punish them severely for their mistakes. The profit in the shallow end of the NLHE pool comes from two places: stealing small pots, and taking big pots from players who can't read the board. The latter will continue putting money in the pot when holding bottom pair, no kicker, even when you raised before the flop and the flop brought two faces.

$2/$4 limit eventually tightened up and there were precious few of the easy targets left, at least at the places I was playing. I'm sure the going will get a lot rougher as I move up in limits with NLHE as well.

27 April 2008

Pauly, Badugi, and The Quest

Played Dr. Pauly's Saturday PLO tournament. Just when I think I might be getting a bit of a handle on PLO, I discover I've been kidding myself. I still can't figure what hands are worth calling a raise with, at least pre-flop. Some hands kind of play themselves in that situation, but there are a lot of hands between the obvious folds and the obvious re-raises where I'm at a loss. I can only console myself with the near certain knowledge that many other players haven't a clue either.

Also played the Badugi freeroll at Pokercs.com. Not sure why I bother. Even with the benefit of some idiot basically giving me all his chips about two minutes into it, I still didn't last half an hour. The starting stacks are way, way too small for pot limit and the size of the starting blinds. It's just a crap shoot. I think this may be my last attempt at this one, even if it is free.

Got in a couple good sessions on The Quest and moved the bankroll over the $40 mark. If the current trend continues I should soon be out of the serious danger zone. Though it's been 12 winning days in a row. Experience tells me that's not going to continue. Or maybe I've finally learned how to successfully play at the $0.01/$0.02 level.

Speaking of that level, it never ceases to amaze me when people sit at the lowest possible level and then criticize the play of others, as though it was reasonable to expect professional play at the two cent table. Complaining about the play at the two cent table is like going to a little league game and bitching about not seeing any 90 MPH fastballs.

I should probably just turn the chat off, but sometimes it's rather funny. Like tonight when someone volunteered "KQ" after a hand I had won. (KQ would have given him TP on the flop, with me being saved by the river.) Then someone else says, "The hand history says you had 63." (I thought about saying the same thing, but figured there might be a few people who didn't know the hand history showed the mucked cards and I didn't want to give away the secret. 63 meant the guy had no business calling my pre-flop raise and even less business calling my flop bet.) Then the first guy says, "No, that's what I thought you had." Yeah, right, that's always what people mean when they type two cards into chat without anyone asking them anything. "Yeah, that's it, that's what I thought your cards were. Yeah, that's the ticket."

26 April 2008

Donkerific!

I'm glad Kat's Friday tournament is called a Donkament. It gives me a good excuse for my play.

15 runners. 125 rebuys. 12 add-ons. I tried to get into the spirit of things by taking what chances I could during the rebuy, and I didn't let a little thing like getting total crap cards stand in my way. I pushed at every remotely reasonable opportunity, and failed almost every time. I have no idea how many rebuys I made, but I'm quite certain it was way more than my one-fifteenth share of the 125.

I took a few all-ins during the first hour, but got sucked out on a couple times and then couldn't get any traction. Toward the end of the rebuy period I was getting desperate to build a stack and kept pushing with anything that had any chance, and kept running into hands just a little bit better. And they held.

At the end of the rebuy I was near the bottom of the pack with 3700. The big stack at my table had 24k. And as bad as the cards were during the rebuy, they got worse once it was over. It was another of those nights where I might as well have sat out.

I did take a few decent pots and managed to stay afloat, but it was a cycle of win enough to be okay, then get crap and get blinded down.

Once desperation set in, I got very lucky. I kept getting it in with the worst of it and sucking out. It felt like the universe swinging back into balance, what with all the horrible luck I had during the rebuy. One of the observers commented that he hadn't seen me get it all in once where I wasn't behind. Of course, he didn't have the benefit of seeing my cards when I made the push and the other guy folded. I'm pretty sure I was ahead in at least one or two of those. Through donkerific suckouts and just a wee bit of decent play, I somehow managed to make the money, taking third.

Among all the horrible cards I saw were a few hands that looked like gems. Three times I got pocket aces. (Yeah, I know, that seems in direct contradiction to complaining about the cards, but even the aces didn't make up for the rest of the crud.) The first time I played them fast and took almost nothing. The next time I slowed it down. Even caught a set on the turn, but lost anyway to a low straight.

The third time was my last hand. I slowplayed it again. Looking at a two-suited flop of Q52, I thought my dream had come true when the betting escalated until all my chips were in the pot. Then ElSnarfGrande turns over 52. Great slowplay.

Despite taking $30 for third, I'm pretty sure I lost money overall.

Earlier in the evening I added a bit to The Quest bankroll. I was looking over the spreadsheet and noticed I've been at this for eight months now. Admittedly, I've taken a few rather long breaks and haven't even played 60 sessions yet, but that's still quite a while with only $32 profit to show for it.

On the other hand, it is a 640% return on my investment, not counting time spent. If my other investments had done that well over the last eight months I'd be typing this from a beach someplace while half-naked native girls brought me drinks with umbrellas in them and waved palm fronds to keep me cool. I guess it's all about perspective.

25 April 2008

Another Rollercoaster

Why, oh, why can't I listen to that little voice that tells me I'm beat and should fold as fast as possible? It could have been much worse, but I dumped about $1 into a pot when I was about 95% sure I was beat. I told myself I should fold to the big river bet, but I still pushed the Call button.

I started fairly strong, then the hand above happened and took all my winnings and about half my buy-in. I struggled back to positive territory. Then a lotto player sat down. I should know better than to roll the dice with these idiots, but I was sure I was ahead when he pushed all-in. I was right about being ahead, but then his massive 52o flopped two pair and I lost the rest of my initial buy-in.

I took a little break to clear my head, then sat down again. This time things went differently. I took a few big pots, induced an all-in when I knew I was WAY ahead, and next thing I knew I was up over a buy-in at this table, making me whole for the night and providing a decent profit. Considering I was facing a one buy-in loss earlier in the evening, the result was quite good. I'd be happier with myself if I hadn't rolled the dice and if I'd listened to the little voice.

The variety at this level can be both interesting and frustrating. One table will show respect for any raise. Another will get callers all around on a 3BB raise from UTG. And most of them will be calling with air. Keeps you on your toes.

24 April 2008

Odd night

Twas an odd night on The Quest. A bit of a roller coaster, thankfully finishing on an up.

Strange behavior from one player who kept popping in and out, pushing when he had nothing, slow playing when he had a big hand. I don't know how many buy-ins he went through. I know I took a couple from him (and sadly gave most of them to someone else).

The table I was at most of the session last night was one that showed little respect for pre-flop raises. Several times I came in UTG with a 3BB raise and the whole table called. And there always seemed to be one guy who refused to believe my pre-flop raise and subsequent bets signified anything important. All the better for me. If it wasn't for once again overplaying TP, and a couple suckouts, it would have been an excellent night.

The cards were very kind. I caught full houses, and was able to capitalize on them, four times. My worst hand was when I ran KK into a slowplayed AA. That was costly. But the boats saved my bacon. Finished the night up almost $1.

The going is obviously slow at this level, but I'm not displeased with the progress. If things keep up as they have the bankroll should be out of the danger zone in a few weeks. I've been giving some thought to trying the waters at the next level, but I'm trying to resist the temptation. Maybe when I make it to 30 buy-ins.

23 April 2008

Blog Bidness

It has always bugged me that the standard blog templates available on Blogger used fixed width columns. I don't know about the vast majority of visitors, but my browser is at a size that leaves a ton of empty white space around the text. There is probably some school of journalistic design that thinks this is very stylish and hip. I didn't attend that school.

A little bit of white space to set things off is a good thing. A lot of white space with this tiny column of text floating in the middle of it is just stupid. I'm reminded here of a clever twist on a familiar saying that is firmly grounded in reality. The optimist sees the glass as half full. The pessimist sees the glass as half empty. The engineer sees the glass as twice as big as it needs to be.

All of this is a wordy lead up to me finding a new Blogger template that adapts the column sizes to your browser width. I may make a few more changes over the next couple days. Depends on how ambitious I feel. Let me know if the new design causes any problems for you. If you're using a RSS reader you should see no impact.

Speaking of RSS readers, I've regularly used Bloglines to check on most of the blogs I follow. It has never been the speediest of sites, but it's useful and free so I continued to use it. Of late it has seemed even slower than usual, often to the point of being non-functional. Maybe the lack of any apparent method of generating income from it has finally caught up with them.

Anyway, I've switched to Google Reader. I tried it when it first became available and there was something or other I didn't like about it. Whatever that was, they've either fixed it or it doesn't bother me anymore. Like most Google apps, it's a bit spartan, but so far it hasn't made me wait several minutes to pull up a specific blog. If you're in the market for a new aggregator you should check it out.

Moving sideways

I had wanted to play in the Bodog blogger event last night, but I had some allergy issues earlier in the day and had to take a Benadryl. This is one of only two medications I've ever taken that can knock me out cold. The other is the Tylenol with codeine. One Benadryl will make me rather drowsy, but I can usually get by. Two Benadryls will put me out like a light. I took just one yesterday afternoon. I made it through work, but it caught up with me when I got home. Sprawled on the sofa after dinner and couldn't move for a couple hours.

I finally came back to life about 10:30 and decided to continue The Quest. The intermediate results were pretty good. I had almost doubled my buy-in within 30 minutes, but then I got stupid. Fell into the same trap as always, calling big bets with nothing but top pair. Dumb. The little voice told me not to do it, but did I listen?

I was fortunate to have won early so I could end the session still up a big $0.02. Hopefully this will be the expected backslide and I can continue adding to the bankroll from here.

22 April 2008

MATH Monday

I played the MATH last night for the first time in ages. Not sure why. I finished watching Sunday's episode of Wire in the Blood via DVR (good show -- BBC America Sunday nights) a few minutes before 10PM and next thing I knew I was signed up and being dealt cards.

And what crappy cards they were. At one point I seriously considered just sitting out because it wouldn't have made any difference in my play. Fold, fold, fold, fold. Maybe I've been spending too much time in the cheap seats, but this struck me as a hyper-aggro table, even for a blogger event. Very, very few were the hands that saw a flop without a raise. This made it very tough to take a speculative stab with the odd suited ace or suited connector hand, which were about the best I could hope for last night.

I'm sure my play looked incredibly weak. In a way I suppose it was. But when somebody opens their jacket and shows me the butt of a gun sticking out of their waistband, I like to know I at least have some bullets in my gun before I pull it out. And I don't necessarily mean "bullets", if you know what I mean. Coming over the top of a pre-flop raise with the hammer may be a cutesy move in bloggerdom, but it's never struck me as an especially smart move in the larger scheme of things. If I'm going to put a big chunk of my stack in the pot, I at least want some kind of chance should I be forced to push the rest in. Not that I'm above a stone cold bluff, but I prefer to be holding something that stands some kind of chance.

The player to my right raised every single time from the button when it folded to him. Once, maybe twice, I had something that I was able to push back with, but he stole the blinds more times than I could count because I kept getting junk. My undoing came at his hands when he once again raised from the button and I felt my ATs was enough to push back with. He had something like AQ and there were no tens to be found on the board.

One thing that was blatantly obvious was the difference in play between this game and the shallow waters in which I've been wading lately. As I said before, there were no family pots in this game. Seldom were the hands where even half the table saw a cheap flop. And there certainly weren't any players who continued to play their small pocket pair against constant resistance and a flop with all overcards. Not that I was expecting any.

Since my exit came fairly early, I licked my wounds for a little while and then rejoined The Quest. Happily, I found a table filled with the aforementioned fools who couldn't get away from a hand if they had even the tiniest pair. I was continually shocked and amazed at the junk people were playing in large pots and taking all the way to the end. These guys clearly had no concept of pot odds or having any idea of where they really stood in a hand. It was great fun and just what I needed to get out of my MATH funk.

It's funny how these things run. For the longest time I'd been getting tables with mostly players who seemed to know what they were doing. Recently it's been nothing but tables filled with the clueless. I actually have trouble believing it when I'm at such a table. I keep expecting fate or lady luck to jump in and say, "Hold on a minute. I'm not going to let you take the candy from those babies that easily."

Last night I got a higher than normal number of good hands, but the size of the win was mostly due to having opponents who let me punish them severely for their far less than optimal play. My biggest issue was trying to decide exactly how much would be too much for that final value bet. Thinking it over after the fact, I'm not sure there was a too big.

It was getting late and I kind of wanted to quit so I could go to bed, but I also didn't want to walk away from such a money making opportunity. Then a lotto player sat down and that was my cue to go. I finished up $3.61 for the session.

Is it odd that I drop $26 on the MATH and don't really give it a second thought and yet get excited about winning $3.61 at $0.01/$0.02 NL?

21 April 2008

The Weekend

Played Kat's Donkament Friday night. Been a while since I've done that. I think I may have broken my previous record for rebuys. I'm not sure, I lost count. I do know I got a bit tired of getting it in with the best of it and watching the what-the-hell-were-you-thinking hand suck out again and again. I wasn't always in with the best, but in those cases I generally lost like I should have. Oh well, that's kind of the point. Play like a donkey.

Things started tightening up a bit once some of the stacks got rather sizable. Though a few of us, you know who I mean Buddy, continued to rebuy, and rebuy, and rebuy.

I made it to the final table but was pretty seriously shortstacked and didn't last long. Congrats to whoever won. I didn't stick around to find out who took it down. It was good rubbing elbows with the usual blogger suspects again.

I've been playing a bit more PLO and PLO8 recently. Not like I'm changing focus, but it's nice to shake it up once in a while. And my Omaha game could certainly use the practice. Played at Stars a while on Saturday and did pretty good. Any time I can walk away from an Omaha table with more than double my buy-in, that's a good session. I wish I could say it was my great skill at Omaha that was the deciding factor, but truth be told I simply got some great cards. For a change.

Played a couple short Quest sessions Sunday night. Both turned out reasonably well, up $2.67 on the night. I actually happened to find a couple tables filled with the kind of players you'd expect to find playing $0.01/$0.02. It's surprising to me that doesn't happen more often.

The bankroll has hit a new high of $31.75. If the past is any indication I should shortly be having a couple horrible sessions where I lose multiple buy-ins. Here's hoping I can break with the past.

I've probably mentioned it enough already, but the Google spreadsheet gadgets are very cool. I love that I simply update the spreadsheet and the blog displays are automatically updated with it.

16 April 2008

The Day After Tax Day

Monday night I was stuck doing taxes. I procrastinated as long as I could, but finally had to face the tax man. Toughest part was trying to sort through the few stock sales I made last year.

I don't keep the best of personal records in that regard, rather depending on my online brokerage to have the information available. They sent me a fancy statement at the end of the year showing how much my gross sales were, but the statement didn't say anything at all about profit or holding period. Thankfully, they did have the information online, though I had to dig more than I thought I should have to find it.

By the time it was all over I had to fork over another $188. Not too bad, all things considered. I'd like to send my personal thanks to George Bush for making the total tax bite a lot less than it would have been eight years ago. Let's hope certain members of Congress stop making asshats of themselves and make the tax cuts permanent.

The biggest surprise came on Tuesday when it took less than ten minutes at the post office. Even that would have gone a lot faster if they'd had more than two clerks behind the counter. I know they're the US Postal Service and obviously know their business better than I do, but it was what is historically one of the busiest postal days of the year. And they staffed fewer than half the windows. I'm just saying...

I didn't have too much time available last night and felt like just having some fun at the tables, so I tried to play some PLO8. Poker.com has been really slow and the only table with any action was a full ring $0.05/$0.10. As I discovered last night, full ring PLO8 is not the game to play when you're in a hurry for some action. At least not if you want to do something other than donate your buy-in.

At 6-max you can often win with rather mediocre hands. Full ring PLO8 is a game of the nuts. If you don't have the nuts, odds are very good that you'll not be taking any chips out of that pot. Being patient enough to wait for a hand likely to turn into the nuts does not fit well with being in a hurry for some action.

What I'm trying to say is, I got my ass kicked. It was mostly stupid play on my part. There was a bit of simply missing all of my 27 outs (or maybe I over-counted), but it was mostly stupidity and wishful thinking.

I gave up on PLO8 after a short while and went back to The Quest. It was a short but positive session, finishing up $1.67.

Full Tilt has long been running a series of posts from their poker pros on various aspects of poker. Howard Lederer recently posted something about SnG strategy. I realize I don't have much standing to question Howard's advice, after all, he's "The Professor" and I'm, well, nobody, but something about his column just had an odd feel to it.

Howard suggested many players use the wrong strategy, taking chances too early in an attempt to build a big stack and take a run at winning the whole thing. He recommended taking a tight, conservative stance until you've made the money. After that you can start taking much bigger chances.

The key point of his argument was that distribution of 60% of the prize pool is determined when you get to the final three. (He was speaking of single table SnGs where the money distribution goes 50-30-20. Since there are three of you and you're each guaranteed at least 20% of the prize pool, that's 60%.) He further argued that since there's only a 10% difference between third and second, making it to at least third is more important than positioning yourself to finish higher. Personally, I'd say the difference between third and second is 50% since second pays 50% more than third, but I'm probably using funny math.

When you deduct your cost from the payout the difference becomes even greater. For ease of calculation let's say it's a ten person tournament with a $10+$1 buy-in. The price pool is $100. Third pays $20. Subtract your $11 buy-in and your profit is $9, or 82%. Second pays $30, giving you a profit of $19, or 173%. Your profit for taking second is more than double the profit of taking third. Coming in first gives you a profit of $39, or 355% of your investment.

Each step up the payout ladder, beyond the first one, provides double the profit of the previous step.

I'm not sure exactly where this has brought us, but I'm glad I took the journey. I knew there was something about Howard's analysis that struck me as not quite right and now I've put my finger on what it was. Characterizing second place money as 10% more than third place is just wrong.

I'm not suggesting Howard's strategy advice is wrong, but I do think there are some major holes in his justification for the strategy. His suggested strategy is also rather simplistic. Admittedly, he's just writing a short column and proper SnG strategy could fill a book. Okay, maybe a big pamphlet. Or maybe a really big blog entry. Hmmmm....

14 April 2008

The Weekend

I took a short break from The Quest to clear my head after the last loss. I've been using my account at Poker.com for my "fun" poker. There's only a bit over $200 in that account and I have no intention of depositing more, so I have to be careful to not go broke there.

The Badugi action has been a bit light, so I played a little Omaha, both PLO and PLO8. I'm getting a lot better at knowing when to run away.

My big weakness at this point is knowing which hands are worth sticking with pre-flop when I'm facing a raise. My gut feel is to fold anything other than very strong hands, but the 6-handed game I've been playing tends to attract players who play with no apparent strategy at all. I've seen pre-flop raises from people who turned out to have something like QJs and a couple low cards.

I have the feeling I might be leaving money on the table by folding to too many pre-flop raises. OTOH, I've been walking away with more chips than I sat down with most of the time, so maybe I should stick with what I've been doing.

I played the Badugi freeroll again on Saturday. I didn't last even 30 minutes.

Sunday I played some more PLO8 at Poker.com. There wasn't much action and I was forced to play way over my bankroll at the $0.10/$0.25 table. It worked out in my favor. There was one big hand where I flopped two big pair and rivered the boat. I managed to induce a big bet from the other guy that put me all-in. It's very nice to double-up like that.

I finally got back to The Quest Sunday night. That session was another one that turned mostly on one big hand. I don't recall all the details, but facing an all-in at the river I reasoned that if the other guy had the only hand that beat me he'd have played it differently. In other words, he wasn't telling a consistent story with his bluff. I was correct and doubled up.

Finished the session up $1.77, bringing the bankroll to $26.06. It's getting tough to resist the temptation to move up a level just to get this thing rolling a bit faster. At the rate I'm going it's going to be next year before I move up to a $5 buy-in. Perhaps I need to start multi-tabling. I've been trying to resist that so I can concentrate on the play, but it goes so slow I'm afraid my attention often wanders.

07 April 2008

Do the Badugi

Sunday was even drearier than Saturday, so I spent the whole day around the house doing not much of anything. Not-much-of-anything being not the most interesting of endeavors, I pulled up Poker.com and checked out the fast and furious action at the Badugi tables. To my great surprise, there were actually two people playing Badugi for real money.

I couldn't not try to take advantage of this situation. I sat down with $10 and gave it a spin. Can't say that I met with much success. At one point I was down almost half my buy-in, but recovered a bit before ending the session down about $1.

Poker.com also had another Badugi freeroll that I signed up for. This site is a bit odd. It's the only one I've seen whose official time is in the central time zone. Or maybe they don't observe Daylight Shifting Time. This kind of messed me up because I was expecting it to start at 4:15pm EDT and it didn't actually start until 5:15pm.

I know this thing is a freeroll and I shouldn't be complaining about "free" anything, but I feel compelled to mention that the structure of this thing sucks. $1000 stack, blinds start at 10/20 and increase every 7 minutes. If your first couple shots at getting involved with a pot don't end successfully, you very quickly find yourself needing to push it all in and hope for the best.

This situation is not improved by the large number of players who obviously have no idea how to play the game. One guy at my first table must have thought it was some variation on Omaha. A couple times he called a final bet and turned over two big pair. And he had actually been raising during the hand. This kind of thing could be considered as an effective increase in the blinds, making the cost of early play far more expensive than it would be with players who had a clue.

I didn't even make it to the first break, though it's good evidence supporting my complaint that I outlasted almost two-thirds of the field. At least this time I didn't get seated at a table full of no-shows.

I need to give this a bit more thought, but some cursory consideration of counting outs in this game would indicate very conservative play and early exits from non-made hands are the best strategy. My gut says you should stay out of most hands that require you to draw more than one card. The only exception would be if you can play cheap and have nothing worse than a two-card 5 to start from.

Specific strategy aside, I am positive that the vast majority of people I've seen play this game play far, far too loose. If you could find a reliable game online, you could probably kill by simply considering the odds and your outs. It's clear most players don't.

06 April 2008

Dreary Saturday

A lot of rain fell from the sky today, much of it apparently landing right on my game. It being rather nasty outside, I found myself sitting around doing not much when time for Dr. Pauly's PLO tournament rolled around. My Omaha game still sucks, but I decided to play anyway.

I played a bit of NLHE while waiting for the tournament to start. Dropped $0.30. No biggie.

I feel so out of my element with PLO. I just kept trying to remember that Omaha is a game of the nuts. If I wasn't holding something very, very close to the nuts, I got out of the way. I'm pretty good at that, getting out of the way. I actually did sort of okay. Played very tight and managed to outlast about two-thirds of the field, almost enough to make the final table.

Unfortunately, the chip leader, who was really the chip leader, was taking good advantage of his advantage. His stack just kept getting bigger and bigger. The blinds eventually started catching up and I was forced to play some very marginal hands. Nothing much came through. I finally had to push it all in with a so-so hand with a lot of possibilities. Somebody had something just a bit better and none of my draws hit.

Later in the evening I decided to play some more NLHE. I should have watched a movie. It was one of those sessions where absolutely nothing hit. If I had good starting cards and bet, two people would irrationally come along, I'd miss, and one of them would river something to beat me. If I had something marginal and folded, the poker gods would taunt me by showing me I'd have flopped a full house if I'd stayed. The whole thing was made worse by two idiots who would consistently stick around even though the odds were overwhelmingly against them, then river something to take down a big pot. Every single time.

I started getting rather pissed about the whole thing and probably tilted a bit toward the end. My last hand I had AQs. It limps to me on the button. I make it $0.08. I know this will only chase one or two of the limpers out, but I figure I've probably got the best hand and might as well start building the pot. The flop brings A95. Cutoff bets, I raise, it folds back to the cutoff who calls. Turn is a J. Cutoff bets. I've only got a bit more than the size of the pot left in my stack so I push it all in. He calls and turns over A9. I probably should have played it less aggressively with just TP, but I couldn't help but be impressed with the stellar play of calling a 4BB pre-flop raise with A9o. That was exactly the kind of thing I'd been seeing all night. Actually, that was one of the less idiotic pre-flop moves. Nights like this make me wish Badugi was more popular.

The bankroll is now $4.30 lighter than it was at the start of the day.

03 April 2008

Quick note

Played for about an hour last night. We got down to just three players at one point and one guy thought he could bully the table. He took quite a few chips from me on one hand where I started strong but the board missed me completely. The next hand unfolded the same way, but I decided I was tired of his tactics and would either double up or end the night. We both missed the board and I came out on top.

A few small pots after that brought me up to $1.13 in the black and it was time to call it a night.

The going here seems really slow, but given that an average win rate at NL is supposed to be 5BB/100, I'm not doing bad. I've not been keeping detailed hand by hand records, but I'm quite sure, even with the couple of big setbacks, I'm winning way more than 5BB/100.

02 April 2008

Small ball

Played a while tonight on a rather passive table. Stuck with smaller pots. I was actually surprised at how quickly I added to my stack winning just 6 or 8 cents at a time.

At one point several players left the table at the same time and we played three-handed for a few minutes. It was clear the other two were way out of their element. I cranked up the aggression a couple notches and viciously took their pennies away from them. I took one chance on a slightly larger pot, but I read it right and my big turn bet sent the other guy running.

I cashed out up $0.90. It doesn't exactly make up for last night, but I'm happy with it.

01 April 2008

Reversal of fortune

I knew my good run on The Quest had to come to an end eventually. I was just hoping it wouldn't be quite so soon.

Last night was a bit of a setback. I dropped 2+ buy-ins.

One of these days, maybe, I'll learn to stay away from the big pots. I almost never seem to win them. I make most my profit from taking smaller pots and the occasional steal.

I had only played a couple hands when I got dealt 55 on the button. I put in a small raise and it folds to the cutoff, who calls. Flop brings a jack and a couple junk cards. Check, check. Turn brings a king. Check, check. The river fills my set. Cutoff puts in a small bet. I figure this is nothing but a steal attempt. I raise it to about 3 times his bet. He immediately comes back over the top. I stop and look at the board. I can see him with a king, a jack, maybe even a slow play with KJ. Pocket K's or pocket J's? Mo chance any sane person would play it that way. I push it all in. He calls and turns over 64. 64? He called my pre-flop raise with 64? The "junk" cards on the flop were 32.

It's a rookie mistake, but I was so blinded by my set I never even saw the possibility of the oddball straight.

I lost another buy-in with bottom full house. Two pair on the board. I knew there was a chance he had the top full house, but the way he'd played it made me think it was unlikely. That's what I get for thinking I'll see rational play at this level.

Last night brought out some truly atrocious play from my opponents. Sadly, it was generally against other players. It's funny how the bad play where somebody calls down a whole string of big bets with bottom pair doesn't really bother me much, but when I see somebody playing good cards badly it drives me crazy. There was a whole bunch of that last night.

There are bound to be setbacks on this path I've chosen. I'm going to do my best to not let it bother me. At this level at least I can tell myself, "It's only $4."

Graphs have been updated to reflect the unfortunate outcome.