No More Disconnections

December didn’t begin so well.

As Tuesday drew to a close I was running at a slight loss for the day – no big deal – however things started to look promising in a couple of my tourneys. I was top-ten in chips in a Monthly Million satellite, half the field had been eliminated and I was in good shape to potentially pick up one of the eight $640 seats on offer. I was also running well in the $10K Gtd Rebuy, fast approaching the money, and additionally I had a couple of turbos on the go... that’s when the internet decided to vanish.


Our home internet connection disappeared for a full 45 minutes. Thanks BT!

Last time this happened was back in July. I rebooted the ADSL router several times, tried another modem, and hurriedly typed some magical incantations at the Windows command line, but it was futile. The web had gawwwn.

After much finger-tapping, at about 00:45 the internet miraculously reappeared and I immediately restarted my poker clients.

There was zero chance I had any chips left in the turbos, but I clung to the vain hope the satellite was salvageable. Alas, it was not. I had been blinded out not long before reconnection, frustratingly in 12th place, just 4 spots from a seat. Grrrr.

Never Again!

This is now the second time a prolonged internet disconnection has cost me hundreds of dollars. As I grumbled over my rotten luck, I vowed that this will never happen again, if I can help it...

It could have been worse: much more money could have been on the line. Indeed, the stakes will rise as my poker career progresses, and the next ill-timed connection loss could easily cost me thousands. Time to take action.

Taking Precautions

I’m already prepared for all kinds of eventualities. I have a spare PC plus a laptop too, both loaded with up-to-date poker software, should my main PC pack up. I am prepared for temporary power outages, armed with UPS devices (battery backups) for my ADSL modem and both my desktop PCs.

Some time ago I bought a second ADSL router, which is fully configured and ready to swap in, to facilitate rapid diagnostics in event of network issues. I even have spare mice and keyboards at hand. Yes – I have had a mouse suddenly refuse to work during a poker tournament!

However I’ve never made any provisions for losing my internet connection. At one point I did consider picking up one of those medieval relics that is the dial-up modem (!) but my last experience of playing poker over a dial-up connection was tainted by – you guessed it – an untimely disconnection. Think ‘cash game’, ‘spiking the nuts on the turn’, ‘a look of glee as the villain continues to put more money in the pot’... followed by despair (and a torrent of foul language) as ‘CONNECTION LOSS’ flashed across the screen.

3G to the Rescue

No more despair or bad language! I have invested in a USB mobile broadband stick, begging the question why didn’t I get one sooner? In truth I didn’t know my ‘3’ from my ‘7-2 off’, but I’ve now figured out that 3G is just the solution I was looking for.

I’ve plumped for a £2 per day pay-as-you-go deal, although there was also a metered ‘pay per MB of bandwidth’ alternative. It’s all the same really as I shouldn’t be using it very often – the stick is just my insurance policy. I’m catching a train tomorrow, so I’ll take the stick with me and see if I can surf the web on the move.

Let’s just hope I hardly ever have to use it.

Adults Only!

Oh and I have avoided one potential ‘gotcha’ with my mobile broadband package. By default, the USB stick ships with a so-called ‘content lock’. Gambling, porn and other over-18 interests are off-limits, so I had to phone the mobile network to prove my age and have the content lock disabled. Good job I thought of that!

How else could I view dirty pictures on the train?

November Review

Quite clearly I should have stopped playing after November 3rd! Stupid boy...


Despite all the variance, November has been my second-best month to date, and I also picked up about $500 in bonuses.

Top six cashes:

$2,119 – 1/163 in $5,000 Turbo on bwin ($54 buy-in)
$1,958 – 2/125 in $10K Gtd Rebuy on Party ($33 buy-in)
$1,820 – 1/130 in $6K Gtd Speed ($55 buy-in)
$1,302 – 3/188 in $8,000 Rebuy on iPoker ($27.50 buy-in, six-max)
$1,203 – 3/130 in $10K Gtd Rebuy on Party ($33 buy-in)
$1,195 – 2/144 in $6K Gtd Crazy Stack Turbo ($55 buy-in)

Bumpy Ride

After playing a heap of poker on Sunday (including the majors on PartyPoker and bwin), I had little to show for my efforts.

32 tournament buy-ins – offset by nothing more than minimum-cashes and brutally disappointing final-table bubbles – left an unsightly hole in my wallet... a hole, just the size and shape of the first prize of the $11 Rebuy! Just before I retired to bed, my losses were salvaged by a last-minute win in my regular tourney on PartyPoker. Weeeee!

As usual I had a break on Monday, staying away from the tables but taking the opportunity to spend some time with PokerTracker.

Game Selection

In my last post I remarked that I was surprised by the variation in ROI in the different tournaments I play, and this has made me realise I really need to invest more effort looking at my game selection. With this in mind, and with some help from the developers on the PT forums, I’ve learnt how to generate customised statistics from my tournament data. This has been most enlightening!

After a fair degree of fiddling, PT now tells me my hourly rate (in dollars per table hour) in each class of tournament I play. My tourneys are broken down into categories like $44 speeds/turbos, $44 freeze-outs, $22 rebuys, $70 satellites, $23 speed satellites, etc. In addition to the familiar ROI and ITM stats, I can now see my $/hour in black and white.

Now I’ve played a decent volume of games, certain trends have started to appear in my statistics, and I can see which games seem to be my most profitable. Of course some of the numbers require careful interpretation – I doubt very much whether my $90 hourly rate in $55 speed tournaments is sustainable, and with only 85 of those tourneys in my PT database I will have to play far more games before I can gauge my true rate – but the present figures are still useful in refining my game selection.

My Regular Haunt

In particular I’ve come to realise that Party’s $11 Rebuy – numerous wins notwithstanding – may not be such a great use of my time any more. I’ve won this tourney eleven times now, finishing 2nd/3rd a further eight times, over the course of 189 games. My ROI is a not-unreasonable 61% and my average buy-in $40.68 (statistics courtesy of PT) but the games last longer than a lot of the other tourneys I play, and my hourly rate averages out as $10.18, somewhat less than many other, more profitable games in my daily schedule.

It will be interesting to continue to monitor all these figures as the months pass. For the time being, I shall be placing more emphasis on speed games than before, particular speed rebuys, and also continuing to play lots of satellite tournaments. That’s where, apparently, the money is.

Back to the Grind

It was back to work on Tuesday evening. It’s been a turbulent week!

Things started dreadfully – I managed to do $2,000 in two days. That’s what you get for buying into 44 tournaments and scraping together little more than a thimbleful of paltry min-cashes. I felt I was playing pretty darned well, but quite simply, managing to sustain bad beat after bad beat, lose every crucial flip, and all that shit.

I carried on playing on Thursday, confident in my game and unfazed by the bad run. Won about $430 in the morning... lost about $460 in the evening. LOL. (To be fair I also picked up a $162 ticket in a satellite.)

Hat Trick

Could I turn things around on Friday? Things were looking gloomy until dinner time, when – after an infuriating day of anti-climaxes, coolers, suck-outs, and falling victim to some of the most absurd ‘bingo’ calls – I suddenly found myself at four final tables simultaneously. This is the life we lead!!

Not much later I found myself somewhat richer. I won a rebuy on iPoker, finished third in a freeze-out on Mermaid Poker, and to complete the hat trick, won another seat in the Monthly Million in a $70 satellite. Praise be!

I’m about $1,300 up for the day, and feeling goooood. :)

Here are some highlights of the week:

€461 (= approx $691, for finishing 3/122 in €3,000 Gtd on Mermaid)
$640 (Monthly Million satellite on PartyPoker)
$625 (1/60 in Sunday night’s $11 Rebuy on Party)
$496 (1/38 in $11 Turbo Rebuy on iPoker)

And a few of the not-quites:

$470 (3/112 in $44 Speed on Party)
$433 (4/227 in $5,000 Speed Rebuy on iPoker)
$300 (gutting 11/182 finish in $120 Speed on Party – $20K prize pool!!)
$249 (just a min-cash, though a satisfying deep run, 29/332 in iPoker’s $30,000 Double Stack)

Could be better, could be worse! Let’s hope next week is an improvement.

This weekend I’m visiting a friend, so until Monday...

Ranting & Raving

I haven’t been feeling too positive about my game over the last few days. There was that nice cash on Wednesday, but overall I feel I’ve just been treading water this last week. Playing averagely; making too many bad calls; not thinking as clearly as I should.

Not only that, but I’ve metamorphosed into a mardy-arse! In particular, I haven’t been taking my bad beats too well. I think I had forgotten how patient I USED to be, until fellow Partygrinder ThundrXpress politely suggested I should cut down on my chat-box rants. Eek!

Of course I should be grateful for the donks and their donkish ways. What happened to my ‘pro’ mindset? I can almost hear David Sklansky whispering in my ear, ‘be glad when they make incorrect calls’. When they suck out, I should of course just say ‘nh’ and move on. And I’m sure the negative attitude spills over into my game and my decision-making.

Note to self: enduring the vast majority of not-so-bad bad beats is in the job description. I need to actively keep myself in check, so thank you Thundr for the wake-up call. :)

Monogamy

I’ve been seriously considering whether it is +EV for me to focus so much attention on PartyPoker. The bonuses are enticing, but I have been compromising on table selection to scrape an extra few hundred dollars. I have been starting to suspect I am actually losing hundreds by playing certain tournaments on Party, at the expense of other, more +EV games on other poker sites.

This possibility came to the forefront of my consciousness this week, when fellow player Philgreen commented that he felt PartyPoker had got tougher lately, and agreed that some of the $109 tournaments were not always a walk in the park.

These games are among the best for amassing PartyPoints, Leader Board points and so on, but I wonder how much profit I stand to make per game. It’s impossible to estimate my true ROI in these tourneys until I have a much larger sample of results, but my gut instinct is that my edge is quite slim – at least, until I’m better at poker! Of course it’s worthwhile playing some bigger games to push myself, but multi-tabling the tougher tourneys can’t be the best way for me to improve my abilities.

Naturally I want to play for higher stakes where possible, bankroll permitting. I have my eye on a number of equivalent tournaments on other sites, which I feel are somewhat softer.

Break

After a crummy session at the tables on Thursday (actually I broke even, but I felt my play was distinctly sub-par), I decided to have a day off. So I forgot all about poker on Friday. Did some housework; cooked up a homemade chicken curry; then put my feet up, watched a film, cracked open a beer, phoned some friends.

Yesterday (Saturday) I booted up PokerTracker and updated my records. It was a couple of hours’ work to import the last two weeks’ worth of tournament hand histories, manually enter missing tournament details... and send a number of crash reports to the PokerTracker developers, grr!

Still not feeling overwhelmingly enthusiastic about playing poker Saturday afternoon, I sat and tinkered with PokerTracker for a while.

The Joy of Stats

I have a LOT of data in PT now! 18 months of playing poker adds up to 317,000+ hands over 4000 tournaments. In fact my play has been increasingly concentrated in latter months as I’ve increased my multi-tabling.

The large volume of data allows me to draw some semi-meaningful inferences. I had a bit of a surprise when I started to break down my results by game type – among other things I noticed that I’m really tearing up the rebuy tournaments!

This seems to be true across the board, at all buy-in levels, across all poker sites. I’m faring better in rebuys than I am in freeze-outs; and similarly, I’m faring better in speed rebuys than I am in speed freeze-outs.

This is not wholly surprising, but what is surprising is just how much better I seem to do in rebuys. This has forced me to rethink my game selection. Plan A was to carry on grinding PartyPoker until the end of the month... but to achieve the bonus targets I originally had in mind, I need to play lots of freeze-outs with high buy-ins, like their $109 games. Quite simply I think my time is better spent playing $10—30 rebuys, in which my expectation is greater, though the bonus-earning potential is lower.

Party’s satellites are also a steady earner, and my ROI is impressive considering some of the biggish buy-ins and small fields.

I shall continue to keep my eye on Party’s various promotions. I’ve already earned a fair number of loyalty points this month and I’m near the top of the Monthly MTT Leader Board, so my plan is to carry on grinding on Party, but forget about my original plan to earn 200 PartyPoints per day, which is near-enough impossible unless I grind exclusively on Party (or play ridiculous hours) which I think is counter-productive.

Back on Form

He’s back! In the evening I returned to the tables; and yea, it was good.

I played quality poker; I’ve been thinking positively; I’ve been curbing my rants (!) and – always sure to lift a gambler’s spirits – I won a cool grand.

The highlight of the evening was winning bwin’s $54 buy-in $5,000 Turbo, placing 1/163 for $2,119. Sweet!

I also won $300 worth of tournament entries by playing satellites on bwin. It’s now six weeks since I signed up with the OnGame network, and my track record is already looking mightily impressive – indeed I’m presently ranked top-1% on OfficialPokerRankings.com.

Yesterday was roughly break-even on Party, a Monthly Million satellite victory ($640 cash) paying for my other tournament entries. I’ve made about $2K overall – not bad for seven hours’ work. :)

That’s not to say the day couldn’t have been better. One particular big hand proved to be the turning point of my game in Party’s $8K Gtd Rebuy, and it didn’t turn out the way I hoped.

A Turn for the Worse

I shall close with the fateful hand. I have an interesting decision as to how to play my hand after I raise pocket Kings under-the-gun and attract calls from a mid-position player as well as the big blind.

As it transpires, the deep-stacked MP player is a bit loose, but the BB is a strong player who I’ve encountered before.

I can’t be too unhappy about the way the hand unfolded. The turn card is a bit of a shit, dishing out draws galore to my foes – it ends up playing out like a family pot in a loose Limit Hold’em game, with decisions on the flop leaving everybody semi-committed!

Nevertheless I find myself in a good spot to triple-up to 60bb, and despite the horrid turn card I still have 50% showdown equity. I ‘only’ have to dodge half the deck on the river to scoop a monster pot!!

Ironically the MP player calls the BB a ‘lucky donkey’ after this hand. (MP was crushed on the flop, though he miraculously increased his equity to 20% on the turn. It would have been truly sickening had he backdoored me...)

No-Limit Hold'em, $33 Rebuy Tournament, 400/800 Blinds 25 Ante (9 handed)

CO (17,900)
Button (46,970)
SB (36,468)
BB (21,620)
Hero (UTG) (15,850)
UTG+1 (23,163)
MP1 (47,520)
MP2 (9,290)
MP3 (81,615)

Hero's M = 11.12

Preflop: Hero is UTG with [Ks Kh]
Hero bets 1980, 3 folds, MP3 calls 1980, 3 folds, BB calls 1180

Flop: (6565) [3c 6h 8h] (3 players)
BB bets 3282, Hero calls 3282, MP3 calls 3282

Turn: (16,411) [3c 6h 8h] [7c] (3 players)
BB raises to 16,333 (All-In), Hero calls 10,563 (All-In), MP3 calls 16,333

River: (59,640) [3c 6h 8h 7c] [Tc] (3 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: 59,640

Results:
BB had [Qc 8c] (flush, Queen high).
Hero had [Ks Kh] (one pair, Kings).
MP3 had [5c 5s] (one pair, fives).

Outcome: BB won 59,640

Hero finished in 33rd place.

I, Luckbox

I ran pretty badly in most of my games today, but it seems I saved most of my luck for one tournament...

$6K Gtd Speed – 1/130 – $1,820

To say I ‘ran like Daley Thompson’ on the final table would be a gross understatement. Thank you, poker gods, for the endless showdowns that went my way. :) :) :)

I also managed to cash in the $120 Speed ($14K prize pool today – I was a coin flip away from the final table); then I went on to nail the single-table $109 Regular for $450. I was laughing all the way to the cashier when I found myself heads-up against the worst player at the table... and then proceeded to flop two consecutive sets against the guy, a chronic calling station! Game over for muppet; victory for LiquidEyes.

Steamer

Frustratingly, I min-cashed in bwin’s $8,500 NL Holdem, finishing 38/389. I was top-ten in chips, when a donk with an even bigger stack raised under-the-gun with pocket Tens. Like a lot of weak players, scared of seeing a flop with a premium but vulnerable hand like T-T, he made an oversized raise. This was all the information I needed to know how best to play my pocket Aces!

When he open-raised to 5bb I pretty much put him on a big pair Tens through Queens, so rather than call or make a small reraise, which could result in him seeing an unfavourable flop and giving up on his hand, I simply shipped my whole 40bb stack, hoping to sell weakness. With any luck he would get married to his hand and call, praying he was up against A-K at worst...

Call he did, and I smiled to see I was indeed a 4-to-1 favourite to win an 80bb pot and take the chip lead. Mwu-ha-ha-ha-haaaaa.

Actually, I didn’t cackle at all – every tournament pro knows better than to tempt fate in the twisted world of poker. More likely I screwed up my face and braced myself. Anyway you can guess which shitty card came steaming along on the river. F**ksticks!

Even with my tournament buy-ins amounting to around $1,500, I’ve made a tidy profit for the day, more than making up for the Tuesday debacle.

I, Donkey

Well, I’m either running badly or playing like monkey on PartyPoker.

A number of frustrating circa-tenth-place bust-outs have really cut into my profits the last few days. Placing 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th really hurts, considering the exponential ramp in payouts on the final table.

Of course the difference between landing a monster pot, all but securing a top-three finish, and being cruelly and prematurely ejected from your virtual seat with nothing more than a token sum of money – invariably punctuated by desperate cries of ‘how can I lose EVERY crucial flip?’ or ‘how can he call with THAT?!!’ – is so often determined by the turn of a single card.

Indeed one of the hurdles of tournament poker is psychological: can you maintain your morale in the face of brutal near-miss upon brutal near-miss?

Nil Points

As well as a dearth of wins, I also wince at some of my long streaks of zero-cashes. These bad runs are highlighted by certain tournament statistics-gathering websites, Sharkscope for example sympathetically tagging a player on a particularly diabolical losing streak with the status ‘super-tilt’!

I confess I’ve always felt self-conscious about my ‘ITM’ statistics (the proportion of tournaments in which I finish in-the-money) which lag behind those of some of my peers. I harbour a niggling suspicion these reflect some elusive leak, or leaks, in my game.

Of course there’s more than one way to skin a cat: the great thing about No Limit Hold’em is that there are so many valid, winning playing styles. That there are numerous ways to play reflects the depth of the game. What is important is that one makes a consistent profit, so arguably it matters not whether a player picks up $500 every twenty games, or $100 every four games.

Nevertheless I do wonder if there is a leak I could plug that would boost my profits, increasing my number of cashes without impacting my frequency of big wins.

When Push Comes to Shove

Plugging leaks is of course an ongoing interest for every serious player. One area I’ve worked on recently is my pre-flop pushing ranges, particularly as I used to feel I was being blinded away too often in MTTs. These ever closer-to-optimal shove/fold decisions should really pay in the higher-stakes tourneys that are now part of my daily schedule (particularly those with $100 buy-ins and above) where I have noticed a greater prevalence of aggressive shoves and calls. It will be interesting to see how these adjustments to my game filter through into my results in the longer term.

While we’re on the subject of niggling suspicions, I also wonder about the true toll of multi-tabling. This month’s bonus-chasing adventures, mentioned in my Pursuit of Profit post, shall serve as continuance of my September grinding experiment and perhaps provide further insight into my optimal route to riches. Next month I shall change tack, playing fewer tables and cherry-picking the best tourneys for my bankroll across iPoker, bwin, Party, Ladbrokes and other sites.

Seven’s a Crowd

I also plan to play more six-max tournaments, something that will be facilitated by playing fewer tables. It’s perhaps too early to say, but my success rate in six-seaters has been very promising, and the theory would go that one can possess a greater edge in these games.

My second-biggest cash to date was in iPoker’s six-max $25 Rebuy back in May, when I finished 1st out of 183 players for $3K. I have started playing this game again recently, and I came close to repeating that success last Wednesday when I finished third for $1,300, ultimately losing a crucial ‘flip’ blind-on-blind. I cashed yet again when I played again on Friday, irritatingly bubbling the final table, finishing 11/140. This has to be my favourite game on iPoker! Results-orientated, me? :)

Ladbrokes and bwin also offer a number of six-max MTTs, so it will be interesting to see how I fare when I focus on short-handed play.

Back to the grind now! Yesterday was pretty pants (I donated about $800 to the poker economy) so the only way is up...

Why I Like to Party

How often, in poker, do you have an 89% chance of trebling your stack?

In this hand, two customers see fit to wager their whole stacks – drawing only to backdoor outs. One has a 6.6% chance of getting lucky; the other 4.4%.

I try not to post too many ‘bad beat’ stories (honest) but this is quite farcical. These guys must really hate money. Here’s why I play on PartyPoker.com: :)

No-Limit Hold'em, $44 Tournament, 50/100 Blinds (8 handed)

CO (3780)
Button (3270)
SB (2950)
BB (4280)
UTG (4150)
UTG+1 (2450)
MP1 (6590)
Hero (MP2) (2530)

Preflop: Hero is MP2 with [Jc Jh]
UTG calls 100, 2 folds, Hero bets 400, CO calls 400, 3 folds, UTG calls 300

Flop: (pot 1350) [Ks 6c Jd] (3 players)
UTG raises to 3750 (All-In), Hero calls 2130 (All-In), CO calls 3380 (All-In)

Turn: (pot 10,610) [Ks 6c Jd] [Qd] (3 players, 3 all-in)

River: [Ks 6c Jd Qd] [Ad]

Total pot: 10,610

Results:
UTG had [Tc 7c] (straight, Ace high).
Hero had [Jc Jh] (three of a kind, Jacks).
CO had [Qc Kd] (two pair, Kings and Queens).
Outcome: UTG won 10,610

Hero finished in 8th place.
CO finished in 7th place.