Grind From Behind

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2011-06-27T23:36:00.000+01:00

Want to keep up with my Las Vegas exploits?

This is where I’ll be posting: http://twitter.com/#!/GrindFromBehind

Viva Las Vegas

2011-06-27T19:23:00.007+01:00

Greetings from sunny Las Vegas!

Last time I posted an update the UK was coated in snow, but now I find myself halfway round the world and the weather couldn’t be more contrasting.

But more on my Vegas jaunt in due course...

2011 Update

I must apologise that my blog has fallen by the wayside this year. Life is good and poker has been going alright – as ever things could be better, but could be much worse.

As a sort of half-arsed attempt to summarise 2011 so far, I’ve reviewed some of my bigger tournament successes. In a sort of reverse, but really rather arbitrary order, for dramatic effect...

5. Up To Speed

I have enjoyed continued success in my regular speed/turbo tourneys, with several outright wins including two biggies on bwin/OnGame:

1/284 in the daily $55 Turbo for $3k.
1/827 in Brazilian Rebuy for $2.4k (the second-largest field I have bested)

In March I finally took down PartyPoker’s $120 buy-in Speed, in doing so belatedly crossing off one of my resolutions from last year:

1/103 in $10K Gtd Speed for $3,172

I’m faring well in my regular haunts on Party:

1/300 in $11 Speed Rebuy for $2.5k
1/218 in $11 Speed Rebuy for $2k

1/133 in $33 Turbo for $1.1k
1/93 in $33 Turbo for $1.1k

Also I took $1.8k for shipping a PokerStars €30 Turbo Knockout against a field of 295.

4. The Big Game

In February I reached my first ever final table in one of the big-field Sunday majors, scoring $3,747 for a 9th place finish in PartyPoker’s $250K Guaranteed Sunday. There were a couple of interesting key hands that I should dig out some time, including a sort of hero-call with bottom set against the chip leader deep in the game.

Also encouragingly I’ve final-tabled Party’s $215 buy-in Friday Special twice, taking $2.3k for a 6th place finish in January after taking a bad beat (obv!) and also final-tabled the $90 rebuy $40K Super Thursday.

3. Big Guns

I’ve been holding my own against some of the big guns on the tougher sites, notably PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker.

In March I bubbled the final table of Full Tilt’s $129 Knockout, which had a huge $90k+ prize pool. After coming through a field of field of 936 players I had a big stack on the penultimate table, and induced the chip leader to 5-bet jam A9s into my QQ for 490k pot – a pot that could have catapulted me to second in chips. The dreaded ace fell on flop and I had to settle for a comparatively disappointing $1k. It was $10k just for coming third in this, a cool $21.5k for the win.

I really enjoy this tourney, and typical of mid-stakes Full Tilt MTTs it has a broad spectrum of players ranging from LOL-bad to scary-good. I felt very much in my comfort zone and made some powerful plays against the stronger players in the late stages.

Then in May I final-tabled the PokerStars $100 1R+1A Turbo, placing 5/331 for $4,625 – one of my biggest ever scores, although rather less exciting than the $15.8k first prize. Again I rate my play as spot on, and had a couple more flips gone my way that fifth place could well have been a third or a first.

I’ve made a number of other final tables on Stars and Tilt, including a runner-up finish in Full Tilt’s $55 buy-in $12.5k Gtd, placing 2/298 for $2.4k. No wins though.

From a glass-half-empty perspective, with all the near misses I feel I’m running somewhat below expectation. Some of these are high variance games though, so I have my own game selection to blame. It is exciting playing the bigger games and makes poker feel less of a grind.

From a glass-half-full perspective, the repeated brushes with big-field tourney success are highly encouraging, and the variance isn’t too big a problem for me. That elusive $10k+ score is surely just around the corner.

2. Top Scores

My other biggest wins of 2011:

In March I finally accomplished one of my New Year’s resolutions from last year, taking down Sky Poker’s weekly six-max Primo, placing 1/300 for £3,750. At approximately $6.1k this clocks in as my second-biggest ever online cash, after my $8.1k win in iPoker’s Super Tuesday $100 rebuy at Christmas.

My success in mid/high stakes tourneys didn’t stop there. In April I shipped Party’s $109 buy-in $15K Gtd, placing 1/160 for $4.4k. I enjoyed a ridiculous chip lead on the final table after speculating with Q-J against a fellow big stack who I suspected was trapping another player with A-A or K-K. I flopped two pair, check-jammed the flop, and sure enough he called with Aces. My hand held up and there was no looking back. Two other strong players made the final table, but I played my A-game, used ICM to my advantage, and 3-bet, 4-bet, floated and bluffed my way to victory. Weeee!

Recently I final-tabled Party’s Sunday night $109 game, the enhanced prize pool $20k Gtd. With 294 entrants the prize pool was actually almost $30k. Four-handed and short-stacked, I hesitantly agreed to chop for a reasonable $3k. It’s been a long while since I agreed to a deal, but the chip leader, strong player RheumaKaiser, opted to chop because apparently he wanted to watch the baseball!! It was a close decision for me, as there was still one bad player on the table and moreover I rather fancied a shot at the $7.6k top spot, but with a short stack and a strong player able to put pressure on me I agreed to take the cash.

I’ve also taken 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th and 6th places in Party’s nightly $99 freezeout, shipping it in February (for the second time) for $2.4k.

1. Going Live

I’ve been getting some more experience playing live poker. As well as some minor successes in local low-stakes donkaments, I have qualified for a couple of bigger live games, including PKR’s £750 buy-in PKR Live VI in London. This took place in May and unfortunately I busted at the end of day one. It was a fun experience, and although I struggled to make any big hands I had a good time and met some cool people.

I have landed another £1k GUKPT Main Event seat which I will play towards the end of the year. I qualified on Blue Square Poker and can choose between any of the remaining 2011 events, so I will probably play my local one in Blackpool.

Onto the big one:

This year I made a serious effort to qualify for the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. I started playing satellites to the WSOP Main Event in February, suffering a near-miss at the start of April when I bubbled winning a $12k package on Full Tilt, placing 2nd out of 81 in a $216 Shootout qualifier. There was only one prize package available, although I did take a $2.1k cash prize for my runner-up finish which slightly softened the blow. (FWIW the $2.1k means I’ve made a net profit from all the WSOP satellites I’ve played this year.)

On April 17th I finally took down a $13k WSOP package on iPoker, placing joint first out of 55 entries. There were two packages available in the $535 satellite, for which I had qualified by winning a Super Satellite for $126 earlier in the week.

My fellow package winner was none other than fellow PartyGrinder PhilGreen111. As well as entry into the $10,000 Main Event, I get to stay in the prestigious Wynn hotel for seven nights, and also there’s about £1,000 towards flights and other expenses.

Of course I’m elated about qualifying for the biggest game in poker, and the icing on the cake is that several of my online chums on Party have also qualified. As well as PhilGreen111, I would also get to meet THEKID_88, ThundrXpress and KASABIAN_LSF for the first time.

Instead of just flying to Vegas for the WSOP Main Event, I thought I would get there a bit earlier, get settled, and get some practice in at the poker tables.

And so I find myself in Las Vegas, grinding live tourneys as a warm-up for the biggie, which begins two weeks from now.

I’m not going to promise much in the way of full blog updates while I’m here in the US. It just so happens I woke up early the last couple of mornings and have been seized by the compulsion to write something. (It’s my first ever experience of jetlag as I’ve never flown so far from the UK before – I have been warned the jetlag will be far worse when I get back to England, oh joy!)

I have created a Twitter account so I can post the occasional concise update on my donkament successes and failures, not to mention my experiences of American culture (i.e. stuffing my face with obscene quantities of food).

Time to sign off. Wish me luck at the tables...

Stocking Filler

2010-12-25T14:49:00.012Z

Festive greetings from the UK, where we are enjoying (?) a white Christmas.

It’s mighty chilly out, I’m clad in a fiendishly fashionable stripy-new-dressing-gown and silly-Santa-hat combo (thank you Mum for posting that to me!!) and the radiators are cranked up.

Speaking of heaters...

The unremitting upswing soars ever skyward, another $2k+ of profit amassed last night – yes I was committed [sad?] enough to grind on Xmas Eve – courtesy of a runner-up finish in Absolute Poker’s $15K Gtd rebuy.

Going into heads-up play I had a 2:1 chip deficit, but felt I had the edge skill-wise, and a decent shot at nailing the $4.3k first prize.

My luck ran out when I shipped 26bb with pocket Sevens over a button-raise, my foe snap-called with K-Qs, and the board rolled out an unfavourable 3-Q-2-K-5.

I can’t grumble too much (bah humbug) as I spiked a gutshot on the final table, scooping a sizeable pot when my opponent shoved into my turned straight with Q-T versus my Q-8 on a J-9-5-T board, although I think I was unlucky to be drawing so thin on the flop.

You can’t win ’em all, but it makes for a cool stocking filler, this latest score ramping up my week’s profits up to around $15,000. A sick, sick week, and without question one of the highlights of my poker career!

Merry Christmas, and many thanks to THEKID_88, Philgreen111, ThundrXpress, TheOldBloke, DDB, BigAl37 et al, for your moral support – oh and the odd poker tip – over 2010. :)

Elated!

2010-12-23T14:28:00.004Z

Oh what a night...

Tuesday I landed the killer blow and knocked my downswing into submission. Over the course of eight hours I racked up nearly $10k profit. My best ever day at the tables!

The bulk of it came from my victory in iPoker’s $100 rebuy $30,000 GP Super Tuesday. It’s the first time I’ve won a 100r tourney, and my biggest online score to date, a cool $8,100.

I also placed 3rd in a €30 rebuy on the IPN/Boss Media network – another €1,875 (EUR) in the bank.

I’m absolutely delighted about my iPoker win, and it’s all the more satisfying having defeated two strong high-stakes players in 3-handed play.

Winning a crucial flip against scary-good Aussie pro Onadownswing (AKA El Spewtardo / The Spewtard, who has notched up around $1m in tournament cashes online), to take the chip lead in short-handed play.

What a wonderful surprise, and an almost fairytale end to 2010, clocking over £8,000 profit since returning from holiday on Friday.

Dreaming Of A White Christmas

2010-12-20T19:23:00.001Z

It's that time of the year again: the pipes are frozen, people are slipping in the street, scarf sales are through the roof, and our transport system has ground to a halt. Britain is buried in snow.

It is a stark contrast to Gran Canaria, whence I returned on Friday. Oh, the joy of sunbathing in December! I acquired a modicum of colour, and even swam in the sea a couple of times. Alright, the sea was a bit chilly...

Tooth Abuse

One of the perks of my job is not having to commute to work. I could almost avoid any contact with the outside world, since I order nearly everything on the internet (supermarket deliveries included) though today I had to brave the weather for a visit to my dentist – or as a friend calls it, ‘paying for pain’.

Fortunately (or unfortunately?) the number 31 bus service was unaffected by the snowfall and I made it to the dental centre just in time for some routine eye-watering gum torture.

Now I’m £30 lighter, bleeding, and sulking after some bint jammed an ultrasonic device between my teeth. And I have a follow-up appointment in January for more tooth abuse, just fantastic!

Back In Action

Back to poker after a two week break.

As well as spending a week soaking up the sun and sangria in the Canaries, I took a few days out to assemble and set up a new desktop PC for my online gambling ventures.

Am I glad I got my computer up and running in time for the traditional Sunday grind...

The last few months I’ve run badly overall, so I was super-chuffed to rack up over $3,000 of profit last night.

Xmas Comes Early

The evening began well, with a torrent of delectable suck-outs securing me a victory in Party’s $10K Gtd Speed Rebuy. At $5 per rebuy it’s a low-stakes affair, but with fields of typically 500—700 the prize pool is fairly substantial.

In fact I placed 4/714 on my last attempt, but of course it’s all about winning, and my $2,688 cash for placing 1/629 made for a very welcome early Chrimbo present.

Disappointingly I went on to bubble the final table of PKR’s $162 buy-in six-max Sunday High Roller. Under $700 for my 7th place finish ... $6k for the winner ... meh!

I had the chip lead for a while but a series of ill-destined all-in plays saw me fall from grace. J-J lost to K-7o / K-Q lost to 7-7 / then I shoved trash and ran into Jacks. gg

I bought into three of the Sunday majors and enjoyed a deep run in OnGame’s ChampionChip $200,000 ($200 buy-in). Embarrassingly I think it’s only my second cash in this tourney, so it was nice to finally nail a four-figure score, placing 23/1300 for $1,211.

Reassuring that I still remember how to play poker after my break. :)

Early Bust-Out

2010-12-20T12:10:00.002Z

Well, day two of the GUKPT tourney went according to plan – apart from the bit where my second all-in push attracted a caller and I busted out!

There was a live video stream of the event on the web, and I’m strangely proud that apparently I was the first player to get all my chips in (I jammed Q-8o or similar from the button – no showdown). No guts no glory...

Sadly there would be no glory for me. About an hour in, now very short-stacked [M=4.5] I pushed J-To from earlyish/mid position and ran slap bang into A-K. No help on the flop, and a King on the turn meant I was drawing dead. Not an ounce of regret though.

Far from feeling disappointed, I went home feeling elated about my deep run (a respectable 21st place out of 153 entrants, six from the money), proud of my play and having a renewed enthusiasm for live poker.

I met some cool people too – I had a good natter with fellow ‘champions’ David Johnston, Cuong Tran and others, both of whom won big in GUKPT events in 2010.

In the New Year I intend to make a point of playing more satellites to live events, as well as entering a few more tourneys at my ‘local’ casino in Blackpool.

The Latest From Coventry

2010-12-05T12:12:00.003Z

The coffee is a-flowin’ as I studiously digest my M=5 jamming charts.

It can mean only one thing: I have scraped my way to day two of the GUKPT Champion of Champions tournament with a short stack!

25 players remain from the field of 153. The prize pool is a cool £150,000, although with 2% of all the chips in play I am an underdog to get close to the £44k first prize. Stranger things have happened though, and I’m one double-up away from being in contention to cash...

I ran alright for the first few hours of the tourney, steadily building to four times my starting stack, but went mostly card dead in the last few levels, blinded down somewhat, before resuscitating my stack by winning a flip with A-Qo versus a shorter stack’s pocket Tens.

15 spots are paid, prizes starting at £2,250. I’m not afraid of risking the bubble in any +EV situation and may be able to exploit my nitty table image. I am far enough from the money, and short-stacked enough, that ICM has little bearing on my jamming ranges, so I will be pushing aggressively to chip up.

I got a few light shoves through towards the end, clawing back a few chips, so I head into day two with about 30k at the 1,200/2,400 level with 300 antes. Fingers crossed for today.

Midland Mischief

2010-12-03T19:37:00.004Z

Greetings from a land of funny accents.

I’m writing this on my laptop in Coventry, where I’m staying for the weekend. It’s time for some more live poker: the GUKPT Champion of Champions event takes place tomorrow, kicking off at 2pm.

It’s going to be another toughie, but I shall take it in my stride, play tight, and try to enjoy myself. If I bust early from the main event, there’s a side event on Saturday evening.

I have no plans to do anything else but play poker while I’m down here. It’s miserably cold outside and this isn’t exactly my favourite city in the world. Naturally I picked a hotel with wireless internet, so I’ll be grinding tonight, and if it all goes pear-shaped tomorrow I’ll be back online again in the evening. GL me!

Bug Bashing

2010-12-03T19:33:00.003Z

One by one, I’m overcoming the technical problems that have beset me recently. The mobile broadband saga has – fingers crossed – come to an end. It turns out the ‘3’ mobile internet stick they sent me was, quite simply, faulty! Eyebrows were raised when I couldn’t get the thing to work anywhere, on any computer. I obtained a replacement from 3 which, sure enough, works a treat.

Next, I’ve managed to fix the problem of my laptop’s Internet Manager software failing to appear, through a rather unscientific process of repeatedly uninstalling/reinstalling/rebooting until the goddamn thing worked.

The problem with my main desktop PC’s nightly ‘network blip’ – losing its network connection for two seconds every night – is still a mystery. The problem has resurfaced even after reinstalling Windows from scratch! So I wonder if it’s some sort of hardware problem or driver issue?

Whatever the cause, I don’t want to spend my life diagnosing infuriating bugs like this, and time is money, so I’ve taken the somewhat radical measure of buying a brand new PC. This has provided a convenient excuse for me to buy something better, faster, and shinier than before. :)

Another nugget of good news is that PartyPoker have dished out a series of refunds, in lieu of a number of disconnections I have suffered over the last two months. Frustratingly their server problems have caused me to lose hundreds of dollars’ worth of chips, so at least I’ve got something back. Now all they have to do is stop their servers going down in the first place...

Shark Pit

2010-12-03T18:59:00.009Z

From my lack of blogging since the Blackpool GUKPT main event in November, you may have construed that either
1. I shipped it, promptly celebrating my £67,000 win with an indulgent spending spree and round-the-world trip (neglecting to update my faithful online fans); or
2. I busted at the end of day one and went home with my tail between my legs.

Unfortunately it was the ‘tail’ option. The tournament was very tough, and there was nothing too shameful about my exit on level 9, coolered A-J v A-K by the resident card rack. Said villain, who I nicknamed ‘Mr Chips’ on account of his seemingly ever-growing stack, enjoyed a quite incredible run of hands, spiking big pairs, sets, straights, and even busting a guy with a backdoored royal flush against a full house!

Queens of the Damned

I felt some of my play was good, some not-so-good. I found myself in an extremely difficult spot on level 6 with Q-Q, out of position in the SB, with a tricky stack size of about 70bb, against an early position 3-bet. With hindsight – having sought a second and third opinion on the hand – my Queens were probably best mucked pre-flop, although it was a non-obvious fold. Regrettably I made the call (not a dire play in itself) and spewed some chips post-flop (less good). I reckon he had Aces or a set of Kings.

Pointing up the difficulty of playing out of position, Mr Chips even named my hand after I folded the river. OWNED!

Testament however to the high-variance nature of no limit hold’em, Mr Chips, despite being chip leader at the end of day one, went on to bubble the event. :(

I was dealt Aces twice, but failed to win a big pot.

Namedropsville

It was a tough field, with lots of well-known British pros (familiar faces from watching poker on telly) and a strong player inconveniently situated on my left who, as I later found out, has notched up over $1m in live tournament winnings.

I eliminated a Scouse guy called Ian Nelson who I remember seeing on TV, on a GUKPT final table, a few years ago.

There were a few hands I would play differently if I had my time again, and in general I would play a tad tighter on account of the standard of opposition, but the day was a great experience. There were as few as 2—3 players on my table I felt were worse than me, and playing against so many strong pros has made me feel more motivated to step up my own game so that I can compete in future.

As a side note, I cheekily invited myself to sit with a Liam Flood in the canteen area and had a nice chat with him and David Colclough over dinner (there was a buffet for players). I also saw (namedrop alert) Roberto Romanello, Neil Channing, Mickey Wernick, Jake Cody, Marc Goodwin, Stuart Rutter, John Tabatabai...

Online Ace

In other news, I have failed to achieve much in the way of turning around the losing streak I suffered in October. I’m in the red for the last twelve weeks or so.

Lots to be positive about though. I haven’t put in vast volume online of late, but I think I’ve been playing well 97% of the time. Reached a biggish final table on Wednesday ($4k FTW) but sickeningly busted in ninth, Aces cracked (all-in on flop / two-outered on river / sigh gg). Had various other deep runs, but no cigar.

My biggest near-miss was an 18th place finish in Party’s $250K Gtd Sunday, which drew in 1,254 entrants. Obviously a highly anticlimactic experience, but (rather uncharacteristically in a big game) I believe I got my chips in ahead for the whole tournament, until the very last hand, a fairly standard SB v BB encounter where my A-6s failed to outdraw 9-9. The SB – the eventual runner-up of the tourney, chopping for a cool $40k – was super-aggressive, so I have no regrets about shoving over his predictable open-raise.

Thwarted By Technology

2010-11-11T22:53:00.005Z

Another week, another near-miss story, another rant!

Oh, and another couple of runner-up finishes to boot:

$999 – 2/833 in iPoker’s $7,000 Freezeout
$470 – 2/47 in $1,500 Double Stack Turbo
$421 – 3/120 in PKR’s Late Night 6 seater

As if the usual day-to-day variance of poker were not hard enough to stomach, it seems my gambling efforts are to be continually thwarted by technical problems too. I think I’m going mad...

The problems are manifold:

Software glitches. On Sunday the iPoker client failed to open a new window when I was moved from one table to another. As a result I was blinded away just a few spots away from the money. :( I was multi-tabling and failed to notice that game window was ‘frozen’, until I glanced at the lobby and saw I had been eliminated – even though the ‘old’ table was still on-screen and indicated that I had chips!
Server-side problems. Over the last couple of weeks, PartyPoker have suffered [to quote customer services] from a number of ‘technical difficulties’ with their servers, causing large numbers of players to be disconnected mid-tournament. This might be forgivable if they immediately took action by pausing the tournaments until the problems were rectified. However in several cases, a minority of players were able to carry on playing and stole all the chips from the disconnected players for periods of 1.5 hours or more! Party have apologised by email, but I’m still waiting to see whether they will refund me for my lost chips. In one tournament, I’m furious because I was blinded down from over 50k (200bb – second in chips) to just 17k – a mere 17bb at the point I was finally reconnected. Sickening.
Yet more ADSL problems. It’s bad enough that I lost my BT broadband connection again at the end of October. Well, it would seem I’m not the only mug with lame internet. Earlier this week I had a late-night poker session at my girlfriend’s house and she lost her internet connection at 2am for over three hours. THREE HOURS! And wait for it... my T-Mobile broadband stick – which I had tested just two days before – failed to work...
For some reason the ‘Internet Manager’ software decided not to appear when I clicked the desktop icon. No joy even after I rebooted the computer. I’m losing the will to live!! As a result I was blinded away in a $70 game on Party and a large-field rebuy on bwin. By the time I’d given up trying to get the dongle working on my own laptop, installed the T-Mobile software on my girlfriend’s laptop, purchased my day of internet usage, and booted up bwin in a browser, it was too late.
In the latter tourney, thanks to six minute blind levels I had descended from being a top-five stack (in the money) to a pitiful 1bb. I shoved a bit and won a couple of showdowns, but promptly busted near the final table for a paltry $115 payout ($2.3k for the win), my K4s beaten, to add insult to injury, by 84o. Grrrr.
Problems with my new ‘3’ broadband stick. I can’t get it to work for toffee! The software installs ok, but I get no connection, anywhere, ever. They are sending a replacement USB stick, so let’s hope it was just faulty or something?!

It seems that almost everything that could go wrong, has gone wrong. I may have to take more extreme measures to minimise future risk. I’m thinking of configuring a dedicated PC as a backup, testing it daily to ensure the mobile broadband stick still works and can connect to the 3G network, and never installing anything on the PC except for the poker clients and critical updates. It sounds like overkill but it can be devastating when technology lets you down.

For what it’s worth, I’ve written a stern letter to BT Broadband to complain about our home ADSL outages.

(Somewhat) Super Tuesday

On the plus side, I final-tabled a $100 rebuy for the first time last Tuesday. In iPoker’s $30,000 GP Super Tuesday I had the chip lead from before the money, and arrived at the final table still chip leader.

Excitingly, if I shipped the tourney I could win back all my recent losses in one go: first place paid a cool $9.8k!

Alas, the poker gods take no prisoners and two suck-outs later I was on the rail...

Sigh!

On the cards for tomorrow: the GUKPT.

I’ll be cruising along to Blackpool to play the £1k main event. I’m expecting it to be tough, but I’m excited and it should be a good experience. I’ll post an update if I make it to the end of day one.

Fingers, toes and miscellaneous body parts crossed.

October Review (Sigh If I Must!)

2010-11-01T19:08:00.001Z

The worst eight days of my poker career to date: stuck $6,000 and counting!

This is a warts’n’all blog so here’s the ugly truth in black-and-white (and red, and more red):

I’m trying to remain philosophical. ‘It happens.’ I’ve had a number of $2k—3k downswings before; they are not out of the ordinary any more.

Those downswings do not manifest themselves periodically, but rather at random.

Looking at the big picture, this is only the same as two $3k downswings glued together! And looking at my ‘all time profits’ chart, I’ve had dozens of upswings of comparable magnitude to this conspicuous downer.

The stark reality is that the downswing may well continue, but – if I continue to play well, and all other things being equal – The Joy Of Independent Probability [could be a bestselling book, no?] is that I’m just as likely as ever to embark on a sudden winning spree.

A month in MTTs is not a long time, so my monthly reviews are arguably trivial. In the last 18 months I have had 15 winning months and 3 losing months. Reviewing my profit graphs from a number of winning months, they are frequently characterised by one or two sudden upswings that dwarf the noise of day-to-day variance and ‘averagely big’ downswings.

Something I read on a poker forum sticks in my mind, where somebody remarked that sooner or later, ‘everyone will run worse than they thought humanly possible’.

The Poker Mindset (my latest book purchase) is a good read, and there’s lots of material on dealing with downswings and bad beats. I stumbled across a great post on PocketFives.com too. Of course all that matters is continuing to play well.

I’ve written off about 8% of my bankroll in the last week [when I say ‘my bankroll’, I’m not counting money I have invested in bonds, or any other money that is out of reach in the short term]. This stings a bit, but it isn’t enough to affect my game selection as I was already significantly over-’rolled for most of my tourneys. As a side note, I feel proud that I’ve generated almost my entire bankroll from grinding poker tournaments, from a very small seed of sub-$1k.

Some reasons to remain positive:

I have a healthy bankroll, and the games are still hot.
My downswing is not intrinsically indicative of anything bad. I am fairly self-assured anyway, and feel good about 98% of my play. I have made some mistakes this week but it’s all a learning process, and I like to think that each mistake makes me less likely to make that same error in future. To put it in perspective, my downswing – equivalent to maybe 120 tourney buy-ins – is not at all out of the ordinary for MTT players. There’s a two+two thread where winning players have reported downswings of 200—300 buy-ins. Hopefully this won’t be one of those!!
I have had some deep runs in big games recently. Last night for example, I very nearly made the money in iPoker’s major and bwin’s weekly $100+1R+1A tourney. I feel I played well and held my own as the tables got tougher; quite simply my luck ran out in the late stages. Bad beats, lost flips etc, blah blah blah.
I’m faring well in my regular games; it’s just been falling apart at the end. In the last two weeks I’ve had a number of 2nd and 3rd places where I did nothing wrong, other than perhaps having been insufficiently obsequious when I recited my nightly prayers to the poker gods. I guess I royally pissed them off on Thursday, when my biggest leak manifested itself over and over and over again – open-shoving when a player behind has A-A! I think I jammed right into Aces seven times in one night, including three consecutive shoves in the iPoker $50 rebuy. Duhhh.
My morale is fairly high. I felt slightly depressed on Saturday night, but slept on it and feel fairly upbeat now (despite another $1,500 down the pan yesterday, LOL!)
I have two big live games coming up – a nice break from the norm.

Onward and upward.

Obama

2010-10-29T19:02:00.008+01:00

I’ve been continuing to play a spot of Omaha, and enjoyed more success.

(I taught my girlfriend the rules of Omaha and Omaha High/Low. Initially she struggled to remember the name of the game, saying ‘Obama’ instead of ‘Omaha’. I thought Obama was amusing so the name has stuck now!)

High Rollin’

Up until this week I had only dabbled in low-stakes tourneys (nothing higher than about $30) but on Wednesday I had a stab at a $99 PLO game and won $600 for placing 2nd. I very nearly shipped it too, taking two bad beats heads-up, both times ‘for the win’.

It would have been sweet to nail my first four-figure score in Omaha. In any event I’m very pleased with the cash and with my progress.

I just play pretty nitty and (in my mind) fairly ABC, and it seems to work: there are plenty of +EV opportunities even at the $100 level, where players seemingly even less experienced than myself see fit to go bust with hands that look pretty – typically resembling ‘good hold’em hands’ – but are actually rather middling!

Gank Backfires

Ganktober is drawing to a close and I’ve had some unashamedly juvenile fun. (Sorry ThundrXpress!)

Of course the thing about slowrolling with Aces is that, upwards of 18% of the time, they lose, and you look silly. So I suppose I was tempting fate by timebanking in a four-way pot... :P

This pot was, naturellement, won by an unspecified player who cold-called a raise, a 3-bet, a caller, and a 4-bet shove, with... 5-5. Genius.

Top Dog

THEKID is kicking arse on OPR: he’s been ranked 5th on PartyPoker for the last three days.

In the aforementioned $33 Rebuy where I was disconnected (grrrr), Kiddo was at my table and went on to TID.

Nice work dude!

Technology Sucks (Rant)

2010-10-29T17:12:00.004+01:00

Bad day at the office. In fact, four bad days at the office – think $4k downswing.

Technology keeps letting me down! Tuesday was nightmarish. The first couple of issues were perhaps a foretaste of disasters to follow. First I had to change my mouse batteries whilst ten-tabling. I have a second USB mouse on standby for such situations, but the cable got snagged so the mouse wouldn’t reach my mouse mat – d’oh. (I think I need to print a pre-grind check-list and pin it up by my computer!)

Live Poker

Shortly later I made the mistake of trying to unplug the power brick for one of my USB hubs from the mains. The power supply pulled apart in my hand!! The thing was still plugged in, however half the casing had come off in my hand, exposing live wires and circuitry. Oh joy.

Why, oh why, did I decide to do this while playing poker? So I had to switch off my screens while I cut the power to that bank of plug sockets and disconnected the dismembered death-trap power brick.

Next, I lost my internet connection for 17 minutes at around 1am. Oh GREAT timing...

Why Now?

I had three speed games on the go on PartyPoker, including the $11 buy-in Speed Rebuy, in which I was the chip leader with a huge 23bb (over thirty times the starting stack; perhaps $150 worth of chips) with a quarter of the field remaining.

Also I was at the final table of the $33 Rebuy, seven-handed (top prize $3,473). Plus I was playing three or four other tourneys.

Bear in mind this was my first big final table for several days...

Tough table! The 33r FT before I lost my connection.

Contingency Plan

No problem, my mobile broadband stick will save the day. Or will it?

For the second or third time when I’ve actually needed to use my T-Mobile dongle, I couldn’t get a f*$#ing connection. Thank you world!

No matter where I positioned it in the room, the dongle provided nothing more than light pollution, its blue flashing LED indicating ‘trying to connect’. Grrr. The damned thing has proved barely more useful than the proverbial chocolate teapot.

Blind Panic

Eventually my home broadband connection returned.

By the time I returned to the tables, I had bled away a third of my stack in the Speed Rebuy and of course the blinds had quadrupled, so I was down from 23bb to less than 4bb. I had virtually no chips in the other speed games.

In the $33 Rebuy, I had blinded away over a third of my stack and was down from 34bb to 13bb. It was a toughish table, with a higher proportion of strong players than usual in this tourney, and there had only been one elimination. Now short-stacked (with large antes in play) alas I would be next to perish. :(

My micro-stack earned me a min-cash in the Speed Rebuy. No such luck in the other speed games, where my piddling chip stacks promptly evaporated before the money.

Internet Schminternet

How hard can it be to obtain reliable internet access in the 21st century?

This has been the third or fourth non-trivial internet outage I’ve had in the last two years. I conservatively estimate that my 17 minute disconnection on Wednesday morning cost me in the order of $300—400 across all the tournaments I was playing. Just what I needed in the middle of a nasty downswing.

Unfortunately there is only one broadband provider where I live – it’s BT ADSL or nothing. You can’t get Virgin/cable in our area, and other ISPs are just reselling BT’s line, so I’m skeptical whether switching provider will have any bearing on the reliability of my connection.

King Dong(le)

So I need a back-up plan, but is mobile broadband the answer to my problems?

It may be that the T-Mobile 3G signal just isn’t strong enough to work reliably indoors here, so I’ve decided to try another network.

Three offer a dongle for £80, that comes loaded with 12 Gig of credit which can be used any time over 12 months. This is rather more expensive than the first pay-as-you-go dongle I purchased, but I’m desperate and have taken the plunge.

Frankly, because of the nature of my work, I would pay through the nose for a service that is truly reliable. £100 or £200 or whatever per year would be a pittance compared with what I could (and probably will) lose one day due to an ill-timed ’net outage.

Well, the new dongle arrived yesterday. Does it work? Does it bollocks!! I can’t connect to Three’s network, period. Not even ‘one bar’ of signal.

I’ve spoken to Three tech support and apparently they are performing maintenance work on our local phone mast. LOL. This is scheduled to end in a day or two. To be honest, I’m not holding my breath, but MAYBE the new dongle will magically start working at the weekend...

PC Problems

OMG OMG, and did I mention the problem I’m experiencing with my main PC? For several weeks now, I’ve suffered a nightly, albeit momentary, disconnection. I lose network/internet access entirely for two or three seconds, at a different time each night, but generally between midnight and 2am. This only happens on my main desktop PC, not my laptop, but I’ve no idea why. :(

I’m still in the process of diagnosing what’s going on. As a side note, it’s interesting to see how different poker clients respond to a couple of seconds of internet outage! PartyPoker usually copes alright, except that I get a gap in my hand history file, even if I’m only disconnected for a split second during a hand while nothing was happening. But as soon as my connection is back, I’m back in the game.

At the other end of the scale, iPoker seems go to belly-up. To say it is inelegant would be an understatement. Generally, all the game windows close and I have to log in again. Frequently it’s worse than that: I am unable to log back in without closing the application completely (which often takes multiple clicks of the close button) and in the past it’s taken anything up to a minute or more before I’ve found myself back in my games. All from two seconds of disconnection. Inexcusably lame!

God, komputaz suck.

Into The Blend

A piece of technology that has never let me down is my food processor. It may be cheap-and-cheerful, but I have to rate my blender as one of my favourite gadgets, up there with my laptop, my Virus synthesiser and my digital piano!

There’s been plenty of blending action the last couple of weeks:

Carrot and coriander soup. Wow, where have you been all my life? I can’t believe I never tried this before.

Homemade pesto. Do you buy the jarred stuff from the supermarket? DON’T! It’s miles better if you blend it yourself with fresh basil and garlic. Fun and easy to make.

CURRY! On Wednesday’s menu (and yesterday’s, and today’s – gotta love curry leftovers) was a sort of improvised chilli and coriander lamb curry. Yum. (You guessed it: I have a surplus of coriander I purchased on special offer!)

Speaking of which, it’s time I tucked into the very last of my batch-job of curry, before I return to the tables for more punishment. Happy days. :)

Back To Blackpool

2010-10-20T02:52:00.005+01:00

In November the Grosvenor UK Poker Tour (GUKPT) comes to Blackpool for a week, and I’ve been trying to qualify for the main event which has a £1,070 buy-in (about $1,700).

Last night I finally won a satellite on William Hill / iPoker. I’m in. :)

I’ve spent a total of £308 on qualifiers for this tourney, and won a rather gratuitous £1,800 prize package, including £400 cash towards travel expenses – amusing as I live just 30 minutes from the casino – plus accommodation. (I’m trying to negotiate a cash alternative to the hotel in Blackpool!)

I suppose it will be tougher than the last live game I played, and the field larger – as is common in bigger live tourneys, there will be two ‘day ones’, as they can’t accommodate all the entrants in the poker room at once.

Nevertheless I shall take it in my stride. I wonder if I’ll see Neil Channing or anybody else famous (Channing won the Luton main event).

The game has one hour blind levels and 300bb starting stacks. NICE!

Champion

While we’re talking about the GUKPT, their Champion of Champions tournament looms ever closer.

I qualified for the event by winning a £275 tournament in Blackpool in May. The Champions tourney is an invitation-only event, exclusively for winners of previous tournaments in the GUKPT series over the course of 2010.

It won’t be a walk in the park, but it’s a free shot at some nice money. I estimate my seat is worth up to £1k, as the event has a £150k prize pool guarantee, and there are presently around 100 qualifiers listed on the GUKPT website.

Amongst the qualifiers are three names I recognise – David Colclough, Stuart Rutter, and none other than Neil Channing, all of whom I have seen on telly. LOL, EZ game.

The only downer is that I have to travel to Coventry, but it seems worth it, not only for the long-shot at some big money, but also for the experience. Maybe I’ll suck out on Colclough again.

Sucky Sucky

2010-10-20T00:52:00.005+01:00

Some great suck-outs for your delectation.

The first is taken from the money bubble of Party’s $55 buy-in $6K Gtd Crazy Stack Turbo. Ordinarily ICM might normally suggest a fold here, despite the colossal pot odds.

However there was a microscopic stack already forced all-in on the other table, so I decided to call for value with my mighty 6-3o. I would only bubble if I lost my showdown AND he won his, and he might well have to contest a multi-way all-in.

I estimate I’ll be the bubble boy one-third of the time or less. The upside of the gamble is that about 20% of the time my hand should scoop a monstrous 53,840 pot, which would place me among the chip leaders with a monstrous 2.7bb. Oh yeah, you gotta love the Crazy Stack! :)

***** Hand History for Game 9748762214 *****
NL Texas Hold'em $55 USD Buy-in
Trny:55474213 Level:18 Blinds-Antes(10,000/20,000 -500)
Monday, October 18, 22:36:08 BST 2010

Table $6K Gtd Crazy Stack Turbo (2044591) Table #2 (Real Money)
Seat 4 is the button
Total number of players : 7/10

Seat 1: ( 20,798 )
Seat 2: ( 71,062 )
Seat 3: ( 15,015 )
Seat 4: Button ( 27,342 )
Seat 5: LiquidEyes ( 17,280 )
Seat 8: BB ( 97,129 )
Seat 10: ( 29,870 )

Trny:55474213 Level:18
Blinds-Antes(10,000/20,000 -500)

Seat 1 posts ante [500]
Seat 2 posts ante [500]
Seat 3 posts ante [500]
Seat 4 posts ante [500]
Seat 5 posts ante [500]
Seat 8 posts ante [500]
Seat 10 posts ante [500]

** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to LiquidEyes [ 6s 3c ]

Seat 10 folds
Seat 1 folds
Seat 2 folds
Seat 3 folds

Button is all-In [26,842]
LiquidEyes is all-In [6,780]
BB calls [6,842]

** Dealing Flop ** [ 5c, Qd, 4d ]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 7h ]
** Dealing River ** [ Ts ]

LiquidEyes shows [ 6s, 3c ] a straight, Three to Seven.
BB shows [ Qc, 9c ] a pair of Queens.
Button shows [ Ah, Ac ] a pair of Aces.

Button wins 20,124 chips from the side pot 1 with a pair of Aces.
LiquidEyes wins 53,840 chips from the main pot with a straight, Three to Seven.

Ouchy Ouchy

A not-so-great suck-out. The following beat was not remarkably improbable, but a very painful way to bust out of a big game with big money on the line.

(I’m permitting myself one ‘whinge’ this month so here it is! Skip to the next hand if the idea of losing $5k on the turn of a card makes you queasy.)

I had an average stack of 22bb, at a tough table in bwin’s $100 rebuy. 21 players remained from a big initial field of 577, the prize pool a mouth-watering $130k.

I picked up Kings in the SB and was pleased to see a raise from EP. I jammed and was called by both the big blind (who had me covered) and the original raiser!

If I won this showdown, the huge 65bb pot would catapult me to second position in chips. Fingers crossed...

The situation could not have been much better: both players revealed A-K offsuit, and I was a 72% favourite to treble up. It was difficult not to get excited about the prizes on offer at the final table – $2k minimum for tenth, $12k for third, $25k for the win...

Then came the almighty kick in the gut. I was immediately drawing dead on the A-9-3 flop. SICK.

Best not complain too much, as I was on the right side of several coolers earlier in the game (KK v QQ etc). October could have been a killer month if I’d final-tabled that bad boy!

A quote from The Poker Mindset seems applicable: ‘If you don’t like the rules, don’t play the game.’

Backdoor Of Doom

I believe the following hand to be the single worst bad beat I have witnessed to date. Thankfully I was in an observational capacity and not the victim.

You’ve got to laugh when they hit their 1.6 percenters. (61-to-one against – just managing to pip my own worst beat to the post.)

I mean, what was this guy even doing in the pot with K-Jo, apart from providing comic relief?

NL Texas Hold'em $33 USD Buy-in
Level:11 Blinds-Antes(250/500 -50)
Friday, October 01, 01:41:15 BST 2010

$5K Gtd, Table #1
Seat 4 is the button
Total number of players : 9/10

Seat 1: Seat 1 ( 26,486 )
Seat 2: Seat 2 ( 5,873 )
Seat 3: Victim ( 10,344 )
Seat 4: Donk ( 113,583 )
Seat 5: Seat 5 ( 22,945 )
Seat 6: Seat 6 ( 8,686 )
Seat 7: Seat 7 ( 13,839 )
Seat 9: LiquidEyes ( 24,075 )
Seat 10: Seat 10 ( 38,328 )

Trny:55021643 Level:11
Blinds-Antes(250/500 -50)

** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to LiquidEyes [ Jd Jh ]

Seat 7 folds
LiquidEyes raises [1,200]
Seat 10 folds
Seat 1 folds
Seat 2 folds
Victim raises [3,200]
Donk calls [3,200]
Seat 5 folds
Seat 6 folds
LiquidEyes calls [2,000]

** Dealing Flop ** [ 3s, 9h, As ]
LiquidEyes checks
Victim checks
Donk bets [10,800]
LiquidEyes folds
Victim is all-In [7,094]

** Dealing Turn ** [ Th ]
** Dealing River ** [ Qs ]

Donk shows [ Jc, Kd ] a straight, Ten to Ace.
Victim shows [ Ac, Ah ] three of a kind, Aces.

Donk wins 3,706 chips from the side pot 1 with a straight, Ten to Ace.
Donk wins 24,988 chips from the main pot with a straight, Ten to Ace.

Victim finished in 18th place and received $50 USD

Funny Flip

When you run well, you run well.

The donk who backdoored the straight in the previous hand somehow made it to the final table. Unfortunately I would be his next victim.

This one’s not really a bad beat, but it is quite an interesting scenario.

We are five-handed. Despite his huge chip lead, the donk open-limps under-the-gun (of course) and I complete the SB with 8-7s (clubs). I am second in chips, with a healthy 39bb to his imposing 100bb.

The flop comes 7-6-5 with a club and two spades. The action goes check-check-check.

I seem to be quids in on the turn, which brings a beautiful Nine of clubs. I have spiked a straight, albeit a rather obvious one, and it seems unlikely my foe has T-8 for the nuts. (Indeed he did not.) However I have also picked up a backdoor flush draw, and best of all, the villain raises my lead bet!

I would appear to be ‘freerolling’ – a situation that is more common in Omaha than in Hold’em – meaning my opponent probably has the same made hand, but I have additional outs to scoop the pot. It’s a dream situation as potentially I can induce him to make a big mistake by getting all his chips in with no possibility of scooping the pot, but a very real possibility of losing it.

I three-bet, and he shoves. Hallelujah! At worst, I’m expecting to split the pot. Except...

He flips over A-8s in spades. He ALSO has a straight with a flush draw – in a different suit! Must admit, I never saw that one coming.

It’s a funny kinda ‘flip’: we each have precisely 50% equity in the pot, but 59% of the time we’ll chop the pot. 20.5% of the time I will bust out of the tournament; 20.5% of the time I will take a (slight) chip lead.

Well, you already know what’s coming on the river. :( Cool hand though.

NL Texas Hold'em $33 USD Buy-in
Level:17 Blinds-Antes(1,000/2,000 -200)
Friday, October 01, 03:12:49 BST 2010

$5K Gtd, Table #1
Seat 7 is the button
Total number of players : 5/10

Seat 4: Donk ( 201,901 )
Seat 5: ( 72,018 )
Seat 7: ( 54,232 )
Seat 9: LiquidEyes ( 77,799 )
Seat 10: BB ( 29,050 )

Trny:55021643 Level:17
Blinds-Antes(1,000/2,000 -200)

Donk posts ante [200]
Seat 5 posts ante [200]
Seat 7 posts ante [200]
LiquidEyes posts ante [200]
BB posts ante [200]

** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to LiquidEyes [ 7c 8c ]

Donk calls [2,000]
Seat 5 folds
Seat 7 folds
LiquidEyes calls [1,000]
BB checks

** Dealing Flop ** [ 7s, 5c, 6s ]
LiquidEyes checks
BB checks
Donk checks

** Dealing Turn ** [ 9c ]
LiquidEyes bets [5,500]
BB folds
Donk raises [11,000]
LiquidEyes raises [30,500]
Donk is all-In [188,701]
LiquidEyes is all-In [39,599]

** Dealing River ** [ 9s ]

LiquidEyes shows [ 7c, 8c ] a straight, Five to Nine.
Donk shows [ 8s, As ] a flush, Ace high.

Donk wins 124,102 chips from the side pot 1 with a flush, Ace high.
Donk wins 158,198 chips from the main pot with a flush, Ace high.
LiquidEyes finished in 5th place and received $340 USD

The Best Hand I’ve Had All Day

I have to include a fantastic hand I saw on the idiot box.

The show was the PartyPoker Big Game on (UK) channel 5, which is a high-stakes, deep-stacked cash game. The hand in question features Neil Channing and Andrew Feldman.

The blinds are £25/£50 and Feldman posts the straddle of £100. It’s folded round to Channing on the button who calls with 4-4.

The blinds both complete (with complete junk) but Feldman, who has picked up pocket Kings, is having none of it. He makes it £600 to go.

Channing (deep stacked and in position) calls, and the blinds fold.

The flop comes a draw-heavy 5d 3h 4d, and Feldman checks to Channing, who bets £700 with his flopped set. Feldman calls. So far, so standard.

A Turn For The Worse

The pot is now £2800. Christmas appears to have come early for Feldman, who spikes an offsuit King on the turn for a higher set! He donkbets £1700.

Channing appears puzzled (perhaps just a spot of Hollywood) remarking, ‘you have Ace-King?’ After a while he flat-calls.

The river brings a Six of diamonds, completing a ton of possible draws. Feldman checks.

Channing thinks for a while and bets £3500 into the £6200 pot. Feldman visibly hates his hand!

The commentators debate the merit of Channing’s ‘ultra thin value bet’, with his set on such a horrid board – but it becomes clear that his bet may actually win the hand for him...

Agony

Feldman complains about how ‘sick’ the situation is. ‘Unbelievable. The best hand I’ve had all day and...’

Channing enquires, ‘why, what have you got?’
Feldman replies ‘you KNOW what I’ve got... top set.’
Channing shrugs and replies, ‘really? Oh, ok. Nice hand.’

Feldman agonises more and more, and the commentators are amused that Channing’s value bet may in fact bluff Feldman off the best hand – though they note that it might indeed be a correct fold against Channing’s range.

‘How can I run so bad! I turn top set... the best hand I’ve had all day... and then a BEAUTIFUL six of diamonds comes on the river.’

The pot is £9700 and it’s £3500 to call. Eventually Feldman tosses his cards into the middle of the table, face up. Channing takes the pot.

Seeing that Feldman folded the best hand, of course Channing can’t resist showing his cards. He flips his Fours and shrugs, ‘hmm, I guess that was a good river card for me!’

Feldman, smiling through his teeth, looks like he is going to throw up.

Into The Tank

2010-10-19T22:11:00.004+01:00

These heads-up hands are from my last $2k win on Party. My opponent was definitely one of the best players I’ve had to take on recently.

If he had any notable leak, it was perhaps calling out of position with hands like Q-6 and K-4 – although this first hand wasn’t so bad:

NL Texas Hold'em $99 USD Buy-in
Level:19 Blinds-Antes(1,500/3,000 -300)

Table $8K Gtd (2032849) Table #1 (Real Money)

Seat 8 is the button
Total number of players : 2/10

Seat 8: LiquidEyes ( 56,822 )
Seat 2: Villain ( 219,178 )

Trny:55200336 Level:19
Blinds-Antes(1,500/3,000 -300)
Villain posts ante [300]
LiquidEyes posts ante [300]

** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to LiquidEyes [ Qh 7h ]

LiquidEyes raises [4,750]
Villain calls [3,250]

** Dealing Flop ** [ Jh, 9c, Th ]
Villain checks
LiquidEyes bets [5,500]
Villain raises [42,000]
LiquidEyes is all-In [44,772]
Villain calls [8,272]

** Dealing Turn ** [ 8c ]
** Dealing River ** [ 8h ]

Villain shows [ 6s, Qs ] a straight, Eight to Queen.
LiquidEyes shows [ Qh, 7h ] a flush, Queen high.

LiquidEyes wins 113,644 chips from the main pot with a flush, Queen high.

In The Tank

This is the one hand where I undeniably got lucky, although I think my play was fair and my reads were right.

I would expect him to 3-bet a lot of aces pre-flop, so after he called my c-bet I felt there were a lot of K-x and Q-x hands in his range which is why I chose to barrel the turn. I had no history of two-barrelling, so I thought there was a good chance he would check-fold the turn.

He thought for quite a long time before calling my turn bet, which (since he is a thinking player) seemed to indicate he intended to call me down on most rivers. As such I decided to shut down unless I got lucky, either by spiking my 4-outer, or by hitting a scare card like a Ten (as I could plausibly have fired again with AJ/AT/KT/KJ on the turn, and might opt to value-bet two-pair if he checked to me).

He used most of his timebank when faced with my bluffy 50k value bet.

NL Texas Hold'em $99 USD Buy-in
Level:19 Blinds-Antes(1,500/3,000 -300)

Table $8K Gtd (2032849) Table #1 (Real Money)

Seat 8 is the button
Total number of players : 2/10

Seat 8: LiquidEyes ( 128,494 )
Seat 2: Villain ( 147,506 )

Trny:55200336 Level:19
Blinds-Antes(1,500/3,000 -300)
Villain posts ante [300]
LiquidEyes posts ante [300]

** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to LiquidEyes [ 6d Td ]

LiquidEyes raises [4,750]
Villain calls [3,250]

** Dealing Flop ** [ Ad, Qh, Kc ]
Villain checks
LiquidEyes bets [7,500]
Villain calls [7,500]

** Dealing Turn ** [ 2h ]
Villain checks
Your time bank will be activated in 6 secs. If you do not want it to be used, please act now.
LiquidEyes bets [20,000]
Villain calls [20,000]

** Dealing River ** [ Jd ]
Villain checks
Your time bank will be activated in 6 secs. If you do not want it to be used, please act now.
LiquidEyes bets [50,000]
Villain will be using his time bank for this hand.
Villain calls [50,000]

LiquidEyes shows [ 6d, Td ] a straight, Ten to Ace.
Villain doesn't show [ 4c, Kh ] a pair of Kings.

LiquidEyes wins 168,100 chips from the main pot with a straight, Ten to Ace.

Weeee!

Costly Call-Down

In the final hand I went for max value with TPTK. Observed in a vacuum it may appear he was a station here, but bearing in mind the T-6 hand (above) his line seems not unreasonable – though I wonder if tilt was at least a small factor in his quick river call?

NL Texas Hold'em $99 USD Buy-in
Level:19 Blinds-Antes(1,500/3,000 -300)

Table $8K Gtd (2032849) Table #1 (Real Money)

Seat 8 is the button
Total number of players : 2/10

Seat 8: LiquidEyes ( 196,394 )
Seat 2: Villain ( 79,606 )

Trny:55200336 Level:19
Blinds-Antes(1,500/3,000 -300)
Villain posts ante [300]
LiquidEyes posts ante [300]

** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to LiquidEyes [ Kd Ah ]

LiquidEyes raises [4,750]
Villain calls [3,250]

** Dealing Flop ** [ Jc, 3d, Ad ]
Villain checks
LiquidEyes bets [6,000]
Villain calls [6,000]

** Dealing Turn ** [ 7d ]
Villain checks
LiquidEyes bets [14,000]
Villain calls [14,000]

** Dealing River ** [ 7s ]
Villain checks
LiquidEyes bets [55,000]
Villain is all-In [53,056]

LiquidEyes shows [ Kd, Ah ] two pairs, Aces and Sevens.
Villain shows [ 9c, Js ] two pairs, Jacks and Sevens.

LiquidEyes wins 159,212 chips from the main pot with two pairs, Aces and Sevens.

Congratulations to player LiquidEyes for winning tournament $8K Gtd

Player Villain finished in 2nd place and received $1,428.30 USD
Player LiquidEyes finished in 1st place and received $2,359.80 USD

Handy Pandies

2010-10-19T19:32:00.000+01:00

I want to post my favourite hand of September, but it’s best if you see another hand first, from a few orbits earlier, at the same table, against the same player.

Both hands are blind-on-blind confrontations, and the villain is the SB.

The villain is a highly-ranked, regular, winning German player on PartyPoker.

NL Texas Hold'em $33 USD Buy-in
Level: 6 Blinds(75/150)
Sunday, September 26, 23:53:46 BST 2010

Table $5K Gtd Rebuy Table #6 (Real Money)
Seat 5 is the button
Total number of players : 9/10

Seat 1 ( 9,995 )
Seat 2 ( 8,090 )
Seat 3 ( 15,950 )
Seat 4 ( 8,822 )
Seat 5 ( 20,874 )
Seat 7: German ( 15,791 )
Seat 8: LiquidEyes ( 18,465 )
Seat 9 ( 9,823 )
Seat 10 ( 6,605 )

Level 6, Blinds(75/150)

** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to LiquidEyes [ 6c 6d ]

(7 folds)
German calls [75]
LiquidEyes raises [350]
German calls [350]

** Dealing Flop ** [ Ks, Ts, 2d ]
German checks
LiquidEyes checks

** Dealing Turn ** [ Jc ]
German checks
LiquidEyes checks

** Dealing River ** [ 6s ]
German bets [500]
LiquidEyes raises [1,800]
German calls [1,300]

LiquidEyes shows [ 6c, 6d ] three of a kind, Sixes.
German doesn't show [ Ad, Td ] a pair of Tens.

LiquidEyes wins 4,600 chips from the main pot with three of a kind, Sixes.

Pwnage Du Jour: Jack-Six Offsuit

So here’s the killer hand. He uses his entire timebank when I overbet the river!

I find it interesting the dynamic that can evolve between two regulars, that adds depth to hands like this. (Would he overbet with a big hand? Is he trying to make it look like a bluff? Does the fact I paid him off last time mean he is MORE or LESS likely to bluff me this time? etc.)

NL Texas Hold'em $33 USD Buy-in
Level:9 Blinds-Antes(150/300 -30)
Monday, September 27, 00:32:27 BST 2010

Table $5K Gtd Rebuy Table #6 (Real Money)
Seat 6 is the button
Total number of players : 9/10

Seat 1 ( 9,255 )
Seat 2 ( 18,535 )
Seat 3 ( 19,685 )
Seat 4 ( 832 )
Seat 5 ( 18,189 )
Seat 6 ( 14,081 )
Seat 7: German ( 13,881 )
Seat 8: LiquidEyes ( 18,975 )
Seat 10 ( 6,165 )

Level 9, Blinds-Antes(150/300 -30)

** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to LiquidEyes [ Jd 6h ]

(7 folds)
German calls [150]
LiquidEyes checks

** Dealing Flop ** [ 6s, Js, As ]
German checks
LiquidEyes bets [600]
German calls [600]

** Dealing Turn ** [ 4s ]
German checks
LiquidEyes checks

** Dealing River ** [ 6d ]
German bets [1,800]
LiquidEyes is all-In [18,045]

German will be using his time bank for this hand.
German is all-In [11,151]

German shows [ Jh, Qs ] a flush, Ace high.
LiquidEyes shows [ Jd, 6h ] a full house, Sixes full of Jacks.

LiquidEyes wins 27,972 chips from the main pot with a full house, Sixes full of Jacks.
German finished in 52nd place.

Five Minutes of Fame

This is the hand they featured on the Sky Poker channel:

Lunnie (SB) 6,661
POKERTREV (BB) 13,770
thesaint (5,917)
LazyBaby (16,620)
KickaStink (cutoff) 39,944
ACE_GUY (button) 31,344

Lunnie posts SB (400)
POKERTREV posts BB (800)

Dealt to KickaStink: [ 7s 7c ]

thesaint folds
LazyBaby folds
KickaStink raises to 1800
ACE_GUY (button) calls (1800)
Lunnie folds
POKERTREV folds

(pot 4800)

Flop: [ 3h Js 7h ]

KickaStink bets 2100
ACE_GUY raises to 4800
KickaStink calls (2700)

(pot 14,400)

Turn: [ 3h Js 7h ] [ 4c ]
KickaStink checks
ACE_GUY bets 7200

(pot now 21,600)
KickaStink raises all-in (33,344)
ACE_GUY folds

On the Sky Poker channel they reveal that he had pocket Sixes.

September Review

2010-10-19T12:57:00.009+01:00

September was not too shoddy on the poker front. Could be better; could be a lot worse.

I guess I’ve got greedy? The nature of grinding tournaments is that, the majority of the time – the times you are running in line with expectation or below expectation – it’s far easier to notice what you COULD have won or what you NEARLY won... how much you WOULD have earned in a given month if you hadn’t dropped $2k on the last Sunday... etc, etc... than it is to focus on the positive.

Every now and then I ground myself by recalling that I earn more from poker now than I did in my previous life as a software engineer. And, materialism aside, this is a much more satisfying existence – not that my ‘real’ job was bad.

Most of September’s pay packet materialised in the first week:

A few selected achievements from the last few weeks:

$1,080 – 19/923 in Absolute Poker’s $200K GTD ($215 buy-in)

I think I played well in Absolute’s Sunday major. To be fair, most of the key action was pre-flop. Ultimately I lost a flip against a very strong player (Ryan Welch AKA gutshtallin – I’ve actually watched a couple of his training videos online). He only had me covered by a handful of chips, so I was in good shape to all-but-eliminate one of the toughest players at the table and acquire a 62bb stack, with just two tables to go.

Alas his A-Qs made a royal flush on the turn, and my pocket Fours started to look a tad pathetic.

It’s my second deep run in this major – I have a feeling I placed about 17th—19th the other time as well.

$2,360 – 1/92 in PartyPoker’s $8K Gtd ($99 buy-in)

I’ve run exceptionally well in Party’s midnight freezeout since they slashed the buy-in to $90+9, final-tabling it four times out of eleven (!) for a 2.6 x return on my $1,089 investment. Heads-up, I was faced with one of the strongest players at the final table, and I started out as the underdog, my foe holding an 1.8-to-1 chip lead.

Heads-up play lasted 23 minutes. I dropped to a low of 46,772 chips to his 229,228, before staging an awesome comeback. I might post three or four of the key hands later.

So, a very satisfying victory. It came just three days after another $2k score...

$2,276 – 1/102 in PartyPoker’s $5K Gtd Rebuy ($33 buy-in)

This is my fourth outright win in Party’s $30 rebuy. Previously, I’ve also had three 2nd places, four 3rds, and a further eight final table cashes. It remains one of my most profitable tourneys.

Critical Acclaim

There was a teensy little ego boost in store for me the other weekend.

Sky Poker cater mainly for micro-stakes players, but there are two or three games I play each week. My favourite is their Sunday night six-max Primo, which typically has a £15k+ prize pool.

Sky is only a small poker site, but one of their gimmicks is that you can appear on television. Well, not in person, but they feature [semi-] live coverage of their flagship online tournaments on the Sky Poker channel (Sky TV channel 865), and the resident poker gurus discuss key hands a few minutes after they happen.

I had my five minutes of fame last week as they featured me thoroughly owning a guy, with a set versus his unimproved pocket pair.

The presenters gushed about how well I played the hand, how I played every street perfectly, and how I extracted maximum value considering I had my opponent dominated throughout the hand.

Unfortunately I don’t think there’s any facility to replay the show on the internet, so I wish I’d taken a transcript of the discussion. Anyway I’ll post the hand later (it’s fairly standard IMO).

It was a nice buzz when the presenters were enthusing about my play. I was watching the show live via the website, as I don’t have Sky TV. Unfortunately I narrowly missed the final table, so the Primo is still on my hit list of tournaments I have yet to take down.

The Sky presenters discussing how great I am. :)

Officially Kicking Arse

Sky are not alone in singing my praises.

OfficialPokerRankings.com also had something to say about my recent tournament success (see pic).

Incidentally THEKID is now ranked 10th. Go Kiddo!

Ganktober

Speaking of THEKID, my online partner in crime drew my attention to a wonderfully childish thread on the popular poker forum PocketFives.com. There are two weeks left in October to ‘gank’ your opponents – that is, to try and put them on tilt by slowrolling them!

If you don’t know what slowrolling is (not to be confused with slowplaying) see the hand history below for an example.

THEKID informed me that for the duration of October, any time somebody shoves into me and I have the nuts, I am unequivocally, legally and morally obliged to slowroll them. I replied, do I have to slowroll you too? He said yes.

Hahaha...

***** Hand History for Game 9690858625 *****
NL Texas Hold'em $33 USD Buy-in
Level:16 Blinds-Antes(6,000/12,000 -200)
Saturday, October 02, 21:12:31 BST 2010

Table $5K Gtd Speed
Table #1 (Real Money)

Seat 8 is the button
Total number of players : 8/10

Seat 1: Tiemo68 ( 69,831 )
Seat 3: tishthwe ( 32,120 )
Seat 4: THEKID_88 ( 26,513 )
Seat 5: TillyismyEX ( 71,888 )
Seat 6: fridis1977 ( 122,297 )
Seat 7: lamehandman ( 13,812 )
Seat 8: LiquidEyes ( 70,176 )
Seat 9: nugoresu1955 ( 34,363 )

Trny:55066897 Level:16
Blinds-Antes(6,000/12,000 -200)

** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to LiquidEyes [ Ah Ad ]

tishthwe folds
THEKID_88 is all-In [26,313]
TillyismyEX folds
fridis1977 folds
lamehandman folds

LiquidEyes will be using his time bank for this hand.
LiquidEyes calls [26,313]

nugoresu1955 folds
Tiemo68 folds

** Dealing Flop ** [ 4h, 8h, Jd ]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 6s ]
** Dealing River ** [ Qh ]

THEKID_88 shows [ Kc, 7d ] high card King.
LiquidEyes shows [ Ah, Ad ] a pair of Aces.

LiquidEyes wins 72,226 chips from the main pot with a pair of Aces.
Player THEKID_88 finished in 8 place and received $185 USD

LiquidEyes: Ganktober

You might think that fate will come back and bite you in the backside if you partake in such mean-spirited silliness. Well, it appears the poker gods have a sense of humour: I was dealt A-A again the very next hand!

I even slowrolled my own father on Saturday, in a three-handed home game along with my girlfriend. He turned a straight with a flush draw, but I rivered the nut flush. Cue several minutes of feigned agony when he pushed all-in. God I’m a dick. :)

Hold’em Wisdom

2010-09-26T12:22:00.003+01:00

God I love PKR. Makes me proud to be British.

One of the great things about playing on the UK-based poker site is the wealth of world class advice at your fingertips. If you tune into the table-talk there’s much hold’em wisdom to be gleaned.

Take this sagely slice of strategic gold, for example...

Clash of the Monsters

An uber-loose player with a huge stack is playing nearly every hand, limping or open-raising relentlessly pre-flop, in any position.

True to form he open-raises in earlyish position. I find J-9s in the small blind and – having played squeaky-tight up to this point – 3-bet all-in for 25bb.

The loose player snap-calls with... 3-3. LOL. I’m a slight favourite, but sadly fail to spike any of my outs. I’m sent to the rail – meh.

There is controversy! Somebody remarks ‘LOL’, followed by another, ‘idiot call’. Unsurprisingly follows: ‘lotto play with J9’.

Every Cloud

But wait, every cloud has a silver lining! I’ve lost my buy-in, but I’m about to gain some priceless advice. They say you learn a new thing every day, and today is no exception...

A player who was not involved in the hand pipes up to defend the big stack’s play.

‘good call’
‘wtf’
‘it was basicly (sic) a heads up pot and any pair is strong heads up’

Three Hands For The Price Of Two

2010-09-25T15:51:00.009+01:00

Now here’s a funny hand. I shan’t name-and-shame the villain (his pre-flop call is quite bad, despite him having position on me) but let’s just say he’s a regular, and he’s ranked higher than me on OfficialPokerRankings.

What I find interesting about the hand is how taking the ‘deceptive’ line of fast-playing my flopped boat pays off.

His post-flop play seems reasonable – he was immensely unlucky of course to backdoor a straight, unaware he was all the while drawing dead. Tee hee!

NL Texas Hold'em $33 USD Buy-in
Level:8 Blinds-Antes(125/250 -25)
21:05:44 BST

$10K Gtd Rebuy, Table #8

Seat 9 is the button
Total number of players : 9/10

Seat 1: BB ( 9,527 )
Seat 3: UTG ( 12,105 )
Seat 4: UTG+1 ( 9,305 )
Seat 5: Villain ( 15,010 )
Seat 6: EP ( 18,150 )
Seat 7: Hijack ( 7,710 )
Seat 8: Cutoff ( 8,610 )
Seat 9: Button ( 10,645 )
Seat 10: LiquidEyes ( 31,530 )

Trny:54810931 Level:8
Blinds-Antes(125/250 -25)

** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to LiquidEyes [ Ad Ah ]

UTG folds
UTG+1 folds
Villain raises [750]
EP folds
Hijack folds
Cutoff folds
Button folds
LiquidEyes raises [2,075]
BB folds
Villain calls [1,450]

** Dealing Flop ** [ As 5s 5c ]
LiquidEyes bets [2,800]
Villain raises [6,250]
LiquidEyes calls [3,450]

** Dealing Turn ** [ 6c ]
LiquidEyes checks
Villain checks

** Dealing River ** [ 7s ]
LiquidEyes bets [2,500]
Villain is all-In [6,535]
LiquidEyes calls [4,035]

LiquidEyes shows [ Ad Ah ]a full house, Aces full of Fives.
Villain shows [ 8d 9d ]a straight, Five to Nine.

LiquidEyes wins 30,445 chips from the main pot with a full house, Aces full of Fives.

Villain finished in 102nd place.

Deathblow

NL Texas Hold'em $33 USD Buy-in
Level:26 Blinds-Antes(10,000/20,000 -2,000)
01:38:47 BST

$10K Gtd Rebuy (2008158) Table #1

Seat 5 is the button
Total number of players : 2/10

Seat 5: LiquidEyes ( 703,368 )
Seat 7: Villain ( 436,632 )

Trny:54495708 Level:26
Blinds-Antes(10,000/20,000 -2,000)
LiquidEyes posts ante [2,000]
Villain posts ante [2,000]

** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to LiquidEyes [ 8d 9h ]
LiquidEyes raises [30,000]
Villain calls [20,000]

** Dealing Flop ** [ Ts 7s Qd ]
Villain bets [50,000]
LiquidEyes calls [50,000]

** Dealing Turn ** [ Jd ]
Villain checks
LiquidEyes bets [95,000]
Villain is all-In [344,632]
LiquidEyes calls [249,632]

LiquidEyes shows [ 8d 9h ]a straight, Eight to Queen.
Villain shows [ 8s Qc ]a pair of Queens.

** Dealing River ** [ 6c ]

LiquidEyes wins 873,264 chips from the main pot with a straight, Eight to Queen.
Congratulations to player LiquidEyes for winning tournament $10K Gtd Rebuy

Villain finished in 2nd place and received $1,683.24 USD
LiquidEyes finished in 1st place and received $2,788.50 USD

Namedropping

A trivial hand (and an unashamed namedrop) to complete the trilogy...

Wasn’t overly thrilled to find myself seated to the right of well-known British pro Dave Colclough, late in Full Tilt Poker’s $23,500 Gtd Rebuy.

Things were looking bleak when, short-stacked (M=6.5) I jammed A-8 offsuit from the hijack only to be insta-called by the Full Tilt pro.

Whoops.

Weeee!

Turning the (Vege)Tables

2010-09-24T18:45:00.016+01:00

Food glorious food! Presently I’m reeling from an onslaught of homemade vegetable satay. So as I sit here clutching my belly, braced for the inevitable attack of sleepiness, I thought I’d update my blog. At least I won’t lose any money if I doze off.

My girlfriend stayed over at my house this week, so in view of her vegetarianism I stocked up on greens. Now she’s gone home I’m working my way through the leftover scraps in the fridge, which invariably means resorting to my default cooking method: currying everything!

I last made chicken satay a few years ago, and it was easy enough to rustle up a veggie version using some carrot, onion, and a ‘lazy’ stir fry pack of beansprouts and other vegetables. Fry with some ground coriander, cumin and turmeric.

Saucy

The sauce is a piece of piss: peanut butter, coconut cream, sweet chilli sauce, soy sauce, brown sugar and stock; plus I used some flour to thicken it slightly. If you are skeptical about the anatomy of the sauce, trust me... just give it a go.

Personally I hate peanut butter on its own, but the other ingredients really balance it out. The missus professes to dislike peanut butter AND anything coconutty, so there were raised eyebrows when she poked her nose around the kitchen last week – but afterwards she said it was the best meal I’ve cooked for her.

Still on the subject of foodage, we discovered a great dish at my local Indian: saag paneer something-or-other. I’ve had various spinachy dishes before now but this was SUPERB – very fresh and zingy.

Banking On It

Most of the money I deposited on Zopa.com has now been lent out. Repayments have started to trickle in, and presumably, within a month or two – when all borrowers have begun repaying – I’ll see a steady stream of interest which should level out.

When I have some solid figures I’ll report the effective rate of interest I’m receiving.

Onto the serious matter of poker...

A friend remarked that my August Review post was a tad negative. With hindsight I was indeed being rather pessimistic about my downswing at that time, so worry not, I’ll be more positive today.

My latest book purchase is The Poker Mindset: Essential Attitudes for Poker Success. Now, we all know not to be results-orientated in poker! But how many of us can say we are never emotionally affected by variance? Unsurprisingly the book has lots of material on this very subject, including a section entitled ‘Indifference’.

The perfect player, argue the authors, would remain indifferent to short-term losses, focussing on the positive and spending his time and brainpower on improving his game instead of dwelling on the negatives.

Positive Vibes

There’s plenty to be positive about right now, so I shall be shamelessly results-orientated in a positive way.

I’ve ticked off another of my resolutions for 2010: last week I shipped Party’s lunchtime $22 Speed Rebuy, good for $1,740.

I’ve also sort-of achieved one of my other goals, which was to nail a $108 turbo on bwin, although it was against a smaller field than usual.

Nevertheless I took down a not-to-be-sniffed-at $1,606 for my first-place finish.

I have continued my good form in mid-stakes rebuy tourneys, winning Party’s 33r once again ($2,788), a particularly satisfying victory as I defeated a competent, aggressive high-stakes player heads-up. In the final hand I induced him to shove all-in drawing virtually dead against my turned straight, weeee!

Nine-To-One

Three nights before that, I was on the brink of my second-biggest ever online score, heads-up in Absolute Poker’s 50r with a chip-lead of 9-to-1!

The $4,350 first prize seemed all but secured, until I managed to get it all-in three times and lose every showdown.

After that the villain had a 2:1 chip lead, but I had a playable stack and felt I had at least a small edge. Alas, the heads-up grind culminated in yet another fateful all-in showdown, K-K v A-8s. Yet again it went his way – he rivered trip Eights. Booooo.

The probability of him surviving the three showdowns, then cracking my Kings, is a paltry 6%.

I took the runner-up prize of $2,625. Nice money – hard not to be disappointed though.

Last But Not Least

A rush of final tables on Party saw my position on OfficialPokerRankings soar to 13th.

THEKID_88 has also been top-25 for a few days (see pic).

Tournament highlights of September so far:

$2,788 – 1/132 in Party’s $10K Gtd Rebuy ($33 buy-in)

$2,625 – 2/73 in Absolute’s $15K GTD (R+2A) ($55 buy-in)

$1,800 – 66/1564 in Party’s Monthly Million ($640 buy-in)

$1,740 – 1/80 in $6K Gtd Speed Rebuy ($22 buy-in)

$1,606 – 1/48 in bwin’s $3,000 Turbo ($108 buy-in)

$1,000 – 4/92 in Absolute’s $10K GTD (R+2A) ($33 buy-in)
$996 – 2/162 in Party’s $6K Gtd Speed Rebuy ($11 buy-in)
$859 – 8/210 in iPoker’s $25K GP Rebuy ($55 buy-in)
$818 – 3/149 in Party’s $10K Gtd Rebuy ($33 buy-in)
$800 – 2/86 in Party’s $8K Gtd ($99 buy-in)

I’ve also taken down four Monthly Million qualifiers for a total of 2,560 T$. Check out my PartyPoker stats for the last 120 days (taken from OPR – not including satellites):

Big Bubbles

2010-09-04T17:46:00.002+01:00

The last couple of weeks have brought a series of anti-climaxes. Over on iPoker, I bubbled the final table of a $50 rebuy and a $100 rebuy on consecutive days, both times getting my chips in ahead, with stacks of 12bb and 16bb respectively.

Disappointment aside, the hands gave me something to think about.

The two bust-outs were very similar. On each occasion the bigger-stacked SB open-shoved on me, and I held A-8o and A-Qo respectively.

Subtle Mistake

In retrospect the A-8 call was a mathematical error, albeit a small one. Having spent a few hours tinkering with PokerStove, Microsoft Excel and an online ICM calculator I have concluded that I needed to be a bigger-than-60% favourite over the SB’s jamming range to break even on the call.

(In the $100 rebuy, my calculations suggest I only had to be a 58—59% favourite, making my A-Q call a no-brainer, except against the very tightest of shoving ranges!)

My calling range in each case is highly dependent on the SB’s shoving range, but here’s the shocking thing: A-8 offsuit is NEVER a call!

Any Two

Let’s suppose the SB in the $50 rebuy was shoving any two cards. (This is certainly plausible – he was the chip leader, we were right on the final table bubble, I had about the third-smallest stack, and there were big antes in play, giving an effective Harrington ‘M’ of 5.5.)

By my calculations, my calling range should be 55+,A7s+,KTs+,QJs,A9o+,KJo+. And by definition, the bottom-of-the-range calls are just that – I expect to roughly break even with 5-5, A-9o, K-Jo etc, even though those hands are considerably ahead of his jamming range.

All because of the pay structure, I must fold 86% of hands, even though he is jamming any two. Of course it follows that because I’m folding so often – being ‘ICM aware’ – he is probably correct in jamming 100% or nearly 100%!

If he’s folding a few junk hands – say he is ‘only’ jamming 85.5% of hands (!) – I must play tighter still. Bear in mind that a plausible 85.5% range includes any two suited cards, any picture card, T3+, 95+, 85+, 74+ 64+ and 54 offsuit. This would seem a perfectly believable jamming range for an aggressive player on the final table bubble.

Now my calling range tightens from 14.2% of hands to 11.3% of hands. I call with 66+,A8s+,KTs+,ATo+,KQo.

The Value of Folding

Here’s the perverse thing about ICM – a fact that any sit’n’go pro will appreciate. It’s everybody else in the tournament – the players not in the hand – who profit from the all-in showdown!

Let’s take the A-Q example from the $100 rebuy. There are 12 players left, I have 16bb, and the SB (who is about fourth in chips) jams his 39bb stack. Here’s the pay structure (almost identical, incidentally, to the 50r pay structure, which also paid 20 spots):

1st $8,910
2nd $5,280
3rd $3,000
4th $2,640
5th $2,310
6th $1,980
7th $1,650
8th $1,320
9th $990
10th $660
11th—20th $396

To put the following analysis in perspective, the SB’s stack is probably worth about $3.1—$3.3k at the start of the hand, and my stack in the region of $1.8—$1.9k. Those figures include the $396 prize money that we’ve already secured by getting this far.

The SB has 9-7s: a pretty strong hand, but a 6-to-4 dog against my A-Q. The instant I hit CALL, the SB loses about $300 in prize equity. (60% of the time he will lose about $887’s worth of chips; 40% of the time he will gain about $619’s worth of chips. Thus his mean expectation is -$286.)

So that’s good for me, right? Nope, not especially!

60% of the time I will gain something in the region of $1,000’s worth of chips. But 40% of the time, I will lose about $1,400’s worth of chips. (These figures are my best estimates, but note I had to make some simplifications due to the limitations of the ICM calculator I used.)

Thus my net gain is... $35! That’s right, I’m risking my tournament life to gain $35!

Where does his other $251 go? It’s distributed amongst the other players. By risking my tournament life, there is a 40% possibility that I will bust out. When I do so, everyone else ladders to at least a tenth-place payout, and they have one fewer opponent against whom to contest the higher prize positions. It’s the short stacks who gain most from my call, the shortest gaining as much as $54; while the five biggest stacks [who are not involved in the hand] gain between $16 and $28 apiece.

Close Call

It might sound daft to take such a marginal punt, but actually I can see the argument for calling even if my mean dollar-expectation were slightly negative. This is partly because of meta-game considerations – i.e. indicating to other players at the table that I am not afraid of gambling against them, perhaps deterring them from shoving so frequently in future – but more to do with the strategic advantage of wielding a bigger stack.

In other words, the actual dollar-value of the chips gained may be greater than ICM estimates, because of the extra plays in my arsenal. The additional ammunition allows me to make all-in re-steals, as well as the ability to ‘ICM rape’ shorter stacks, exploiting ICM-aware opponents (or just plain timid opponents) who have no re-steal equity of their own.

So – no regrets, not even about the iffy A-8 call. However I might muck very marginal hands in future, particularly in softer games.

Twice In One Lifetime?!

2010-09-04T16:36:00.001+01:00

Two tables to go in Full Tilt’s $55 buy-in $25,000 Guarantee...

Full Tilt Poker Game #23140259594:

$25,000 Guarantee (177762084), Table 23
800/1600 Ante 200
No Limit Hold'em - 19:42:11 ET - 2010/08/16

Total number of players : 7/9

Seat 2: ( 15,468 )
Seat 3: ( 41,702 )
Seat 4: ( 77,134 )
Seat 5: LiquidEyes ( 142,616 )
Seat 6: ( 24,427 )
Seat 7: ( 51,190 )
Seat 9: Villain ( 82,581 )

Seat 2 antes 200
Seat 3 antes 200
Seat 4 antes 200
LiquidEyes antes 200
Seat 6 antes 200
Seat 7 antes 200
Villain antes 200

Seat 6 posts the small blind of 800
Seat 7 posts the big blind of 1,600

The button is in seat #5

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to LiquidEyes [ Kh Kc ]

Villain has 15 seconds left to act
Villain raises to 3,200

Seat 2 folds
Seat 3 folds
Seat 4 folds

LiquidEyes raises to 8,000

Seat 6 folds
Seat 7 folds

Villain calls 4,800

*** FLOP *** [3h 2d 3s]

Villain checks
LiquidEyes has 15 seconds left to act
LiquidEyes bets 8,500
Villain calls 8,500

*** TURN *** [3h 2d 3s] [Ks]

Villain checks
LiquidEyes has 15 seconds left to act
LiquidEyes checks

*** RIVER *** [3h 2d 3s Ks] [7s]

Villain bets 23,800
LiquidEyes has 15 seconds left to act
LiquidEyes raises to 125,916, and is all in
Villain calls 42,081, and is all in
Uncalled bet of 60,035 returned to LiquidEyes

*** SHOW DOWN ***

LiquidEyes shows [ Kh Kc ] a full house, Kings full of Threes
Villain shows [ 3d 3c ] four of a kind, Threes

Villain wins the pot (168,562) with four of a kind, Threes

*** SUMMARY ***

Total pot 168,562 | Rake 0
Board: [3h 2d 3s Ks 7s]

:(

Déjà vu: the bubble of Party’s $33 buy-in $8K Gtd Rebuy...

***** Hand History for Game 9594889825 *****
NL Texas Hold'em $33 USD Buy-in Trny:54401776 Level:13
Friday, September 03, 18:13:55 BST 2010

$8K Gtd Rebuy, $33 USD Buy-in Table #2

Blinds-Antes(500/1,000 -100)

Seat 7 is the button
Total number of players : 9/10

Seat 2: ( 23,838 )
Seat 3: ( 36,583 )
Seat 4: LiquidEyes ( 40,816 )
Seat 5: ( 69,922 )
Seat 6: ( 40,364 )
Seat 7: ( 81,444 )
Seat 8: ( 42,177 )
Seat 9: Villain ( 78,959 )
Seat 10: ( 39,875 )

Seat 2 antes 100
Seat 3 antes 100
LiquidEyes antes 100
Seat 5 antes 100
Seat 6 antes 100
Seat 7 antes 100
Seat 8 antes 100
Villain antes 100
Seat 10 antes 100

Seat 8 posts the small blind of 500
Seat 9 posts the big blind of 1,000

The button is in seat #7

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to LiquidEyes [ Ad As ]

Seat 10 folds
Seat 2 calls [1,000]
Seat 3 folds
LiquidEyes raises [4,000]
Seat 5 folds
Seat 6 calls [4,000]
Seat 7 folds
Seat 8 folds
Villain calls [3,000]
Seat 2 calls [3,000]

*** FLOP *** [2c 7s 2h]

Villain checks
Seat 2 checks
LiquidEyes bets [8,000]
Seat 6 calls [8,000]
Villain calls [8,000]
Seat 2 folds

*** TURN *** [2c 7s 2h] [Ac]

Villain checks
LiquidEyes checks
Seat 6 checks

*** RIVER *** [2c 7s 2h Ac] [Qh]

Villain bets [9,000]
LiquidEyes is all-In [28,716]
Seat 6 folds
Villain calls [19,716]

*** SHOW DOWN ***

Villain shows [ 2s 2d ] four of a kind, Twos.
LiquidEyes shows [ Ad As ] a full house, Aces full of Twos.

Villain wins 98,832 chips from the main pot with four of a kind, Twos.
Player LiquidEyes finished in 18.

August Review

2010-09-04T12:59:00.002+01:00

The last month has been lame overall, testament to the high-variance nature of the tournament poker beast!

I’m just £1,000 better off than I was at the start of August, pretty poor considering the £3,600 winning streak I experienced mid-month.

Apart from my deep run in the Full Tilt $750k, highlights of August included a succession of four-figure cashes in $30 rebuys:

$1,790 – 2/119 in Absolute Poker’s $10K GTD (R+2A)
$1,100 – 2/50 in Party’s $5K Gtd Rebuy
$1,044 – 3/132 in Party’s $10K Gtd Rebuy

My runner-up finish in Absolute’s 30r was of course anti-climactic, but I’m super-happy with my play over the 43 minute heads-up grind. We began 40bb deep and my foe was competent, though I felt I had a small edge.

After a few blind levels, I had a modest chip lead but the effective stack was down to around 25bb. Finally we got it all-in pre-flop, after the villain button-raised, I 3-bet A-Qs, and he jammed.

We had both been 3-betting fairly frequently to defend our big blinds, but he had only 4-bet shoved once before, so it wasn’t a snap-call. Nevertheless I felt from the game dynamic that he could have a dominated Ace at least as often as he had A-K, and tentatively made the call. He had 9-9 and we were flipping for $1,100.

The flop immediately brought a Queen and it looked like the $3k first prize was mine. However you guessed it, there was a Nine on the turn and I was crippled. A couple of hands later I shoved a ragged King and ran into pocket Sixes. Game over! I think I played close to perfectly so I feel very positive about the score.

Jack-Six

I was a smidgen less happy about my second place on Party, as I feel I bluffed a little too frequently heads-up. Still, two 30r final tables in one night was pretty good going, and I simultaneously final-tabled PKR’s $55 six-max too – taking a grim beat after some moron defended his blind against my MP raise with J-6o!

He min-bet the A-J-9 flop (two spades) first to act, min-bet again on the turn (unimproved), and called a pot-sized raise... only to river a Six for an unlikely two pair. He put me nearly all-in, about a pot-sized bet.

There were hardly any plausible two-pair combinations given the action, so I felt his range was polarised between busted draws and sets – perhaps occasionally A-J. Although I had a ropy kicker, I figured my A-8o to have the same value as A-K in this spot, as he definitely didn’t play his hand like A-T or A-Q.

I tanked, but ultimately made the call, promptly dishing out some obligatory verbal abuse (ahem).

Left with a pitiful 1.5bb, how happy was I to be dealt A-A the next hand! There was a raise and I stuck the last of my chips in. He had Q-T and the flop came J-9-8. LOL. One of those days I guess.

Cooler

While we’re on $55 freeze-outs, I’ve final-tabled Party’s nightly $10K Gtd TWICE recently (6/262 for $688 and 7/218 for $463). This is one of my favourite regular tourneys and the game now has an improved blind structure, increasing its appeal.

Last but not least I scraped onto the final table of Full Tilt’s $25,000 Guarantee, placing 9/580 for $565. I’m a bit sick about only coming ninth when first prize was over $7k, second $4.5k... sadly I was on the wrong end of a truly grim cooler with two tables to go, losing over half of my monstrous stack. I’ll post the hand later.

The last two weeks have been mostly miserable poker-wise. Let’s hope my luck picks up over the next few weeks. I’ll be taking my second stab at PKR’s monthly $100,000 GTD Masters tonight, as well as grinding a few of my favourite regular games. GL me!

Mixed Emotions!

2010-08-27T17:30:00.008+01:00

Would’ve, should’ve, could’ve.

I had outlasted over 3,000 other players.

I was seven spots away from a $7,200 score, which would have been my biggest ever online cash; and had I finished ninth I could have nailed my first ever five-figure score.

Let’s not even talk about the $52k prize for finishing third, $80k for second, or $132,787 for first...

The game was Full Tilt Poker’s $750,000 Guarantee ($216 buy-in) and I finished 19th for $2,775. No mean feat against a field of 3,420 competitors. :)

Salvaging Sunday

Sunday had been an otherwise crummy night and as I busted out of game after game, scarcely a min-cash in sight, it looked like my $1,500 in tourney buy-ins would be a near write-off. It looked set to be my worst gambling session for quite a few weeks.

But two lucky hands in the $750k and I found myself brandishing a colossal ship stack...

Sucky Sucky

First, several hours into the tournament and down to about 14bb, I jammed K-Qo in EP only to be snap-called by the guy on my immediate left (oh shit) and then overcalled by another guy (oh shit shit shit). It was virtually impossible for me NOT to be dominated, unless one of them had mis-clicked. And ‘dominated’ was an understatement...

I was up against K-K and J-J. Sigh. With a sinking feeling, I was poised to type gg in the chat box.

There was a glimmer of hope when the flop delivered a Queen, my equity rising to over 8% (!) And don’t you know, I caught another Queen on the river. THERE IS A GOD!

King of the Table

A little later I picked up Kings on the button, only to be faced with a sizeable EP open-shove, a MP re-shove, and an overcall! I don’t think I was ever going to fold, but I did take a moment to think about their respectively ranges. I was definitely going to run into Aces some not-insignificant portion of the time here, but made the call and found myself up against A-Q, A-K and Q-Q. There weren’t too many cards to dodge and I quadrupled up.

Ultimately, three tables to go, the game got tough – I was surrounded by big winners and high-rollers. There was a lot of 3- and 4-betting, with hardly a flop to be seen. I won a key flip to get up to 40bb, but then took a marginal punt with A-Ko, 3-betting an EP raiser who, to be honest, I didn’t expect to fold too often. Sure enough he jammed his last 19bb and I called. He had Aces, ouch.

I mustn’t be too results-orientated, but perhaps flatting his raise would have been marginally better – it depends how many A-Q and 9-9 type hands he’s 4-bet jamming. My equity against a solid 4-betting range could be as bad as 40%.

Still, table image and game flow matters aside, despite my read that he was strong, I suppose it can never be THAT bad to get it all-in with A-K against a circa-20bb stack so I’m not too mad at myself. Besides, against a field of tough opponents, it could be argued that I should be more than willing to flip. Ho hum.

Aced

Finally I busted after open-shoving a bad Ace from the button, running into the SB’s A-9. He flopped a Nine and that was that. gg

The $2.7k represents one of my bigger scores, and left me a few hundred pounds in the black for the day.

Of course I have mixed feelings, as I came within a stone’s throw of some SERIOUS money. The top four players chopped the prize pool for over $73k each!

Music, Majors & Megabucks

2010-08-26T23:13:00.001+01:00

Day-offsies yesterday. Had a late night listening to music on the interweb. Was there life before Youtube?

One of the finest pieces of music ever written?
This so trumps the original.
A cheery one!
Laugh all you like, but I think it’s a classic.
A crash course in anger management.
Not suitable for epileptics. Best bit starts at 4:15.
Whoever said rappers were dubious role models?
Laugh at Eminem’s expense.

Money Matters

I have played less poker than usual over the last few weeks. Among other things I’ve been sorting out my personal savings. Unglamorous, but it’s been interesting researching how best to invest my poker proceeds.

Being sensible/boring (delete as applicable – put whatever spin you like on it) I am a bankroll nit, by which I mean I do things by the book, only risking a small proportion of my bankroll at any one time.

This means that I don’t actually lay a finger on most of my money; relatively speaking I just gamble with my ‘spare change’.

Sustaining Interest

Naturally I try to minimise the amount of money deposited on any one poker site (I have twelve real-money poker accounts) for reasons of opportunity cost, i.e. the money would be better off in high-interest savings accounts. So I just keep my poker balances just high enough to withstand ‘normal’ swings, and reload if necessary.

I’ve shopped around for a savings account with a competitive interest rate. It’s farewell ING Direct – they’ve had my money for years but their crummy 0.5% AER just doesn’t cut it any more!

Also I’ve stuffed some of my savings in 2-, 3- and 5-year bonds. I can’t touch the money for the investment period, but the interest rates are better than any instant-access savings account, and the investment is FSA-protected.

Game Selection

The downside is that I don’t have access to my money if I have a bad downswing in the immediate term, so I’ve temporarily written off the money in my bankroll spreadsheet – i.e. I won’t regard it to be part of my gambling bankroll until I’ve got the money back.

Fortunately I was over-bankrolled to play most of my favourite poker tournaments anyway, so this will barely affect my game selection.

Loan Shark

The biggest gamble I’ve taken is throwing a few grand at Zopa.com, on the recommendation of a friend. They call themselves a ‘social lending’ organisation and the premise is to cut out the middleman in loans.

I started writing a few paragraphs to explain what Zopa is, because I took a little while to get my head around it myself. But two paragraphs quickly turned into eight paragraphs, it was getting rather off-topic, and I’m conscious that it reads like an advertisement.

The short version is: “I’ve started lending some of my money out to individuals for their home improvements, new cars, and consolidation of existing loans”! Yes, I am evil.

It’s as simple as creating an account on the Zopa website, depositing some of your hard-earned, and waiting for people to borrow your money. There’s more uncertainty than putting the same money in a savings account, but the potential returns are greater.

I’ve written a bit more about the company here for anyone who’s interested. I should think there will be a few likeminded poker players out there who have some spare money kicking around and would like to make some decent interest from it.

Major Excitement

On the poker front, things have picked up since the downswing I reported. Over the last week I’ve made about £3,300 profit, turning around an otherwise shoddy month.

At the weekend I had my deepest run in a Sunday ‘major’, placing 19th in Full Tilt’s $750K Guarantee. I outlasted over 3400 competitors for a $2,775 payout, finally busting at 6:30am on Monday – phew!

Sadly my Ace-King ran into Aces in the late stages, so I went home with a few thousand rather than megabucks...

More on this in my next post.

Cash Crash: How To Lose £200 In Two Minutes

2010-08-21T17:35:00.005+01:00

I promised to write about my disastrous $1/$2 hand on PKR.

It’s a loose six-max table and I begin the hand with $328 in the big blind. The two rather passive UTG players limp; the small blind pumps it up to $8.

My read on the SB is that he frequently makes these raises as a steal over the loose limpers at the table, while he is not very aware of position, so I figure his range to be wide. It seems like a good spot to 3-bet as a re-steal with any passable hand, and my J-7 soooted seems just about good enough for the job.

Cold Callers

I make it $26, hoping to induce folds all round, or at least isolate the SB, on whom I have position.

The car crash begins to unfold as all three players cold-call – despite the UTG players having had only $2 invested, and the $24 raise representing 8% of the effective stacks! Of course it is less surprising that, last to act and with $8 already invested, the SB comes along for the ride.

Out of position with a ropy hand, I am ready to give up on most flops, so it seems Christmas has arrived early when the flop comes J-8-7 (two diamonds) giving me two pair.

But owing to the deep initial stacks (approx 150bb), with three full PSBs behind, the concern is that some of the times I induce heavy action my hand will be in diabolical shape.

Worst Case Scenarios

My gravest concern is that somebody has set-mined with Eights, and it definitely seems plausible that one of the UTG players made a loose call with 8-8 or the less likely 7-7. The SB could have J-J, but again that would be rather unlikely considering the Jack in my hand.

Despite my fairly strong, and rather unlikely holding, I have a non-trivial decision, out of position to two players with rather wide ranges. After all, my own hand is only a couple of pegs better than A-A, and given the pre-flop action, players ought to be looking to make a hand that can crack Aces.

Thinking opponents might be unwilling to stack off with a hand that does not have good equity against an overpair; however to speak of ‘thinking opponents’ is arguably giving these guys too much credit...

Decision Point

The SB checks. I can’t see the EP players immediately folding top pair with a decent kicker; I would expect any flush or combo draws to be willing to get it in; and it seems highly unlikely for anybody to have top-two pair. So despite the grim possibility that I am drawing super-thin against a set, it seems my hand is unfoldable unless there is a succession of shoves.

Perhaps there’s an argument for checking to encourage action from marginal holdings like A-J, but I opt to lead out for $70 to protect my hand, whilst hopefully giving opponents with worse made hands or marginal draws the impression of fold equity.

The deep-stacked UTG player hesitantly flats, and UTG+1 jams for his remaining $284. The SB folds.

Despite the chunky shove, it’s UTG – who has me covered – that I am more concerned about. The guy is a serial slowplayer so it is definitely possible he has flatted with a big made hand, despite the dangerous board. Still, there are a ton of drawing hands he could have too.

I timebank, but eventually ship it in and close my eyes. UTG quickly calls – oohhhhh dear!

Scoop

The situation is baaad. UTG has T-9s for the flopped nut straight. However he has no redraws, and it is UTG+1 who scoops the gargantuan main pot with 5-4s when the turn card brings a third diamond, giving him a flush!

As a side note, it is mildly amusing that pre-flop with J-7s, technically I held a better starting hand than both UTG players.

When the money went in, I did still have an 18% chance of making a full house, which would have netted me a $994 pot.

Analysis

When the flop came, admittedly I was much more concerned about a set than a straight; T-9s is a somewhat looser pre-flop call than 8-8. I naively thought they would fold T-9 for a $26 raise, ha!

Nevertheless, despite the numerous permutations of suited connectors in my foe’s ranges throwing an extra disaster scenario into the mix, it follows that they will also flop numerous draws against which I am in fine shape, and with which they may overestimate their own equity. Also I love the fact that 8-7 is in their ranges, for a severely dominated two-pair.

Number Crunching

As ever, PokerStove has the answers. With the benefit of hindsight – i.e. factoring in the sheer number of dubious hands with which they are calling pre-flop – I’ve played around with various hand ranges and come up with some figures.

Let’s say I get it in three-way, as did indeed happen. Even against relatively pessimistic hand ranges (in other words: giving both villains credit for being able to fold most top-pair hands and more marginal draws) my two-pair has upwards of 24% equity.

Let’s say I induce UTG to fold, and get it all-in against UTG+1. Now my equity is probably upwards of 43%, making it correct to get it in. In particular it’s fantastic if, after UTG calls my $70 c-bet, he then folds to the two all-ins, thus contributing yet more dead money to the pot.

If all three opponents showed interest, I would seriously consider folding. For example, faced with a bet, a call and a shove, the SB would surely fold some of the weaker hands in the other players’ jamming ranges, while calling with a range that includes more monsters such as J-J and T-9o.

(The SB is the only player who can credibly have Jacks, while he would almost certainly overcall pre-flop with any connected cards given the pot odds. So assuming my read is correct that he’s frequently stealing from the limpers pre-flop, he is the most likely player to flop a straight or set.)

Bottom Line

Overall it’s not a great situation when I get it all-in versus one or two players, but it’s not terrible. There’s also the modest possibility that my c-bet takes down the $104 pot uncontested, or that somebody calls one bet but later folds. These scenarios add a few dollars to my bottom line.

Finally, the possibility of my foes making bigger errors post-flop equates to more profit for me. For example if I get it all-in heads-up versus UTG+1, it’s great news for me if he’s ill-advisedly jamming a few donkey top-pair hands. Adding just a couple more hands into the mix (say A-J and K-Js) bumps up my equity by 4—5%. Now it is almost a flip, with a heap of dead money.

Still, it wouldn’t have been so bad to bet-fold [folding after 2+ players showed interest] or check-fold [to serious multi-way action]. The reverse implied odds of getting it in against sets or straights make the situation marginal at best.

Lesson Learned

I’ve learned a few things from reflecting on this debacle.

For one thing, the hand provides a concrete example of how top-two-pair is better than top-and-bottom-pair. If I held J-8 rather than J-7, my showdown equity estimates rise a couple of percent. In a three-way all-in on the flop, my equity rises from 24% to 26% (based on the same, somewhat pessimistic hand range estimates). In a heads-up all-in on the flop, my equity rises from 43% to 45%.

On top of that, J8s+ flops a little better in general, forming more straight draws and slightly better two-pair hands on average, on the occasions my re-steal does attract one or more callers.

I think my pre-flop logic was ok, except for underestimating the probability of attracting multiple cold-callers! However the post-flop situation points up the problem with slightly junky hands like J-7: it’s hard to flop a hand you are in love with. I would be happy to play J-7s heads-up in position, but the possibility of multiple callers means I should be more inclined to re-steal with slightly better-connected hands like J-9s. Basically J-7s is closer to a pure bluff, whereas J-9s is slightly more of a semibluff.

In a nutshell, even when you are stealing, it pays to have some standards.

Another lesson learned regards the nature of multi-way pots. As the above figures indicate, my expected heads-up equity is rather favourable: although there are a couple of nightmare hands in the villain’s range, this is compensated by all the draws and inferior made hands.

However three-way, there is a significantly increased chance that at least one villain has one of those nightmare hands, and this is reflected in my lower expectation.

At least nobody had the dreaded set; my expectation drops to sub-10% against 77—88. Ouch!

July Review / A Month In Superlatives

2010-08-17T16:28:00.007+01:00

Sorry I haven’t updated my blog for a few weeks. The good news is I’m still alive. The bad news is I have less money than I did before. It’s been a classic ‘why didn’t I quit while I was ahead!’ month...

I have cherry-picked some high- and lowlights from the past four weeks.

Costliest Cooler

I played some $1/$2 NL on PKR the other weekend. In the course of burning through a quantity of cash I don’t care to remember (I worked out afterwards I’d lost £100 an hour!) I played the biggest pot of my cash-game career to date: $994.

I did not win it.

In brief, I got $328 in with the mighty J-7s – after a $26 re-steal rapidly snowballed into a three-way all-in car crash on the flop. I’ll document the hand in my next post, for the benefit of rubbernecking sorts.

Deepest Run...

...in the PokerStars Sunday Million. This has become a weekly fixture for me, and although I have yet to cash, I came close on Sunday, placing inside the top 1,600 (!) out of 8,294 punters.

My stack peaked at 100k (ten times the starting stack) but I lost two-thirds of my hard-won chips when I took the marginal decision to re-raise 6-6 over a button-shove. I was certainly ahead of Brazilian Team PokerStars vgreen22’s jamming range (he had a Harrington ‘M’ of 6.5), but since the big blind had 2.5 times as many chips as vgreen, it would seem rather spewy to flat-call then fold to a re-shove.

So I figured I had to jam or fold. There was only a tiny chance of an overcall (perhaps less than 4—5%) but with hindsight, that very possibility probably means I should fold any pair below Sevens or Eights, since I will be a 2-to-1 dog against the BB’s overcalling range, and when he folds the punt is only marginally profitable even against a fairly wide button-jamming range.

Having put a few scenarios in PokerStove, it would seem that my isolating range in the SB is highly sensitive to the relative stack sizes.

You can guess what happened! The BB woke up with T-T and scooped the whole pot. Goodbye [most of my] stack.

I’m not too annoyed with myself – I was very unlucky to run into an overpair – and I’ve learnt a lesson from the experience.

It would be interesting to figure out the relative stack sizes where it would be optimal to call-fold in the SB, as opposed to isolating, with marginal hands like 6-6... though I would expect this to be highly subjective, due to players’ unpredictable re-shoving ranges in the BB. I suppose it’s never that bad to simply fold.

Most Toilet Visits

I celebrated my thirty-somethingth birthday recently. And what better way to celebrate than by indulging in copious quantities of my favourite food... CURRY!

My girlfriend and I embarked upon a weekend-long ‘curry crawl’, sampling some of the finest Indian cuisine in the North of England. Well, we cobbled together a shortlist of restaurants – a mixture of personal favourites and friends’ recommendations – and selected four curry houses in reasonable proximity, across Manchester, Bradford, Preston and Burnley.

Much curry was consumed, and yea it was good, the highlight of our tour arguably the Kashmir restaurant in Bradford where the inexpensive menu and frill-free venue (this is West Yorkshire we’re talking about, glamorous it is not) might lead one to expect much less of the cuisine.

By Sunday though – my toilet trips running into double figures – it did seem that I like curry more than curry likes me.

Greatest Overkill

My girlfriend may have greater chilli tolerance than I do, but I can thrash her in the smugness stakes. Despite my refrain that I’m ‘actually not that competitive’, admittedly my capacity to gloat when I thoroughly own her at poker knows no bounds.

Try to imagine the sheer scale of my smirk when, my nemesis down to her last two red chips – 1bb, and therefore all-in by default in the big blind – I peered down at my cards to find... pocket rockets. ROFL. After I’d composed myself enough to say ‘call’, I tossed in another red chip and showed my cards.

She was not amused.

I was an 8-to-1 favourite over her trashy Q-3 offsuit, and it got funnier.

Delighting over my dealer duties, I burned a card and dealt the flop, which came T-2-A rainbow.

After a bout of obligatory cackling, I noticed that she had backdoor straight outs. I mocked, ‘hey you can still win if the board comes precisely King-Jack!’

‘Or Four-Five,’ she added. Damn, I didn’t notice that.

In fact she had a whopping 3.2% chance of outdrawing me. Alas, she was drawing dead when – as if for sheer comedic value – the turn brought the case Ace. I scooped the 2bb pot with quads. Using a sledgehammer to crack a nut?

Highest Ranking

Supplementing the ego boost of defeating my noob girlfriend heads-up, I enjoyed a brief spell in the top-25 out of all PartyPoker players [IN THE WORLD, I might add for dramatic effect] on independent tournament rankings website OfficialPokerRankings.com.

Well, I spent a single day at number 25. :)

Consequently I featured on the OPR homepage (pictured). Pretty cool huh?

It’s my peak position to date, my ranking arising on account of a multitude of four-figure cashes over the 120-day period April through early August, a last-minute $1,850 score in the nightly $33 Rebuy edging me into the top-25.

My track record over that period is not to be sniffed at, including my three biggest-ever cashes on Party.

PLO Pwnage

2010-07-22T13:58:00.025+01:00

Sunday was mostly miserable on the gambling front – I bluffed off my stacks in two of the majors, and elsewhere lost about nine thousand coin flips, leaving me £920 out of pocket for the day – so I had a couple of days away from the tables.

I made a few bad decisions over the weekend, I reckon due to going into ‘autopilot’ and not thinking through hands properly, and also partially owing to impatience.

Yesterday for a change I played some Pot Limit Omaha. I’ve played low-stakes cash games some while back, but had little to show for my few forays into PLO tournaments.

My last taste of Omaha tourney success was winning a $11 PLO Hi/Lo game on PKR for a princely $155 at the end of 2009!

Last night I improved on that: I played five low-stakes PLO MTTs and made £226 profit (about $350). For the second time in one week, I ended up playing two heads-up matches simultaneously – only this time, grappling a game I’m much less familiar with...

In spite of my inexperience I scored a first and a second place:

$264 – 1/33 in PKR’s PLO Double Chance ($22 buy-in)

$219 – 2/29 in Party’s PLO Rebuy ($11 + rebuy + addon)

I’ll Race Ya

The Party tourney was perhaps the tougher of the two but I don’t think I made any gross errors heads-up. I had fallen behind in chips by the final hand when I lost a ‘flip’ after jamming all-in on the turn.

Down to 17bb, I had limped the button with A-7-Q-5 double-suited. I had raised many buttons and for whatever reason decided to limp in this time, however I think raising would have been better, even though the villain called 100% of my min-raises.

When the villain donkbet the Q-8-8 flop (two hearts and a spade; I had neither) my two pair was no better than a bluff-catcher, but I did think my foe had a draw, or air, more often than trip Eights. Low on chips, I decided to take a stand with my hand and go with it on any blank turn.

The turn was one of the better cards I could hope for, besides a Queen: the Six of spades. For what it’s worth I now had a weak straight draw, slightly increasing my showdown equity if he had been ‘freerolling’ with A-Q-x-x but additional outs to scoop the pot.

He potted it again; I shoved the remainder of my stack.

I was pleased (though arguably lucky) when he flipped over J-T-9-x with a heart draw.

My hand was only a very small favourite, as he had nine outs to the Queen-high straight and eight to the Queen-high flush.

I shall have to gain more Omaha experience before I can gauge how risky a line I took in the hand, considering the paired board. Tinkering with an Omaha odds calculator has made me realise I was a full 2-to-1 dog with two cards to come, despite having a made hand on the flop and my opponent having no overcard outs!

And of course he will sometimes have the Eight, so I could be crushed by his range as a whole. However we were heads-up, I was short-stacked, and I guess one can’t fear the worst the whole time.

Perhaps the optimal (but trickier) play would be to call his bluff instead of shoving the turn, hoping to induce a river bluff should he miss his draws, but I would have a tricky decision should he shove a 9, T, J or K river – the better than 2-to-1 pot odds might compel me to stack off most times – and I would be missing out on value were he to check-fold worse hands.

I can definitely see how skills are transferrable between poker variants, my heads-up hold’em experience compensating in part for my Omaha naivety, and I pulled off some successful bluffs in position.

What’s interesting about PLO is that nearly all my big chip losses were my own fault. I can trace my downfall in the other three PLO games to textbook errors – like underestimating the probability the villain has the nuts, or getting into trouble out-of-position with marginal hands – and in turn my player notes on the opposition were littered with ‘noob’ stuff:

Could not fold overpair / bottom two pair.
Went broke with weak flush.
Overvalued unimproved AAxx in multi-way pot.

Omaha is fun, and playing a less familiar game does suppress that insidious autopilot tendency. Scoring an outright win on PKR was satisfying, continuing my recent run of success in their tourneys.

I’ve got lots to learn in Omaha, but at these stakes, ostensibly much of the opposition have even more to learn!

Quick Exit Strategy

2010-07-22T11:40:00.007+01:00

Like the previous weekend I bought straight into a couple of the majors. I did get owned by a tricky player in the PokerStars Sunday Warm-Up for a third of my stack – I took the bait when he peculiarly checked the river after leading the turn, inducing me to value bet my pocket Aces only to toss them in the muck when he check-raised all-in. I guess he had a set and was trying to make me bluff a missed flush draw.

The villain is a winning high-stakes player according to OfficialPokerRankings, while my own PokerStars stats are none too impressive, so it’s hard to believe he was attempting to bluff/rebluff me – just some random donk, from his perspective – unless he felt he had an exceptionally strong read I had total air, or that I am capable of nitty laydowns.

Otherwise though I felt I held my own in the big games on Stars, and I feel they are +EV if I pick my spots.

Shove My Nuts

My obligatory bad beat story for the day is that, 57bb deep in the PokerStars Sunday Million, I got it all-in on the J-9-8 rainbow flop with the nuts (I had overlimped Q-To on the button) against bottom two pair, only for him to fill up on the turn. AGH!

My foe looked strongish having donk-led into three players, and a second guy who I knew to be a calling station unsurprisingly called his bet, so I made a massive overbet to sell the story I had a draw. I was hoping to elicit a call from two-pair, 8-8 or similar (the station might even get it in with a hand like Q-Js?) so I suppose I got what I wished for!

It was less than an hour into the tourney so at least I didn’t waste too much time.

Fast Track

While we’re on the subject of fast ways to lose money, I took a punt at Party’s $70 100 Chip Last Chance Turbo qualifier for the Monthly Million. Naturally there’s a lot of bingo at the start of the game, but I theorised that all my speed game practice might give me a small edge, and people make some terrible errors late in both sats and turbos.

Unfortunately I drew the short straw: I was the big blind on hand one. LOL. 40% of my 2.5bb stack invested, I overcalled two MP shoves and promptly busted with my suited Ace. Ho hum!

Now, whether it’s possible to beat the house edge (PartyPoker take a full 8.6% fee) depends very much on magnitude of the errors made by the opposition. The jury’s out, but I might have another crack next month. It’s a laugh... albeit a very short-lived one.

Heads-Up Handiwork

2010-07-14T01:51:00.022+01:00

It’s been a while since I played a decent heads-up match. I got my value for money on Monday night...

Over half an hour of nitty bubble play at the final table of 888 Poker’s $109 buy-in High Rollers six-max tourney – only five spots paid – I edged gradually into the lead with 23bb, jamming mercilessly into short stacks, open-raising as much as I could get away with, and 3-betting shorter stacks’ opens.

The elimination everybody had been waiting for came when it was folded to the 11bb short stack on the button and he jammed all-in. The SB folded and I found A-Jo in the big blind. This would be a trivial call against most players in most tournaments, but I did feel his range was rather strong. He had made some rather rash plays earlier in the tourney, but understandably seemed to have tightened up on the bubble.

Nonetheless I felt I should capitalise on my chip position by calling for value: it figured to be a modestly profitable call against all but the very tightest of shoving ranges, and being the shortest stack he should be the most inclined to take a risk to gain chips.

It may or may not have been a correct call, but in any event I stuck my chips in and was rather displeased when he flipped over Tens. This made my call (very slightly) incorrect if I knew his hand, but matters could be much worse and we were off to the races. The Q-6-2 flop was no help but an Ace on the turn, and a no miracle Ten on the river, saw the bubble burst.

From here I extended my chip lead further and further, my prospects of taking down the first prize of $1,560 looking increasingly good, until we were three-handed and then finally heads-up.

From Behind

Meanwhile, deep in PKR’s $3,000 GTD six-max, a sudden rush of cards saw me catapulted into contention from being the short stack. Soon we were three-handed and I finally took the chip lead after raising from the button with Q-Js.

The BB defended and donkbet the K-J-T rainbow flop, betting 3bb into the 5.5bb pot. I had second pair, a straight draw and a backdoor (second-nut) flush draw, and it was hard to put the BB on a strong hand after his donk-lead. My hand figured to be in decent shape against almost any plausible hand he would bet-call with here, so (with 23bb behind) I raised to 14bb, hoping he would fold to my show of strength. He shoved and I was obviously committed to call.

It’s subjective whether it would have looked stronger or weaker to this particular opponent had I simply jammed over his donk-lead, rather than making a raise that – to a moderately thinking player – was clearly committing.

The villain flipped over K-5o, a horrid pre-flop call and a rather optimistic play post-flop. Even if he discounted the possibility I would raise the nut straight on a rainbow board, he can’t be better than 38%—40% against my jamming range on this flop, and that’s if I include a few marginal hands like A-9o, A-8s, and the naked Queen.

Perhaps I’m over-analysing the hand, because it would appear the level of thinking that went into the play was: ‘I have top pair. Bet! Bet! Bet! All-in!’

Anyway he was a very slight favourite, 50% / 47.5% with a few split pot possibilities.

It did not prove to be much of a sweat: the turn brought a Jack, one of the best possible cards for my hand, and now my foe was drawing only to the two remaining Kings in the deck. He failed to river his full house, and I scored a full double-up with my trip Jacks. The villain meanwhile was crippled, and we were surely on the verge of heads-up play.

Two Faced

Back in the 888 six-max, I was now heads-up, better than 3-to-1 chip leader. However my foe scored an early double-up after winning a flip with 6-6 versus my mighty J-8o, almost equalising.

Things got kinda complicated when the the shorty finally perished on PKR. Now I was heads-up in two games simultaneously – a first for me.

To top it off I was also negotiating a final table on Party: I was chip leader of the $9 Rebuy, though frustratingly there was a strong player on my immediate left.

Twenty minutes of mind-bending, dual heads-up action later (I don’t know how Durrrr does it) I came within one river card of sealing the deal in the 888 tourney...

For The Win

Although I was not far ahead in chips, I felt I had my foe on the back foot. It seemed my opponent was becoming a little impatient (making some rash overbets pre-flop) and I felt I could induce him to make a big error at some point. That point came when I was lucky enough to pick up three big hands in a row.

First he button-raised and I shoved A-To. He folded.

Next hand I button-raised A-Js. He folded.

Next hand he button-raised again. I picked up A-Js once more and – with my aggro table image in mind – yet again pushed all-in, the effective stack 20bb. I felt he could easily call with a worse or hopefully dominated hand – and he did. He quickly called with K-Js and I was way ahead. The board came J-9-2-5 rainbow, and victory seemed all but certain.

‘No king! No king!’ I pleaded to the poker gods, if they were listening.

My pleas fell on deaf ears. King on the river. NOOOOOOOOO!

The villain smugly wrote ‘gg gg gg’ in the chat box, as though the match was over!! Tsk.

He had a near 5-to-1 chip lead but one lucky double-up could see me back in contention. Alas, three hands later I jammed a ragged King only to be snapped off by his A-To. He was almost a 2-to-1 favourite and once again the poker gods found favour with my foe.

100% happy with my play though. As a friend wisely remarked, ‘knowing you played well is its own reward innit’. :)

I took $936 for my second-place finish, not to be sniffed at.

Leakage

Meanwhile I had more success on PKR. My foe had a massive leak: he defended his big blind almost 100% of the time, calling my button-raises out of position, and then paying me off with the numerous second- and third-pair type hands he would inevitably hit.

Interestingly though, the big pots came my way in three key hands where I was out of position...

Overtaking Manoeuvre

I pulled one big bluff to take the chip lead. I called the villain’s button-raise with K-8o and check-called his c-bet on the A-K-3 flop with two clubs. (The Ace was the Ace of hearts.)

The turn brought the Jack of clubs, a moderately scary card that gave me a weak flush draw (as I had the 8c). I checked again and the villain made a weak bet, which based on previous hands I thought was quite literal: he probably had something, but wasn’t confident enough in his hand to make a bigger bet, yet didn’t want to show weakness by checking. I still considered that I could be behind, losing to a hand like A-6 or K-9.

Check-calling would be conventional here, but I decided to check-raise, primarily turning my hand into a bluff (he had folded to a turn check-raise once before). This would also serve to protect my hand if he were making a half-arsed semibluff with something like J-T or a better flush draw than mine. He could have me crushed with the Ace of clubs, though I might expect him to bet his hand harder.

If he did have a King and was unwilling to muck it, I could potentially be ‘freerolling’ with the same hand as his but also the possibility of outdrawing him, though the reverse could be true if he held a higher club. My raise could make him lay down a couple of hands better than mine (such as K-9, K-T with no club, or the same hand K-8). He might also lay down some K-x hands that would split the pot on many river cards.

He called my check-raise; time to re-evaluate.

He could definitely have a flush draw here, or any pair, including some that beat me like A-x and K-9.

River Rat

The river brought an offsuit Jack, the board now A-K-3-J-T with three clubs. He might have a straight, but Q-x seemed only a small part of his range. There are many plausible two-pair possibilities on this board, so I’m losing to quite a lot of hands, and chopping the pot with most Kings.

I decided to continue with my bluff, hoping to make the villain lay down A-x, K-x, or even two pair. I shoved – slightly overbetting the pot – representing the straight or flush.

He could certainly have a straight here, but I think there are more hands in his range that can’t call a shove than can.

(It’s vaguely possible he could fold a straight here, fearing he is splitting at best and often losing to the flush – but I wouldn’t bank on it!)

I’m not sure if I took the most profitable line, and making a bluff like this is MUCH riskier out of position, but by the river the pot was huge and I wanted to ensure I scooped it, instead of splitting or frequently conceding to a marginal hand like A-x that could not stand much heat.

I couldn’t think of many hands from which I could extract thin value; I had no special evidence that my opponent would be the sort to bluff a missed draw if checked to here; I felt my hand’s showdown value was touch-and-go after he called my turn check-raise; and I could be put in a tough spot if I checked and he bet.

The villain thought for a while... then folded to my overbet. Phew!

Value-Shoving

I took the same line in two subsequent hands, but these times I had the goods...

I had fallen behind in chips when the villain limped on the button and I checked Q-4o in the BB. Flopping top pair on the draw-heavy Q-T-9 flop with two diamonds, I check-raised and he called.

The turn brought a second spade and I was more concerned with protecting my hand against the numerous draws than the possibility of being behind. I shoved and he time-banked...

Eventually he called with T-3s, second pair with a turned flush draw. The river blanked and I doubled up.

By the final hand, my foe was down to 11bb, versus my 47bb. Perhaps because of my playing style, most of my heads-up matches end with a pre-flop all-in – I suppose I tend to make conservative value-bets and bluffs most of the time and save my post-flop shoves for the big bluffs, big draws or near-nut hands...?

Not so this time. My foe limped on the button once more and I checked my 9-3 suited. I check-raised the 9-7-2 flop (two clubs), trying to keep my bet small and ambiguous so that he could think I was making a ‘move’, hopefully inducing him to re-shove a worse hand. He called and the turn blanked, an offsuit Four. I jammed and he called for his last 7.5bb with 8-7s for second pair. He shoulda shoved pre-flop, but that’s another matter!

Again the river blanked and it was all over. King of the six-max, I took the first prize of $1k. Woot!

Runner-Up

I couldn’t quite seal the deal in the $9 Rebuy on Party. Things looked up when, three-handed, the stronger of my two adversaries was eliminated. As heads-up play commenced my opponent had a better than 5-to-2 chip advantage, but I took an early lead, scoring a lucky double-up when I open-raised A-Jo from the button. My foe jammed A-9o, I snap-called and my hand held up.

My card rush continuing – I flopped two pair on two consecutive hands and got paid off – I had a better than 4-to-1 chip lead. So how did I manage to lose from this position?!

Crying Call

We got it all-in with A-8o v A-Qo, my foe’s better Ace holding up. We were almost even in chips again. Ho hum!

After a card-dead spell, I made a regrettable river call after being outdrawn. With 30bb to my 33bb, my foe limped on the button and I checked T-9s in the BB (raising would have been a viable alternative here).

The 9-5-4 flop with two hearts gave me a monster hand, top pair plus a flush draw. He led into me and I raised to 2.5 times his bet. Knowing with hindsight that he rarely folded after betting out, a bigger raise would have been prudent, though given my hand strength and position, almost any raise is ok here.

I could easily have any pair, a naked flush draw, a straight draw or air here, so (particularly being out of position) he could conceivably re-raise with various hands worse than mine. However he flat-called.

The turn brought an offsuit Queen. This seemed a blank, but we both checked, a mistake on my part. I should have fired again here, as I knew from previous hands he would call me down with second pair to the flop or possibly worse.

The river was an offsuit King and he led into me. It was a fairly modest bet and I was offered 3.35-to-1 odds on the call: it stank of a value bet. For him to lead into me here, it seemed that the Queen or the King had hit him: either he had chased a higher flush draw than my own and hit his overcard, or he called on the flop with a hand like K-5, spiking a very lucky two pair. I even named his hand out loud ‘K-5 or Q-5?’ – but made the crying call in view of the seductive pot odds. Sure enough he had Q-5o. GRRR @ myself!

I don’t believe he would value-bet a worse hand than my pair of Nines after I raised the flop – if he had showdown value, as I suspected he did, it would make more sense to check-call to induce a bluff from a missed draw or air – so I was only beating a busted draw.

At a stretch he could be making a blocker bet with a Nine and a lower kicker, but I doubted it. In my gut, I didn’t believe he had a busted draw; despite the tempting pot odds I believe that it was a fairly clear fold against this particular player. I suppose that theoretically I should make this call once in a while to remain unexploitable, and it’s hardly a grotesquely bad call.

The turn check was perhaps the bigger mistake. Although it happens the turn card hit my foe, it was a virtual blank and I should have bet for value.

Final Flip

Card dead again for some period, I fell further behind in chips, and made one failed bluff that was arguably a strategic error because of my dwindling stack size – and my foe’s tendency to call!

Eventually, down to 11bb and at a 3-to-1 chip disadvantage, I was in jam-or-fold territory and pushed all-in from the button with a fairly strong hand, Q-8 suited.

He snap-called with A-2o. This hand could equalise us and there was a glimmer of hope on the A-8-4 flop, but I lost the race, drawing dead after the turn brought a second Ace.

$1,820 for him; $1,081 for me.

Live And Learn

So, just one victory out of three heads-up matches. However the game on 888 Poker felt like a moral victory as I was so unlucky to lose two crucial races and the A-J v K-J hand!

It’s only the Party Rebuy that bothers me, as I feel I made a couple of errors heads-up – and that’s a couple too many. I like to think I’m reasonably versatile in my heads-up play, and try to employ some lateral thinking in exploiting opponents’ individual weaknesses. However I’ve come to realise that my natural somewhat-aggressive style can fall down against very ‘cally’ opponents, and there are a few things I would do differently next time.

Donkleads & Dhal

2010-07-13T18:49:00.007+01:00

Which would you like first, the good news or the bad news?

(Virtually a rhetorical question, isn’t it. What sort of perverted individual would want the good news first?)

The (moderately) bad news is that since my last post, after continuing my winning streak for one day – adding £660 to my bankroll – I then burned through £1,300 over my next few poker sessions.

The good news is that things picked up in a big way yesterday.

Friday 13th

(Oh, was it Friday the 9th? My bad.)

The lowlight of last week was attaining the dubious honour of being first out of PartyPoker’s $215 buy-in Friday Special. LiquidEyes = big fish.

Level 1, hand 11: I get it all-in pre-flop with Aces in a 242bb pot. My hand is no match for my foe’s Kings after the flop brings the dreaded King. But hey, had my Aces held up, it would have been an equally grim cooler for him. Onto the next game...

My luck did not improve much. Elsewhere I had big pairs cracked by underpairs, or cold-decked by overpairs, left right and centre, and sustained sickening suck-outs on several bubbles. £605 in the red for the evening.

Weekend Wickedness

Hmm, shall we gloss over the weekend?

Actually, I didn’t lose too much money: I got through £225 on Saturday, another £360 on Sunday – the latter sum actually a fairly trivial loss in relation to my £1,600 staked in tournament buy-ins over the day. Probably my most high-rollin’ day to date?

I put in a lot of hours for not a lot of result, and didn’t see any overtime pay for my 12.5 hour Sunday grind!

Early exits from the PokerStars and Full Tilt majors, the Sunday Warm-Up and the $750K Gtd respectively, left me a little out of pocket but 98% happy with my play. I bought into both games directly, my bankroll now permitting me to play pretty much any sub-$250 tourney, and I feel I have a big enough edge (at least in the early stages) to view such games as profit-making ventures as much as a ‘flutter’. They’re also good practice for tougher games in the future.

Luke Warm

My bingo bust-out in the Warm-Up – my 19bb 3-bet shove with pocket Twos incredibly called by the MP open-raiser’s Threes, despite my solid play up to that point – just serves to demonstrate the +EV opportunities in the game.

He was only getting 1.4-to-one on the call, so I would have to be jamming a wide range (any pair, any suited ace, A9o+, virtually all broadways, and a bunch of suited connectors) to make his call just marginally profitable. I reckon he would be pushing his luck by calling with Fives here, without a good read on my play.

As the cards were flipped over, my foe quipped ‘I put you on 2-2’. So I guess he was just smart enough to comprehend the dubiousness of his play, but lacked the self-discipline to hit the FOLD button! However I might tighten up my own jamming range in that spot in future, at least against random unknowns in the early stages.

King Of Pay-Off Wizards

I was rather sour about a crippling blow late in 888 Poker’s $80 game too, my decent-sized stack royally ravaged by a loose player with a bigger stack. He saw fit to call my EP raise with K-8s in the small blind, and when the flop came 7-5-4 rainbow he was drawing only to gutshot and backdoor flush outs against my pocket Kings. He donked the turn when a Nine came, giving him a flush draw, so I flatted for pot control, and possibly induce a bluff or a value-bet from a worse hand on the river.

Of course the third club came down, and he led out. There were definitely a few backdoored flushes in his range, but it was hard not to pay him off, having under-played my own hand somewhat. I felt he could have something like 8-8, 9-8 or 8-7 just often enough to warrant my crying call, but maybe I could have laid it down.

Of course in retrospect, knowing his actual hand I should have raised the turn, but I was moderately concerned he was taking an unorthodox line with a set or two pair. I would be in a tricky spot if he re-raised, as he could be overplaying a pocket pair inferior to my own, but could alternatively have a monster.

Overall I think raise-folding the turn is probably the correct line in this hand, because his donk-lead was a little on the weak side and it stank of a blocking / price-setting bet, rather than a value-bet with a medium-strong pair like Tens. The weak donkbet then re-raise almost always signifies the fish has a monster hand! Further, if he flatted the raise I would have extra information at my disposal should he lead out on a scary river card, perhaps making it easier to find a fold.

Fishy Flip

PKR’s six-max $109 Grand Prix was as dork-infested as ever. I met my maker when I raised about a third of my 17bb stack with A-4s over two limpers, and – appallingly, but not surprisingly – the second limper flat-called out-of-position.

My plan was to jam almost any flop if he checked to me, and the 6-4-3 all-diamond flop (no diamond in my hand, alas) wasn’t the worst flop for my hand. These donks usually limp-shove with 7-7 etc, so there was a good chance he just had a hand like K-J, A-x or T-9s and had just called to hit.

I would be usually be flipping if he called with a high diamond, but otherwise I expected him to fold a lot of hands, making my line potentially a smidgen more profitable than simply shoving pre-flop.

He check-called my shove and we were flipping. Typical donk – he had 2-2 – and the lucky muppet had a diamond. It was all over on the turn when the Five of diamonds gave him a straight flush. How I LOL’d.

Anyhow I got most of my money back by the end of Sunday. I earned around $1,700 in tournament dollars over the weekend from various satellite victories, as well as scratching together a number of small prizes from various final-table finishes.

The Poker Gods Smile On Me

Onto Monday – the ‘good news’ bit!

I played seventeen tourneys and scored no fewer than six top-three finishes – weeee!

Quick Fix

The afternoon was productive, two final tables in speed tournaments lifting the spirits. I scored a 1st and a 2nd place, seeing me £360 in profit from three hours of ‘work’.

As if it needed to be stated, naturally I was one coin flip away from winning the latter game! Isn’t that always the story? Heads-up I politely declined my opponent’s deal-making offer (at the time I was a slight chip leader) but have no regrets about the decision to play on.

Later on I placed 3/153 in bwin’s $54 turbo, my pocket Tens sadly cracked by both A-6o and K-To in a final three-way all-in. $857 for my trouble, not bad.

Food For Thought

A couple of my lovely readers have complained that my blog is all about poker these days! What happened to the stuff about food?

Well, in truth I’ve been a tad lazy as concerns culinary creativity lately. I haven’t yet sunk to the level of Chris Moorman who allegedly lives on takeaways, and I do still enjoy cooking when I set time aside for it.

However I’m not quick in the kitchen – when I find a recipe and it says ‘preparation time 20 mins’ I tend to multiply the figure by 2.5, ever envious of TV chefs who can cobble together a veritable feast in less time than it takes me to say ‘BOLLOCKS I forgot to put the rice on’ – so concocting something adventurous does eat into my tourney schedule somewhat.

As one earns increasing amounts from poker, of course the economic argument for cooking stuff from scratch goes out of the window. Sure, it may be cheaper to buy the ingredients and make it yourself... but the time saving of takeaways must start to appeal when you are a high-roller and time is money!

Still, cooking is fun, therapeutic, potentially healthy... depending what shit you put in it, of course.

Tarka Dhal

For a while now I’ve been meaning to have a stab at rustling up one of my fave Indian dishes, tarka dhal. I love TD so much, it seems criminal that it’s generally relegated to the status of ‘side dish’ on restaurant menus.

The fact I’ve neglected the serious subject of food in my blog gave me an extra incentive to make something. (Thanks jamestct for the kick up the arse!)

Digital camera on standby, I followed this recipe and took a few snaps while I was on the job. I anticipate the same remarks my previous curry pics attracted from my ex-girlfriend: yes, admittedly curry does tend to have a turd-like appearance in photographs.

For the initiated, tarka dhal is superlative soupesque slop made from garlic and lentils, with a number of the usual Indian spices like garam masala and ground coriander. If you have never tried TD, EAT SOME! YESTERDAY! You literally have not lived.

My disclaimer is that I used split red lentils instead of ‘chana dal’, red chillies instead of green, and I didn’t have any fresh coriander and so tried to compensate with (obviously inferior) dried stuff from a jar.

The verdict: it wasn’t quite as good as I hoped. But not bad at all. If I was more experienced in such matters my intuition might guide me to chuck in more spices, or something, as it was a little... bland. My best guess is that more garlic wouldn’t have gone amiss, and perhaps a gratuitous splodge of butter.

What I need is a pro Indian chef to taste-taste my dish and tell me what it’s missing! Maybe I could swap a cooking tutorial for a poker lesson, or piano lesson, or something.

Anyway it was fun to make something other than money (and enemies).

The Good News (Continued)

A good day Monday far – my bank account and my belly swollen not inconsiderably – and it was not over yet. Three more $1k scores were in the offing. TBC in my next, no doubt equally long-winded post...

$3k For The Second Loser

2010-07-08T19:16:00.026+01:00

I have the very mixed feeling that you experience when you come third in a big game – something that happens more often than I would like!

Nine months ago I battled through 1,731 players to take down bwin’s $20,000 Rebuy, turning a $15.50 buy-in into a cool $4,049.

Tuesday night, the stakes ten times greater, I booted up bwin and put up $154 to play the $30,000 European Rebuy. Only 191 competitors this time, easy peasy. :)

From my initial double-stack ($54 buy-in plus $50 rebuy) I ran well in the rebuy hour, building my stack from 3000 to 6995.

Rapid Fire

1 hour 40 mins into the game I score a full double-up after flatting an EP raise with A-Ko. I began the hand with 48bb.

The utg player limps in for 200 and utg+1 makes it 550. I have no read on him but he looks strong, and he has me just about covered. I flat-call on the button and utg also calls.

Scoping the aggressor online revealed that he’s a mid-to-high stakes player and he’s had a $20k score in a $100 rebuy, so I might expect him to be fairly aggro.

utg+1 very quickly fires out at the K-Q-3 flop with two diamonds. I call and utg folds.

I can see little merit in raising here. The fast c-bet could certainly be indicative of A-A, A-K, air, possibly a hand like 6-6 with minimal showdown value, or something like A-Js in diamonds, as I do not have the Ad myself.

I couldn’t imagine him insta-betting with K-K or K-Q as he has a non-trivial decision in a three-way pot, second to act. (I could be wrong though – leading out with top-two-pair might be his standard line.) In any event, I figure a raise would fold out a lot of the hands I beat, and could induce a re-raise from a big draw.

Also the utg player is an unknown quantity. So I flat-call to disguise my hand strength, take advantage of position on the turn, and to limit my losses should the utg player check-raise.

Turn It Up

The turn is a brick, an offsuit Five, and my foe checks. Fairly confident I’m ahead – largely based on the timing tell on the flop – I bet to protect my hand. It’s not a brilliant spot for A-K: because of the 10bb pot pre-flop and the sizeable c-bet, any reasonable turn bet will pot-commit me, leaving me playing for stacks with one pair.

Nevertheless I feel I have to go with my hand, the deciding factor being that my top-pair-top-kicker is under-represented, and I can only put the villain on a small range of hands that beat me.

I bet 2,900 into the 5,680 pot, leaving 4,390 behind.

The villain check-raises all-in. Folding now is out of the question, but I am braced for him to flip over a pair of Aces or a set of Queens. I’m also prepared to have to dodge a few outs if he mistakenly thought he had fold equity and has taken an uber-aggressive line with a draw.

More often, I actually expect him to have the same hand, as the turn check-raise line might indeed be the best way to maximise value should I be floating, turning a pocket pair into a bluff, or value-betting something like K-J.

He might reason that I would usually raise the flop with K-Q, and that I would usually re-raise pre-flop with A-K, and so it’s hard for me to have that strong a hand. However the range of hands he himself is representing is also rather narrow.

I call his shove and the cards are on their backs. He flips over K-Js and he’s in dire shape, drawing to just three outs. The river blanks and I scoop the 100bb pot.

Domination

40 minutes later I win another chunky pot with A-K. I raise from EP and the guy on my immediate left 3-bets to 6bb. He started the hand with 23bb to my 59bb. I reckon I have a medium-tight table image, having folded most hands since landing the 100bb pot. I had made one uncalled 3-bet, and in another hand I had to show down 4-4 after stealing from EP, but otherwise I felt my image was fairly solid.

Folding out of the question, I four-bet all-in and the villain (having already invested nearly a quarter of his stack) unsurprisingly calls. Surprisingly he flips over K-Ts, a marginal hand with which to risk 23bb against an EP raiser in my opinion. Five blanks later I have 84bb, one of the biggest stacks in the tournament. So long, and thanks bwin for all the fish!

Nearly three hours into the tournament I call a M=5.5 button-shove with 9-9 and score an easy win against the short stack’s K-4, which fails to improve. I’m now 58bb deep.

Ace In The Hole

A couple of hands later I win yet another 13bb with A-Ko. Didn’t you know Ace-King is the nuts on Tuesdays? I make it 2.3bb from utg and attract a MP caller. It’s always ugly playing A-K out of position and I whiff the flop, but the dry T-7-6 rainbow board is not a bad one to c-bet.

I bet half the pot, he calls and I’m ready to shut down, the villain most likely holding any pocket pair up to Jacks or maybe Queens. Things are looking up when the turn brings an Ace. I check for pot control and to increase the chance of getting action on the river, and he checks behind.

River Value

The river is an Eight, putting four to a straight on board, but pretty much a blank unless he has 8-8, 9-9 or more tenuously J-9s / T-9s / 8-7s (the suited connectors would have been rather loose calls pre-flop). He surely would have bet the turn in position with a made straight, set or A-T, so I’m much more concerned with extracting some value from hands like J-J / 5-5 / Q-Ts. He could even have floated the flop with A-Q or A-Js.

I bet a third of the pot with my top-pair-top-kicker, surely offering irresistible odds to any reasonable made hand. Unless he’s Tom Dwan I can’t see him bluff-raising here, since I could very plausibly be trying to milk a straight myself. Thus I feel I can easily muck my pair of Aces if faced with a raise.

A tough opponent might reason that 9-x is only a small part of my range here, and my modest river bet could be construed as a blocker bet. Even so, the effective stack size makes it difficult to raise a hand worse than a straight, such as a set of Sevens or Eights, for value: a shove would likely fold every hand worse than a straight, whereas a small ‘hoover’ raise runs the risk of being 3-bet shoved by a straight, putting him in a truly horrid spot!

The villain calls and mucks. My best guess is that he held J-J. You never know for certain whether you got your value-bet right in no-limit hold’em (except the occasions when you jam and elicit a call!) but it’s deeply satisfying getting value in these spots. I caught a lucky card, but aside from the obvious Ace and King outs I could consider two-barrelling had the turn brought a Queen, putting pressure on his more marginal pocket pairs.

Barrels Of Fun

The bubble approaches and I ramp up my aggression accordingly, stealing lots of pots and capitalising on my big stack. Very soon I gain the chip lead, after pulling a sick three-barrelled bluff in position on another big stack...

62bb deep, the blinds 500/1000, I make it 2.3k with 4-4 in MP, and both blinds call, including the BB who has me covered by just 1.5bb. The flop comes 8s-5h-2h and I elect to c-bet 4k into the 7k pot.

The BB check-raises to just over 10k. Pre-flop he overcalled for just 1.3k (to take a shot at a pot of 6.4k) so his range here is very wide.

OPR says he is a winning mid-/high-stakes player and he could reasonably make this play with all kinds of hands: any pair, any draw, or total air. After all I can easily have nothing myself here, and he might feel he can exert some pressure on me with his own big stack.

Folding here would definitely be okay; even if he ‘just’ has a draw, my small pair could be an underdog to win by showdown. However I have position, and based on his wide pre-flop calling range I figure there are a lot of hands in his range that will not be able to take much pressure. Offered pot offs of 3.6-to-one I call the extra 6bb and peel off a turn card.

Three To A Flush

The King of hearts falls, not a bad bluffing card. Given the odds and stack sizes, I could certainly have taken a conservative line with a flush draw, chased rather than re-raising, and hit. If I held A-8o with the Ace of hearts I could now have picked up a backdoor flush draw; even if he feels he might be ahead, it’s a tricky spot for him. There are a couple of other hands that have also improved, such as K-8 and K-K, both of which I could plausibly have played this way, reasoning that a turned flush is only a small part of his range.

He checks and I bet 17bb. His check tends to suggest he does not have the flush, unless he’s trapping with the nut flush – and I might have expected him to bet bigger with a big draw on the flop.

He calls, and I start to think I’m digging myself into a hole here!

Scare Bear

However the river brings a fourth heart, the board now 8-5-2-K-T (with the Eight of spades). The villain checks again. I have no heart – I’m losing to ANY single heart – but do I have the balls to represent the Ah/Qh?

I reason that there is only a tiny number of Ah-X hands in his range, whereas I can very plausibly have the nuts here. Even if he suspects bubble abuse, what’s the worst hand he can call my bluff with? I could be turning a weak flush into a bluff, so – being a competent player – I think he has to lay down a hand as strong as a set. Even if he has a Jack-high flush he has to hate life right now.

I shove my last 32k into the 62k pot. Without taking ICM into account, i.e. if this were a cash game, my bluff must induce a fold at least 34.2% of the time to show a long-term profit. Primarily due to the villain’s wide pre-flop overcalling range, and also his defensive line on the turn, I reckon he will fold much more often than this, so close to the tournament bubble.

Every so often he will have got tricky and checked the nuts on the river, his most likely holding being A-8o with the Ace of hearts, and I will have donked off my stack with virtual air. He could also hero-call me with something like Qh-Jh (if he slowplayed his flush on the turn) but even with the second-nuts he might doubt that I – an unknown player – might be capable of jamming here without the nuts.

I won’t lose sleep over bubbling if I made a +EV play. It’s not the $291 minimum prize I’m concerned with here, so much as the possibility of donking off 60bb of hard-earned chips.

My heart races as I click ALL-IN. I shouldn’t like to pull off a move like this in a big live game – I would be bricking myself!

My foe folds in a flash: I’ve taken almost half his stack and soar into the lead, wielding a mighty 94,000 chips. I got a little lucky with the scare cards, but I think the hand is a great lesson in the power of position.

The Only Way Is Up

By final table time I have over 201k, just one player possessing more chips than me. Fortunately the 205k stack is on my immediate right, a lucky seat draw!

Scoping him online reveals he is a high-stakes player with a few good scores under his belt, and sure enough he proves to be the toughest and most aggressive player on the table, using his chips as a weapon.

Early in the final table and ten-handed, still second in chips with 65bb to his 76bb, I 3-bet light with 8-8 over one of his numerous EP opening raises. It’s folded back round to him and he immediately jams, haha! Maybe he had a big hand and my timing was off, but of course I can hardly ever call here due to the presence of four sub-13bb stacks. I muck my pocket pair. In spite of my positional advantage I realise I will have to tighten up a tad.

I probably should have flat-called with my Eights instead of 3-betting, as I had position and, theoretically, set mining odds, though it’s debatable whether he would stack off post-flop against his nearest rival, out of position, given his dominating chip position.

Better Lucky Than Good

I manage to sustain my chip position, remaining second in chips for most of the final table but rarely overtaking the aggressive player. Six-handed I get lucky after jamming K-To from the button into two smaller stacks, and running into the BB’s K-Qs. I am in terrible shape, a 3-to-1 dog to win the hand.

The board comes A-7-6-Q rainbow, my odds dwindling with each successive card. Then the miracle Jack comes on the river: all of a sudden we’re a man down and I have the chip lead with 299,000 chips, just shy of 50bb. Weeeeee!

My stack peaks at 465k in four-handed play, nearly three times as many chips as my nearest rival, the tough player on my right. However he edges closer when he picks up Aces and eliminates the third-biggest stack.

A Flip Away

I come within a coin flip of heads-up play when I pick up 5-4s in the SB and the tough player folds. The blinds are 4k/8k and I have 384k to the BB’s 95k. I jam and he snap-calls with a ragged Ace, his A-3o less than a 54% favourite over my suited connector. Unfortunately an Ace on the flop all but dashes my hopes, and two bricks later I’ve doubled up the shorty.

A few hands and a couple of aborted blind-steals later, I’m the short stack, down to 176k. I still have a playable 22bb, the guy on my left having 37bb and the tough player leading with almost 50bb.

In Position

The button folds and the tough player raises from the SB. I find K-9o in the BB and consider 3-bet shoving. However I have position and a passable kicker which I think figures to be in good shape versus his raising range, and so opt to peel off a flop.

The flop comes 9-8-4 rainbow. The tough player checks, and my top-pair, second-best-kicker looks to be the best hand. His check is not out-of-character or inherently suspicious (I have seen him check/fold at least once before) though he could be check-raising with a big hand or draw. I decide that given my chip position and fairly strong hand, I am usually willing to play for stacks against the aggressive player here.

Even if he check-raises he could have a worse hand such as J-T, 7-6, T-7s, possibly 9-x. I have a few outs against many of the hands that are ahead of me when he check-raises, such as A-A, maybe Q-Q. I’m in bigger trouble against A-9 but I think he probably leads out with this hand, and it’s fairly unlucky if he has 9-8 or a set. The other two-pair combinations seem unlikely. I’ve retrospectively tinkered with PokerStove and reckon I have over 40% equity against his check-raising range, making it a clear call.

A small check-raise might be ominous – I would be moderately concerned about a set or 9-8 – though he could make this play as a total bluff so I would probably have to call the raise and re-evaluate on the turn.

You Bet Your Life

Since I’m playing for stacks I should make an ambiguous bet that could easily be construed as a positional bluff, thus maximising the chance of him check-raising (thinking he has fold equity) or check-calling with 8-x, 7-7, 6-6 etc. An excessive bet will only increase the chance that he folds the more marginal hands I’m beating, essentially strengthening his raising/calling range.

Theoretically, were I simply to open-jam the pot with top pair, this would only be a very slight error were he to call 100% of the time with what I suppose to be his check-raising range, against which I reckon my showdown equity is 40%+. (Given the pot odds I need about 44% equity if he calls every time.)

Thus the villain only has to fold to my small bet a modest percentage of the time, and/or occasionally call with a worse hand, to make my bet/calling line profitable. If he sometimes check-raises with air then folds the turn, or spews even more chips, better still.

Big Bet Poker

I bet 24k, a fraction under half the pot, and my foe check-raises to 104k. With just 151k behind, it will cost most of my stack to call, so in effect he is very obviously putting me all-in.

The huge check-raise stinks of either a fairly-strong but vulnerable hand (like top pair, top two pair or an overpair), or more likely, a strong draw. The big check-raise neutralises his positional disadvantage in the hand, avoiding tricky turn decisions if he has one pair and one of the many possible scare cards falls.

Further he gets the maximum number of chips in the pot while he still has a lot of showdown equity, should he have a big draw like J-T. Actually, J-T is the precise hand I expect him to turn over most often here.

The check-raise may also fold out many hands that have good equity against his draw, such as second pair.

I had already determined that I would call should the villain make a big check-raise, and so jam my remaining stack. He snap-calls and flips over... J-Ts. Not the hand I hoped for, but pretty much what I anticipated.

Fifty-Fifty

It doesn’t get closer than this: it’s an authentic coin flip, exactly 50-50. He has no backdoor flush draw, so he’s looking to hit a Queen, Seven, Jack or Ten – fourteen outs.

The turn brings a King and I am way ahead, 82% favourite to take the chip lead and severely set back the tough player. Unfortunately it’s my turn to be rivered, a brutal Queen completing his straight and propelling him into the chip lead, twice the stack of the other guy.

The tough aggressive player goes on to win the $6,822 first prize – sicko!

The other guy gets $4,705, and I take $3,361 for third place.

$2.4k Ahead

As ever, it’s gutting to get so close to what would have been my biggest ever online score, but I am 97% happy with my play and that’s what matters most to me.

$3.3k is not to be sniffed at and I finished the day nicely in profit, even after spending $1.2k in tournament buy-ins. It’s reassuring to finally win something on bwin after running/playing(?) badly for several months: Sharkscope says I’ve burned through $5k over my last 130-odd tournaments on that site.

If only I made $2,400 profit every day...

June Review

2010-07-06T14:20:00.007+01:00

Good times! They say money can’t buy happiness, but I think every tournament player would agree that winning makes you happier and richer.

June has been a cracker:

It has marked the end of a prolonged breakeven/losing period online.

It’s been my second-most profitable month ever (falling £1,500 short of my September 2009 profits)

I took down not one, but two of the tournaments I’d set out to win by the end of the year.

I’ve had my two biggest ever scores on PartyPoker, my ranking on OfficialPokerRankings peaking at 41st due to my recent spate of tournament successes.

Highlights – Party Time!

$4,050 – 1/245 in $15K Gtd ($55 buy-in)
$3,477 – 1/98 in $10K Gtd Rebuy ($55 buy-in)
$1,425 – 1/100 in $5K Gtd Speed ($55 buy-in)
$444 – 1/40 in $1K Gtd Regular ($33 buy-in)

(The little ones count too. It’s fun finishing first!)

The Nearlies

$1,713 – 3/218 in $15,000 GP Rebuy on iPoker ($33 buy-in)
$1,585 – 4/90 in $15K Gtd Rebuy on Absolute Poker ($55 buy-in)
$1,190 – 2/127 in Party’s $7K Gtd Crazy Stack Turbo ($55 buy-in)

The Crazy Stack was something of a disappointment. Stacks were super-short but I did have a 3:1 lead as heads-up play commenced. I’m slightly annoyed because I missed a clear shove: I folded T-4s on the button when effective stacks were under 3bb. Grr @ myself.

$700 – 43/927 in $200K Guaranteed Sunday ($215 buy-in)
$660 – 2/60 in $3K Gtd Speed ($55 buy-in)
$650 – 6/80 in $10K Gtd ($109 buy-in)
$632 – 3/190 in $6K Gtd Speed Rebuy ($11 buy-in)
$600 – 3/80 in $5K Gtd Speed ($55 buy-in)

My regular Speed games continue to provide relatively reliable income, though I had only one outright win this month despite attaining the chip lead at several final tables.

Also I won two $270 tickets for the monthly PKR Masters, a $215 seat in Party’s Friday Special, and qualified for the Monthly Million three times over the course of June.

My form seems to be continuing this month, with a 4th place finish in Party’s midnight $109 game for $1,000, two more Million seats, and several final tables besides.

Sharkscope.com shows the magnitude of my recent upswing on Party:

Top Scores To Date

It’s all happening at the moment, with three of my top-five scores having materialised in the last six weeks:

$9,100 at G Casino (May ’10)
$5,440 on PKR (Jan ’10)
$4,050 on Party (Jun ’10)
$4,048 on bwin (Oct ’09)
$3,477 on Party (Jun ’10)

I have yet to crack the $10k barrier. Maybe before the end of 2010?

Balance Of Justice

Let me share an interesting quote I stumbled across yesterday, on dealing with the variance of poker:

‘[Before changing my mindset regarding variance] my perception of loss was so much more heightened than that of victory. Almost every time I played, I walked away feeling as though I’d lost. When I’d win, I’d say, “Well, that should have happened.”’

I definitely fall foul of this way of thinking from time to time, and have to consciously keep myself in check. Must... shrug off... bad beats!

However I might be forgiven for feeling I ‘should’ have won the following hand...

Beat This!

I shall sign off with the comedic(?) highlight of the month.

June has been memorable for a less savoury reason: I sustained my worst ever bad beat since I began playing poker. It’s from 888 Poker’s $50,000 Sunday Challenge, and I begin the hand with a healthy mound of chips – just over three times my starting stack, a little above the average at this point in the game.

The villain in question does EVERYTHING wrong in the hand, and I manage to get my chips in as a 51-to-one favourite on the flop, almost certain to scoop the 90bb pot...

27 06 2010 23:53:43
$75 + $5 Tournament - Table #1

200/400 Blinds No Limit Holdem

Seat 10 is the button
Total number of players : 8

Seat 1: SB ( 23,358 )
Seat 2: BB ( 17,313 )
Seat 3: UTG ( 5,867 )
Seat 4: EP ( 23,286 )
Seat 5: MP ( 17,771 )
Seat 6: Hijack ( 11,851 )
Seat 7: Cutoff ( 17,916 )
Seat 10: Hero ( 16,628 )

ante [40 each]
SB posts small blind [200]
BB posts big blind [400]

** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Hero [ 5h 5c ]

UTG folds
EP folds
MP raises [800]
Hijack folds
Cutoff folds
Hero raises [2,225]
SB folds
BB calls [1,825]
MP calls [1,425]

** Dealing flop ** [ 8c Jh 5s ]

BB bets [7,195]
MP folds
Hero raises all-in [14,363]
BB calls [7,168]

BB shows [ Jd Ad ]
Hero shows [ 5h 5c ]

** Dealing turn ** [8c Jh 5s] [8h]
** Dealing river ** [8c Jh 5s 8h] [Jc]

** Summary **

BB collected [ 35,921 ]

2010 Poker Odyssey: Half-Time Score

2010-07-01T15:19:00.015+01:00

Half of 2010 has elapsed, but I managed to sneak in an extra goal before the half-time whistle...

At last I have taken down PartyPoker’s nightly $55 tournament. Another of my ‘resolutions for 2010’ crossed off!

The $4k first prize is also my biggest cash to date on Party – coming less than two weeks after I landed my previous best cash of $3,477, and a month before that, $3,308. I can’t tell you how good this feels after my four-month, confidence-rattling online downturn.

My PartyPoker rank on OfficialPokerRankings.com peaked at 50th as a result of the score.

Raw Deal

I feel I’ve had a raw deal previously in the $55 tourney. This was my fourth final table in the event, but I had never finished higher than 8th for a miserly $487.

Back when the tournament was more popular, offering a slightly bigger guaranteed prize pool of $20k, I managed to final-table the game twice, but both times was devastatingly bingoed out of the tournament in tenth place.

I’ve only had four other non-final-table cashes, and so prior to Tuesday I had made a net loss playing this game, perhaps $2k—3k. There’s a ton of dead money in the tournament but the blind structure leaves something to be desired, descending into a crapshoot towards the end with most players at the final table wielding stacks around the 10bb mark.

So two weeks ago, I was optimistic to find myself chip leader as the final table loomed, possessing considerably more chips than most players. Could this be my chance to take it down?

Endgame

Over the last few months I’ve gained valuable experience in tournaments such as Party’s $33 rebuys and $109 freezeouts. The opposition on the final tables of these games can be a real hodgepodge of strong and weak players. Some days it can be very tough to pick a spot on these FTs, with few open-raising opportunities before the flop, and many aggressive players itching to 3-bet over any non-committing raise.

My latest book purchase, Winning Poker Tournaments: Vol II, talks at length about endgame play. A running theme through the book is that one should avoid raise-folding a sub-20bb stack. (In the book they are generally talking about tournaments with relatively big antes, making the intial pre-flop pot size around the 2.5bb mark at a full table.)

This strategy is something I try to bear in mind all the time, but in softer games such as the low- to mid-buyin tournaments on Party, one can take profitable lines that stray from this guideline.

Stop! Thief!

In the $55 MTT, there will be many players that will play too tightly and never make light 3-bets, particularly with many shorter stacks present at the table, making it tempting for them to err on the side of caution and fold to a higher prize position. In fact, despite the ‘play to win’ ethos of many of the best players, in certain spots these cautious players may be making the mathematically correct decision because of ICM considerations.

ICM favours the big stack, who can make unexploitable steal-raises against which opponents can only make a stand with a real hand. So it is a very real advantage to arrive chip-rich at the final table.

Big stack or not, you still have to win a bunch of key showdowns to win a tournament.

I tried to make every blind-steal I felt I could get away with, in each case evaluating which stacks against whom I would be pot-committed if they were to 3-bet.

And this is where most of my chips dwindled away: I would steal from MP with Jack-Ten, a shortie would shove Ace-King, I would call (correctly) and lose the showdown.

Meh.

I soon joined the ranks of the jam-or-fold stacks, jammed, and then wished I had folded!

Loose Ends

One cannot be too results-orientated in poker, but afterwards, deflated, I wondered whether I had played too loosely?

Looking back I think the answer is ‘mostly no’. I believe the measure of overly loose play is whether anybody exploited me by pushing more marginal hands for value. For example, say I raise A-5s in early position, and a player shoves 7bb for value with A-Jo, figuring he’s ahead of my wide opening range. Or, I raise A-To in EP, and a 12bb stack jams with K-Qs, inducing me to make an incorrect fold. In both cases, the 3-bettors are exploiting me for playing too many hands.

But if my EP raises command undue respect, and the opposition only play back at me with big hands such as A-Q or T-T, it is me that is exploiting them rather than vice versa.

I suspect that to eke out the maximum edge in a tournament with this structure, and to take full advantage of the chip lead, one probably does have to make some loose plays, at least until such time as one has been exposed as a thief and irreparable damage to table image has been sustained!

And one has to accept that sometimes it will all go pear-shaped.

Déjà Vu

TAKE TWO. Tuesday night I found myself at the final table of the $15K once more – and guess who was chip leader?

Optimistic about my chances, determined to play perfect poker, and fired up to ‘TID’, I started taking some screen shots for my victory blog. How cocky am I. :)

I ran much better this time. My timing (just a form of luck, of course) was spot on: most of my steal-raises were unchallenged, and the time I was 3-bet I had Queens and snap-called, crushing my opponent’s 9-9.

Big Flip

After that I had one crucial piece of luck, in five-handed play. The stacks 19bb, 12bb, 11bb, 5bb, and 15bb, I open-jammed my 19bb under-the-gun with pocket Tens. Although T-T is obviously a monster, the three bigger stacks might feel they had fold equity against me, and I didn’t fancy flipping for 80% of my stack against A-J or K-Qs, hands that might fold to an open-shove, but 3-bet all-in if I made a small raise.

Against relatively tight players, I figured there was a slightly greater chance of being 3-bet by a hand against which I’m flipping than a hand I dominate, whereas I felt that some of the hands I dominate (such as 7-7) would still call my open-shove, particularly now we were five-handed and everybody had secured at least $937.

Further, I felt that if I showed my hand I might garner respect that could pay off in future when I made lighter shoves. Nevertheless I can see an argument for raise-calling; it’s a close run thing when the effective ‘M’ is 9 or less. It becomes a question of whether I think one of the big stacks might make a move with a hand like 4-4 or A-T if I make an apparently non-committing raise.

I got it in, and held my breath as the 11bb stack quickly called...

I desperately hoped to see a lower pocket pair, but he flipped over A-Q suited and we were off to the races, my Tens only a slight favourite. The poker gods were on my side however and I extended my chip lead yet further.

Things were looking favourable. I was in an utterly dominating position and soon hoovered up the remaining chips, winning almost every showdown.

The shorty was the first to die, jamming his pocket Eights into my Ace-Ten. I isolated, and an Ace on the river saw him eliminated in 4th place. Running gooood.

Soon afterwards, I only picked up Jacks! The button jammed with Ace-Nine and failed to outdraw me. ul gg

The whole final table lasted less than 35 minutes and heads-up play lasted two hands. By the final hand I had a stupid amount of chips, leading nearly eight-to-one.

Hand two heads-up, I shoved a suited Ace from the button and my foe, not wholly unreasonably, called off his last 6bb for value with T-5s – only a very slight error against my jamming range. (T-7s might be a profitable call in my estimation.)

The villain flopped a flush draw, but I was in the lead on the A-3-2 board with top two pair. His flush failed to materialise and I pocketed the last few chips.

I don’t think my foe will be too disappointed about folding his way to a $2.5k payday.

Meanwhile I was elated with my big score, my third-biggest tournament cash to date, and the satisfaction of having crossed another Party tourney off my hit list.

‘Weeeee’, and all that!

Room For Improvement

2010-06-29T17:12:00.012+01:00

Poker is a funny old game.

If I aspired to be a world-class sprinter or a boxer, I would be chasing a pipe dream. I just don’t have the requisite physique, and no amount of study or training would turn me into the best. I probably could not compete even on a local level; it’s just not ‘in my blood’.

Mind sports, such as chess or poker, are a little different. Sure, you need some raw brainpower – I’d wager that no consistent winner has a below-average IQ – though many superb poker players are not especially academic as such. Indeed some very successful players sound a bit stupid.

To state the obvious, to be an online poker pro, you merely have to click the right buttons at the right times. You do not need impeccable hand-to-eye coordination, lightning-fast reflexes, or muscles like Popeye.

Poker Idol

Sometimes I gaze in awe at the results of poker players more successful than myself. A small elite including fellow Brit dyeti dominate the bigger-buy-in tourneys on PartyPoker; on Sky Poker, Uzi_Lover final-tables the £10K Primo event week after week, consistently outlasting fields of hundreds. How do they do it?

Even the best players are only dealt two cards. All they do is make a few bets, and fold a lot. There is nothing they do that the rest of us could not theoretically do.

So, to state the supremely obvious once again: if I want to make as much money as these guys, all I have to do is work out what they are doing, and do the same thing myself. Simple!

Stylised

Everybody of course develops their own individual ‘style’ in poker. I am a bit of a station really, which cuts both ways: I catch a lot of bluffs, but also call off my stack with second-best hands sometimes. I’m always looking for ways to refine my game, and it doesn’t necessarily follow that I could just pick and choose bits of other people’s styles and expect them to work for me.

For example, if I suddenly turned super-LAG, trying to imitate some celebrated poker pro or other who has the knack of scooping pots with any two cards, I might start losing money because I would have to make adjustments to other parts of my game to suit – I might have to improve my post-flop skills, perhaps fold a bit more often in marginal spots on the turn or river, or maybe make some more adventurous, high-variance bluffs.

Still, it’s always good to study other players and reflect on what they are doing right and wrong, and if there’s anything one can learn from them.

Limited Liability

Back in 2008 I used to play a few limit hold’em tournaments (A.K.A. ‘fixed-limit hold’em’, or ‘FLHE’).

The first time I entered a FLHE tournament was an accident: I mistakenly thought it was a no-limit tournament. (PartyPoker have slightly improved the clarity of the lobby information since then!) Luckily, I had once read a book on FLHE so had a rough idea what I was doing.

As it happens, I won the tournament. I played again the following week, finishing second. The next time, I cashed yet again. And so I persisted with the daily FLHE game for a while, encouraged by my initial triumphs.

Anyhow, one player who used to dominate this tournament was bigapple222. I soon became aware of bigapple’s unorthodox tendency to limp all his strong hands – up to and including Aces – in the early stages of the tourney. This goes against conventional wisdom, yet in a game littered with calling stations I can see the merit of the play.

One obvious advantage is deception, but I suspect was not his main motivation to limp. This is a game where most players are only looking at their own hand!

Limping For Joy

Keeping the pot smaller pre-flop in FLHE means that fold equity is greater post-flop, since bet sizes are fixed. So by betting into a smaller pot after the flop, there is an increasing chance of thinning the field, and one can induce loose players to make bigger errors by calling with inferior one-pair type hands without the odds.

Limping A-A when the blinds are low can be exceptionally hazardous in no-limit hold’em, because of the implied odds offered to other players, who can limp a speculative hand then win a huge chunk of your stack post-flop if they hit. The situation is slightly different in FLHE, where implied odds are lower: you can’t make huge bets on later streets to capitalise on having caught a lucky card.

Also it can be easier to get away from one-pair hands in a smaller pot, if several players appear to take interest in a scary board.

Moreover, in loose games, nobody folds to a pre-flop raise anyway – the fish routinely cold-call raises or even 3- and 4-bets with hands like 8-7s, making an unimproved overpair very difficult to play in a bloated, multi-way pot.

Enough about limit hold’em. My point is simply that seeing bigapple do things a little differently got me thinking about possible adjustments to my own game.

Now, just because a successful player does a certain thing, does not necessarily make it an optimal or even +EV play. Nevertheless it is always interesting to take something on board from another winning player.

Sky High

I have nothing to show for my attempts at Sky’s weekly Primo tournament thus far. The Sunday evening game is featured on the Sky Poker channel, with semi-live coverage of interesting hands and commentary from the presenters – with a slight delay for obvious reasons! (Incidentally you don’t need to have Sky TV to watch Sky Poker, as it can also be streamed live from their website.)

I did once get a name check on the Sky Poker show, as they periodically mention the chip leaders and I had a top-five stack at the time (see pic).

Returning to the theme of my post, one guy frequently featured on the show is the aforementioned success story Uzi_Lover (ranked 2nd out of all Sky MTT players on Sharkscope.com for 2009). So I wasn’t too pleased back in May when I registered for the Sky’s £5k Double Stack, only to find myself seated to his immediately right.

It’s no surprise that Uzi’s post-flop play was excellent. He made very few mistakes, won a ton of pots without showdown, and (partly due to my positional disadvantage) I was able to extract minimal value from my real hands.

What was slightly surprising, however, was his playing style...

Lagging Behind

Sky’s tourneys are VERY loose affairs, with hardly any pre-flop folding in the first few levels, and donkeys going busto with top-pair-any-kicker with little regard for stack size or opponents’ hand ranges.

Conventional wisdom would dictate that one should play rather tightly against such loose opposition. It’s a six-max tourney, and I do open up a lot from the cutoff and button in these games, but for some reason I rarely get anything started on Sky. The blind levels are only 10 minutes in the Double Stack and increase in quite big steps, so there’s only so much time to accumulate chips.

What surprised me is how loose-aggressive Uzi was. He played FAR more aggressively than I usually would in these tourneys, stone-bluffing in position, two-barrelling and relentlessly semi-bluffing.

Needless to say, when he picked up a big hand he got paid off in a big way.

Now, maybe he caught a lot of cards in that game, and maybe I’ve overestimated his level of aggression. But there is some reason he’s faring so much better than I am!

What with the limited time to accumulate chips, and the benefits of the six-max format for competent post-flop players, my experience of being comprehensively owned by Uzi has made me wonder if I’m missing a trick in these games. It could be time to experiment with upping the aggro.

The Price of Inaction

2010-06-21T16:30:00.005+01:00

It’s been a fruitful few days, but not all plain sailing.

The low point of last week was a disastrous internet connection loss late on Friday night, which cost me hundreds if not thousands of dollars. I became disconnected during iPoker’s $15,000 GP Rebuy ($33 buy-in) having reached the final table with the chip lead!

With $4,600 up for grabs for first place, I could only mutter THIS IS NOT HAPPENING as my contingency plan fell through...

After fifteen agonising minutes struggling with my mobile broadband stick, trying to persuade my PC to recognise that I had plugged the bloody thing into my USB hub (and cursing BT for our untimely ADSL disconnection) I finally managed to log back onto iPoker.

Blind Spot

iPoker is a FAST site – perhaps the fastest, in terms of how quickly hands are dealt. And with ten minute blind levels and big antes, the 30r is not a game where one would want to be sat out for long.

By the time I was back in the action, there had been several eliminations and we were four-handed. Gone were some of the stronger players, but gone also was my chip lead. Blinded down to half my original stack, I was now the shortie with just 8.4bb at the current blind level. :(

Comeback?

Six folds later (the two big stacks predictably raising my blind without mercy) I scored a lucky double-up after pushing K-8s from the button and outdrawing the small blind’s A-7s as a 41%-59% dog.

Two hands later, fellow shortie stokkis1 perished – great news, as he is a strong player – and we were three-handed. His elimination secured me a minimum payout of $1,713, but despite my chip deficit (I had just 13.5bb to my foes’ 36bb and 42bb) I knew that just one lucky double-up could put me right back in contention.

I had reasonable fold equity, neither opponent would want to double me up, and I felt one of them was not such a great player.

I was card dead for the next four hands, before successfully stealing the blinds by shoving my last 11bb from the button with 8-7s. Next hand, 12.7bb deep I woke up with Kings. Just the ticket!

Sweating Every Street

The small blind raised to 2.4bb and I shoved my K-K. He called fairly quickly with A-6o (obviously I would prefer him to flip over K-Q or a lower pair!) and I was a fairly big favourite against his ragged Ace. 71% of the time I should double up and find myself second in chips.

Alas, I had a sick feeling in my stomach as the less-than-rosy 8-7-5 flop (with two spades) gave my foe an up-and-down straight draw. Sick sick sick. His Ace was ‘live’ too, so it was almost a coin flip for the 25.5bb pot.

A King of spades on turn gave me a set, however every silver lining has a cloud... Gone were two of his Ace ‘outs’ but now every spade bar the Seven of spades would seal my fate and give the villain the chip lead. I was a firm favourite, yet with one card to come he still had a 32% chance of sucking out. I could barely look at the screen.

The dreaded fourth spade came on the river. His King-high flush had beaten my three-of-a-kind; I was out. GUTTED.

Blamestorm

The prize structure is very top-heavy on iPoker, the eventual winner taking home $2,900 more than did I. That is hard to stomach. Bad luck and suck-outs I can cope with, but in this case I feel partly to blame for not testing my mobile broadband stick recently – it had been in the back of my mind to do so.

Needless to say, from now on I will be testing my mobile broadband stick every week to make sure it still works! Obviously I have tested it before, but at some point I rearranged my USB hubs to accommodate a new webcam, and I can only conclude that this caused one of my hubs to receive insufficient power, or something...

I’m trying to remain positive. If something good has come of the experience, it’s that in future I should get back online more quickly if I lose my ADSL connection. As for half my stack being blinded away, well that sucks HARD – though it’s not as though a first place finish was a given. I had the chip lead, but not by an order of magnitude. There were several good players at the final table, and there is a lot of variance in the late stages of these fast-paced tourneys. Further, it was unavoidable that I would miss at least a few hands while I switched to my mobile stick.

Still, I would rather have lost 90,000 chips due to a suck-out or ‘cooler’, rather than by being sat out. *Sigh* one to put down to experience.

Back On It: $7k Heater

2010-06-20T16:48:00.002+01:00

This is more like it!

Since my big live cash end-May, I managed to dribble away £2,200 or so, before finally enjoying a healthy upturn starting Thursday.

Tournament poker is not a career for the easily disheartened, nor the under-bankrolled. To set the scene, between 24th February and 16th June (a period of nearly four months) I had a depressing net loss of over £2k to show for my online efforts. :(

Were a layman to glance at my profit & loss chart for this period, it’s only thanks to my £6k ‘fluke’ live win that he might believe I am a winning player!

Running Hot

The last three days have spelled the end of my recent rut: in possibly my biggest ‘heater’ to date, a spate of final tables has generated nearly £4,900 profit (approximately $7,200 USD) – and to top it off I’ve also won $910 worth of seats from satellites. Now THAT is what it’s all about.

As ever, things could have been significantly better – a number of 2nd, 3rd and 4th places leaving one with that mixed feeling about what could have been, with several thousand more left ‘on the table’.

Between Thursday and Friday I notched up FOUR four-figure scores (ranging from $1.2k to $3.5k) though only the biggie was a first place. Individual disappointments aside, I feel enthused by my winning streak and highly grateful to see the back of my extended dry patch.

Times Tables and Timeouts

I’ve pushed my limits a tad, experimenting with nine- or ten-tabling – probably 2—3 tables more than optimal, for my own abilities – though dropping down to fewer tables when at the business end of any big tournaments.

I do find that when I’m feeling sharp and on my A-game, playing a lot of games keeps me very focussed, but it’s harder to make player notes, and I have suffered a few too many timeouts, including one utter cataclysm where I raised 80% of my stack with an overpair, only to be smooth-called, and then timeout-fold the next street while I was concentrating on another table NOOOOOOOO!

(Thankfully it was near the start of a tourney, there was ‘only’ about $100 worth of chips on the line – and I try to make myself feel better by telling myself he must have had a set to flat-call my overbet!! Oh, and I did make a big comeback...)

Officially a Shark

I have a backlog of tournaments to blog about, but for the moment (before I kick off my Sunday night grind) I shall revel a little.

My profits for 2010 have nearly hit the $30,000 mark:

I’m rocking it on PartyPoker. A rush of in-the-money finishes and final tables has seen my rank on OfficialPokerRankings.com soar to 54th – supercool!

Also I’ve taken down my biggest prize to date on Party, a cool $3,477 for shipping the late-evening $10K Gtd Rebuy. It was less than a month since I first won this tournament, and Party upped the buy-in from $30+$3 to $50+5 in the interim.

I have yet to win a $30 rebuy or $50 rebuy on any other poker site, although I have come pretty close, as I shall document in my next blog update.

Check out my spate of money-finishes:

Now let’s see if I can sustain my streak of success. I think the poker gods still owe me one. :)

Bashing Belgians

2010-06-08T11:51:00.004+01:00

My brother’s stag party was fun, though not my usual ‘scene’. There was a fairly standard theme of making the stag look stupid: think eye shadow, tight string vest, pink and green fluorescent fairy dust and other camp accessories. And, of course, copious consumption of alcohol.

Nobody was hospitalised or arrested (the latter would be pretty bad – my bro is a policeman himself) although we were ejected from one pub within two minutes of our arrival after one of the party saw fit to indecently expose himself...

The barmaid was singularly unimpressed by the ‘display’, unlike the raucous hen party present in the bar, who seemed delighted!

Sunday sucked. The weather was miserable, lashing down with rain as I checked out of our hotel and faced the journey home. I was a little weary but thankfully not too hungover. Back home, I put in seven hours at the tables but clocked up a measly two cashes out of 18 tournaments, for a -$1k bottom line.

Speedy Downfall

Big anti-climax on the final-table bubble of the $6K Gtd Speed Rebuy. I lose my chip lead in one dramatic all-in, jamming 8.5bb in EP but attracting a call from the second-biggest stack, urgh!

I have a sinking feeling as the SB calls for his remaining 7.8bb, praying he flips over 77—99 and not A-K. In fact he shows A-Jo – possibly a +EV call, but only marginally so because of ICM considerations, as I estimate he will bust about 50% of the time against my EP pushing range. Several stacks are on the brink of elimination, including the BB who has 87% of his stack invested in the BB and should call my shove with any two cards.

So I’m behind, but still have a 40% chance of bagging a monster pot, eliminating the hero-caller, extending my chip lead and putting myself in prime position to dominate the final table, a big favourite to nail the $1,814 top spot.

Alas, five bricks later I’m crippled. I promptly bust in a subsequent four-way all-in and take 10th place.

Sick to the Stomach

God, poker sucks sometimes!

We’re down to the last two tables of iPoker’s $55 buy-in Double Stack Freezeout, the top ten places paid. There is a Belgian calling station on my table and I’m actively looking out for opportunities to play pots with him. He is loose pre-flop, getting himself into tons of trouble spots with dominated hands; and he seems to bet 100% of the time I check the turn, building the pot uncontrollably with marginal hands, and also donking off his chips on massive ill-fated bluffs.

Unfortunately he usually has position on me, but he makes such massive post-flop errors that I’m happy to play for stacks against him with any reasonably strong holding.

Here are a couple of hand-picked selections from our various skirmishes. In this first hand, I have a tight table image and make a loose EP raise with 9-8s. Of course I could get myself into kicker trouble here, but when the loose Belgian is the only caller and I flop top pair, I think I usually have the best hand.

Texas Hold'em NL Tournament 2010/06/07 01:27:28
Table $4,500 Double Stack Freezeout (Buy-In: $50+$5)

Seat 1: Hijack (18,256.50 in chips)
Seat 2: Belgian (43,830.50 in chips)
Seat 3: Button (31,969 in chips)
Seat 4: SB (12,908 in chips)
Seat 5: BB (27,305 in chips)
Seat 6: UTG (17,201.25 in chips)
Seat 7: UTG+1 (10,003.75 in chips)
Seat 8: EP (32,942.75 in chips)
Seat 9: Hero (19,320 in chips)
Seat 10: MP (16,010.50 in chips)

Post Ante 100
Seat 4: Post SB 300
Seat 5: Post BB 600

Pot = 1,900

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Hero [8d 9d]

(3 folds)
Hero: Raise 1,300
(2 folds)
Belgian: Call 1,300
(3 folds)

*** FLOP *** [8c 6d 6h]

Hero: Bet 2,200
Belgian: Call 2,200

*** TURN *** [2d]

Hero: Check
Belgian: Bet 4,450
Hero: Call 4,450

*** RIVER *** [7h]

Hero: Check
Belgian: Bet 17,800
Hero: Allin 11,270

*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 46,870

Belgian: Shows [Js Ks]
Hero: Shows [8d 9d]

Hero: wins 40,340

I believe he would play an overpair more aggressively on the flop (and possibly pre-flop), so when he fires at the turn then shoves the river in position, his range seems highly polarised. I can’t see him shoving a medium strength hand like 9-9, 5-5 or 8-x when he could just check behind, so it feels like a nuts-or-nothing bet.

His pre-flop calling range is super-wide, my hand is under-repped (to a donk my turn check looks like Ace-high, and since I raised in EP it may seem unlikely for me to have hit top pair on this flop), and the pot odds are irresistable to a calling station like me.

Sure enough he shows down King-high and I double up.

Now here’s the killer: just two hands later, I induce the Belgian to get his whole stack in, drawing to just three outs, with one card to come, in a pot that should give me the chip lead. A torrent of obscenities is unleashed as the river card is dealt...

Texas Hold'em NL Tournament 2010/06/07 01:29:49
Table $4,500 Double Stack Freezeout (Buy-In: $50+$5)

Seat 1: EP (17,456.50 in chips)
Seat 2: Belgian (23,810.50 in chips)
Seat 3: Hijack (31,769 in chips)
Seat 4: Cutoff (11,808 in chips)
Seat 5: Button (25,905 in chips)
Seat 6: SB (20,401.25 in chips)
Seat 7: BB (9,803.75 in chips)
Seat 8: UTG (32,742.75 in chips)
Seat 9: Hero (40,240 in chips)
Seat 10: EP (15,810.50 in chips)

Ante 100
Seat 6: Post SB 300
Seat 7: Post BB 600

Pot = 1,900

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Hero [Ac Jc]

UTG: Fold
Hero: Raise (NF) 1,300
(2 folds)
Belgian: Call 1,300
(5 folds)

*** FLOP *** [Kd As 3s]

Hero: Bet 2,500
Belgian: Call 2,500

*** TURN *** [2c]

Hero: Check
Belgian: Bet 4,750
Hero: Raise 36,340
Belgian: Allin 15,160.50

*** RIVER *** [8d]

*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 65,750.50

Belgian: Shows [Ad 8c]
Hero: Shows [Ac Jc]

Belgian: wins 49,321

OUCH! A few hands later I lose a pre-flop all-in with A-Q v K-9s. I manage to hang in there until the bubble, when I am coolered with pocket Eights v Tens, taking 11th place. Hero-to-zero yet again.

A disappointing Sunday, adding to my tally of online losses since my big live score.

On a Positive Note

There was good news from Las Vegas however. While I was punishing my liver at the weekend, fellow Party-plunderer Kevin Howe was punishing Phil Hellmuth and co.

Kev took third place in WSOP Event #8, for a cool quarter of a million dollars. This takes his profits up to half a mill – from just six months of playing poker. It’s the stuff of fairytales!

News From Vegas

2010-06-04T12:35:00.006+01:00

My brother’s stag party takes place this weekend. There was a time when the prospect of all-weekend drinking held greater appeal, but I think I shall make my excuses on Saturday and sidle home. I’ll be back at the tables on Sunday, if I don’t feel like death.

Not much else to report about my own life, so here’s rather more glamorous news from across the Atlantic...

THEKID_88 and his pal Kev (KASABIAN_LSF, former winner of Party’s Monthly Million and $50K Gtd Saturday) have flown to Las Vegas where they will be holidaying for a few weeks and a-gamblin’ it up.

Unsurprisingly they have seen all the big names – Ivey, Negreanu, Brunson, Dwan. And down to business, it sounds as though the holiday has paid for itself already...

THEKID has been playing $1/$3 and has already racked up profits in excess of $1,000, admitting that although he’s run well, the standard of play in the cash games is very poor.

World Series Of Poker

High-rollin’ Kev – not content with his $200k ship on Party and $39k for final-tabling the PokerStars $1,050 Super Tuesday – has entered WSOP Event #8: $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em. Drawing in 2341 players, the tournament offers a stonking top prize of $568,974.

Well, don’t you know Kev has made the final 25! As I write, Las Vegas is well into the early hours, day two has ended and the tournament will conclude tomorrow. Kev has endured a rollercoaster ride, dropping to 2bb after having Aces cracked, but then staging ‘the biggest comeback I’ve seen’ according to tablemate Phil Hellmuth, also among the final 25 players.

So well done to Kev for making it this far, and GL on the final day of the tourney! He is guaranteed at least $16,275 in prize money but no doubt all eyes will be on the top three spots. There are live updates on PokerNews.

May Review: Otherwise Crap Month Salvaged by Landmark Live Score

2010-06-02T23:37:00.016+01:00

The singular highlight of May is fairly easy to spot on my profit chart:

I need to get back on winning form online. Had a few near-misses this month, but there’s room for improvement in my play. More quantity and more quality is called for.

Top Scores To Date

$9,100 at G Casino (May ’10)
$5,440 on PKR (Jan ’10)
$4,048 on bwin (Oct ’09)
$3,308 on Party (Apr ’10)
$3,236 on iPoker (Feb ’10)

My GUKPT Victory in Pretty Pictures

To the victor...

The spoils...

The kudos...

And the adulation of my friends. Thanks Rob - your card has pride of place next to the trophy!

(Erm, please don’t ask me to explain the nickname.)

Weapons of mass destruction. Queen-Eight offsuit – the winning hand of the tournament, outflanking my foe’s K-Ts to take his last 8 big blinds.

The only slight disappointment was receiving my prize money in the form of a regular cheque. I rather hoped for one of those giant-sized cheques they present to lottery winners!

Earlier in the week I scribbled down some details about key hands from day two of the tourney, so a write-up will follow in the next few days.

Web Player Pwns Live Regs

2010-05-29T23:37:00.005+01:00

Stop press! Live regulars owned at their own game by figure-of-fun internet gamer...

Seven more hours of grind, and yours truly emerged victorious from the £275 GUKPT Summer Series tourney.

For my trouble I’ve taken home

* A funky GUKPT trophy, woohoo!
* £6,260 in prize money
* Plus I’ve also gained free entry into a Champion of Champions event in Coventry in December.

The first prize (equivalent to about $9k) is my biggest cash to date, my first outright win in a relatively high-stakes tourney, and it dwarfs my one previous cash in a live tourney, exactly one year ago.

Needless to say I won about 95 coin flips and bingo’d the buggery out of everyone on the final table weeeeeeeee...

Joking aside, the game was significantly softer than I expected for this buy-in level, and even on the final table many of my opponents had massive leaks. I won’t say it was a super-easy game, and you can only have so much of a skill edge in high-blind play, but I felt I was easily in the top 5% of players.

I give myself 8/10 for my play on day one and 9/10 for day two, with just one hand from the final table where I regret a sort of crying call when I could have made a big lay-down. A full match report will follow in due course.

Feeling very pleased with myself and on a huge high.

Summer Lovin’

2010-05-29T10:09:00.007+01:00

Here’s a novelty – blogging about a tournament that hasn’t yet completed.

Today is day 2 of the GUKPT Summer Series Event #3, and yours truly is among the 17 remaining players. Get me!

The live tourney ran for seven hours last night, and will conclude today. 81 competitors put up the £250+25 buy-in, and the top ten finishers will share the £20,250 prize pool.

Carnage

We started with 200bb and within the first few hours I had built my stack from 10k to nearly 30k.

Despite the deep starting stack and 40 minute blind levels, seven players managed to bust out on level 1! So, not that different from playing donkaments online... (although to be fair there was a set-over-set cooler on my initial table).

Incredibly I managed to flop three sets in the first few blind levels. I got paid with top set after raising J-J utg; although I got four callers, there were only some tenuous flopped straight possibilities to worry about on the J-T-8 flop. My c-bet attracted two callers but thankfully a brick fell on the turn; I took down the pot with a second bet.

Computer Nerd

I won a much bigger pot with a set of Nines on about level 3, nearly doubling up, in a hilarious hand.

The villain was one of two cocky Asian guys sat to my immediate right. He was opening a LOT of pots, and there was much macho posturing. For example there was some silly talk about how if one of them had won a certain pot he ‘would have won the tournament’. Maybe he was talking about another tournament but it sounded ridiculous.

There was also some banter as they jibed me for being quite obviously a relative ‘noob’ to live play (quipping ‘have I seen you on the internet before?’ much to the amusement of my tablemates!)

Clearly I wore a T-shirt saying ‘internet player’ as similar jokes were made at my previous table too, sigh. :)

Aggro Station

The villain opened from MP and I 3-bet 9-9 on the button. He called out of position and the flop came K-9-4 with two spades. I c-bet 1,800 and he check-raised to 4,400.

In a recent interview Annette Obrestad dubbed a certain sort of opponent the ‘aggro station’, and it crossed my mind that this guy was over-confident that he could run me over. Of course it’s not too hard to win pots when you flop sets...

I don’t know how good he is – if he’s halfway competent his line is more consistent with a draw or air as he should check-call with A-K – but in any event it seemed best to flat-call his raise and let him hang himself on the turn, hopefully firing another bluff or overplaying his top pair type hand.

I thought for a while and flatted his raise. He fired again for just over 5k on the blank turn. I counted out my chips – I had less than 6k left. I said ‘all in’ and before I could push my chips over the line he SNAP-folded!!!!! Haha.

He never even looked at how many chips I had, and couldn’t have had any draw as he was obviously pot-committed with any semblance of a hand. Easy money – thank you aggro station.

Spew

I treaded water for a few hours, raise-folded a few times, and successfully spewed 6.5k in a hand by 3-betting light with 9-8o in the BB over a fairly active player’s MP raise. I had a slightly awkward stack size of around 35bb and folding pre-flop may have been the better play.

He called my re-raise in position and the flop came a hopeless Q-J-5 with two spades. It seemed spewy to bet-fold here given my stack, and I would much prefer to c-bet a drier flop. I cut my losses and check-folded. Perplexingly he showed just one of his cards, a Five! Whether this means he made a loose call with A-5s, or had flopped a set and wanted to keep me guessing, I’m not sure.

Anyhow, whichever his holding, I suppose my 3-bet-and-bet-most-flops line should be profitable in the long run if he’s making such light pre-flop calls.

Card Rack

It all started happening in the last two hours of the night. My stack down to 17k—19k and the blinds and antes adding up to an initial pot of 2300, I made some LP open-shoves, none of which were called.

Up to about 20k, with around 22 players remaining, I had a lucky double-up when I jammed 6-5s over the SB’s open-raise. I had seem him raise-fold before, and even if called my hand usually has a ton of equity so long as he doesn’t have a pocket pair 66+. He called with A-Js, argh bad timing. However I flopped a Six and he failed to improve. He was crippled and I was now in a much more comfortable position.

I picked up another 11k when a guy made a rather marginal shove with A-3s over my MP raise. Although I perhaps had a slightly loose image, he had next to no fold equity and I think the play was borne more out of desperation than anything else. I flipped over my pocket Tens, and although he picked up a flush draw on the turn, the river bricked and I won another bunch of chips.

A little while and a table break later, the same guy jammed his last 12bb from the hijack position. I found Sevens in the cutoff and had to decide between jamming or flat-calling. At this point I had a good 50bb; only one player behind me, the BB, had a stack worth worrying about. I reckon he had 30—40bb, and although I wasn’t thrilled about pushing into him, I figured his overcalling range would be pretty tight and that he would have to lay down some better hands like 9-9, especially since we were down to the last 18—19 players. I announced ‘all-in’, and thankfully everyone behind folded.

Even better, the raiser flipped over 4-4. I had him strangled, and he failed to improve. ul gg!

Raising the Roof

The hand that’s keeping me awake at night was on level 10, five or six hands from the end of the session, in which I went head to head with a fellow biggish stack.

I begin the hand with 67k, the blinds 600/1200 with a 100 ante. I raise to 3k with A-Qo in EP and it is folded to the BB who opts to defend his blind (which you see a lot in live games, in my experience).

The flop comes K-K-T and it goes check-check.

A Six arrives on the turn, putting two hearts on the board. He bets 3,500. He could definitely have a King here, but he can also have a Ten, a draw, maybe a pocket pair like 9-9, or possibly air.

I can credibly represent a King here, and opt to raise, to try and make him lay down a hand that is beating me like T-x. I also get some extra value from his draws, and it seems unlikely he would 3-bet bluff me off the best hand given the strength I have shown in EP.

I make it 10,500. He asks how many chips I have behind, then after some thought he calls the extra 7k. I’m ready to shut down – he can definitely have a King here and unless the miracle Jack comes (which could still lose me the hand) my hand has little showdown value. There’s a possibility I could check behind on the river and win with Ace-high against something like A-x of hearts or Q-J.

The river is an offsuit Jack! I have spiked the broadway straight.

He bets very weakly, just 5,100. My gut feeling is that this is a blocking bet with trips, and I stew for a couple of minutes over the possibility of raising for value, and if so, whether to hoover-raise small, jam, or find some intermediate raise size.

I’m only really worried about K-T, K-J and 6-6 as most other full house combinations seem unlikely.

However I seriously consider the possibility he’s making a tricky play with the nuts or near-nuts – a very similar scenario from the SCOOP $50 rebuy flashes through my mind, where a guy bet-shoved a boat and I ended up making a crying call with my straight, urgh.

In the end I sheepishly flat-call, fearing the nightmare re-raise possibility.

As I announce I have a straight, from the way his face changes I instantly know he has trip Kings. Disgusted, he yells an obscenity and slams his fists down on the table!!!

Oopsie, don’t think I’ve made any new friends...

I could definitely have extracted at least another 9k of value, and I was kicking myself all the way home last night for failing to capitalise on the miracle river card.

I have 85k now (50—60bb), almost double the average stack. Anything can happen today and everything can change in a couple of hands, but I feel confident in my game. GL me!

My Favourite Donkament

2010-05-27T15:51:00.004+01:00

I’ve had a couple of sickening near-misses in iPoker’s six-seater $25 Rebuy this month. It’s one of my favourite tournaments, though I’ve only actually won it once – that was a whole year back. I think I’m due another shot at the top spot...

Hero-to-Zero (part 1)

At the start of May I nearly made the final table of the six-max MTT.

Eight players remain, so we’re four-handed. The chip leader is on my table and we go head to head. He’s a donkey – a total calling station, and has a propensity to make desperate river bluffs that make no sense at all.

Thanks to his generous chip donations I have one of the bigger stacks, a healthy 37bb.

The blinds are 1k / 2k with a 200 ante. The donkey min-raises to 4k from the button and I’m in the BB with Q-Jo.

Given the strong implied odds I relish the chance to play another pot against the table muppet, even out of position. I flat-call and flop trips on the Q-Q-8 rainbow board, weeee!

I donkbet half the pot - I’ve never seen him fold to a flop bet, and he probably won’t believe I have trips. I think it’s just a cold deck if he has 8-8 / K-Q / A-Q.

He calls.

Turn is a blank (a Five, completing the rainbow board).
I bet 9k into 17,800.

He calls.

River is an Ace. Based on watching his previous play, I think it’s absolutely possible he’s called me down with Ace-high... so here’s hoping...

I bet 24k into 35,800 (leaving myself with just 32k behind).

He shoves. I think he’s dim enough to do this with an Ace, and he could have trips with a better or worse kicker.

I call and he flips over pocket Aces. AAAAAARRRRGGGGH!

So I bust in 8th for $400. With his now ridiculous chip lead, he wins the thing for $2,700.

Hero-to-Zero (part 2)

Last Thursday I made it to the final table of the same tourney.

Four-handed I have 20bb and pick up A-Qo in the SB. It’s folded to me and open-shoving is undoubtedly a good option, what with the sizeable antes making for a substantial pot. Against many players this might be the most +EV play and is certainly unexploitable. However the rather loose BB rarely folds his blind to a raise, and several times has re-raised all-in over LP open-raises, leading me to suspect he may make light 3-bets.

Since he is loose, I expect a c-bet to take down the pot most of the time. So although it’s a higher-variance route than open-shoving, I opt to make it 3bb to go. He flat-calls.

The A-7-3 flop is fairly dry except for a possible heart draw. I c-bet just over half the pot and he calls – hmmph.

I really thought he would push all-in pre-flop with any Ace, but by the same token it’s hard to put him on a set since I figure he would push any pocket pair as well. I reckon he could be bluff-catching with something like 8-7 for second pair, or perhaps chasing a flush draw.

A fairly innocuous offsuit Five falls on the turn. My stack is shallow, I get it all-in and he calls. He has 6-4s for a turned straight – yes he chased a f***ing gutshot draw with just four outs and no odds. Sigh.

Well, that’s exactly the kind of post-flop error I was rooting for him to make, so I shouldn’t complain. A choice four-letter word was uttered at the time, mind.

I take $760 for 4th place. The suckoutmeister ultimately finds himself heads-up against the other worst player at the table – but despite his foe being weak-loose-passive, has to settle for 2nd place and $1,800. The passive player miraculously ships the tourney for $2,400. Every donk has his day. :)

Back To The Grind

I haven’t been playing perfectly and there’s always room for improvement. Even so, I think I’ve managed to justify to myself that – in the main – I’m just getting unlucky in my tourneys, and that fat pay cheque should be just around the corner.

This evening I’ll be returning to my usual online tourneys, and tomorrow for a change I’m thinking of entering a live game. Our local G Casino is hosting a ‘GUKPT Summer Series’ NLHE tournament which has taken my fancy. The £275 buy-in is a little bit higher than I would normally pay online, but it won’t hurt my bankroll too much as a one-off.

Assuming I’m not eliminated in the first ten minutes on an ill-fated bluff given away by my trademark flaring-nostril tell, or hospitalised by an angry competitor after I two-outer him and put the boot in by insulting his grandmother, I’ll report back with any interesting action.

Wish me luck...

Calling Canada

2010-05-27T14:22:00.005+01:00

Tournament highlights from the last couple of weeks can be counted on one hand.

Sunday 16th was a good day, though it didn’t start well. Initially I ran well in two of the majors but ‘no cigar’...

Major Disappointment

I had one of my more successful stabs at iPoker’s $250,000 Guaranteed ($320 buy-in). I doubled early, but eventually busted with Aces (obv!)

I make a standard preflop raise in EP, committing nearly 10% of my stack, and the villain calls in position. Flop is an ugly J-T-7 drawfest with two hearts. I bet; he shoves. Don't see how I can fold here... he flips over Jacks for a set. Meh.

I've tinkered with PokerStove and I feel happy with my play: I reckon I'm at least 60—65% against his shoving range there.

I acquired a top-ten stack in Absolute’s $200K GTD ($215 buy-in). With about 300 of the 903 entrants remaining, I managed to induce another fairly big stack to 4-bet-shove pocket Fives into my Aces. There was a heap of dead money in the pot too – but it was destined for my foe’s stack as the dreaded Five hit on the flop. That was for nearly all my chips and I would’ve should’ve could’ve been the chip leader. Meh.

Things started to look up as I got deeper and deeper in PokerStars’ SCOOP Main Event ($109 buy-in). It was a case of ‘two steps forward, one step back’ as my stack dramatically ping-ponged back and forth between 20bb and 100bb, but as we entered the early hours of Monday it looked like I could be playing for some time yet.

Getting remotely close to the final table would of course be a long shot, against a field of over 19,000 entrants, but it proved to be a much softer game than the $50 rebuy I played earlier in the SCOOP tournament series.

Into The Early Hours

At 2:30am, feeling optimistic about my chances in the SCOOP M.E. but having busted from most of my other games, I took the plunge and registered for PKR’s $3K Gtd Canadian Open ($44 buy-in, 77 entrants).

Come 6am I finally busted from the M.E., placing just inside the top 1000 players for $403, but I had a good stack in the PKR game as I found myself at the final table.

I had a LOT of fun with my big stack on the bubble and on the FT, at one point open-shoving six consecutive hands as most of my opponents had sub-15bb stacks and nobody seemed to want to be the bubble boy!

It wasn’t plain sailing on the final table: I lost my chip lead twice over by running into big hands, but each time steadily managed to regain my former position. By 7am I was nodding off, but had the chip lead as heads-up play commenced. After staying up all night I was NOT prepared to come second!

My chirpy Canadian foe remarked ‘you are very tough! How many years have you been playing poker?’ It’s nice to have my ego massaged for once, instead of being told what a donk I am...

Incidentally I have a female avatar on PKR (together with a gender-neutral screen name) and although I’m certain not everyone is fooled by this, I wonder if some people do have lower expectations of my play ’cos I’m a ‘girl’!

Ultimately I took the tourney down for $862 – and no small confidence boost. A net profit of £540 was not bad compensation for my nightshift.

Cashing In

2010-05-27T12:43:00.003+01:00

My break-even spell continues. I haven’t been putting in as much volume as usual, something I shall have to rectify over the coming weeks.

Since my last blog entry I’m approximately:

+£500 from cash games
-£500 from tournaments

You do the maths!

In fact I have made more money from the fluctuating exchange rate than from playing poker: I’ve gained several hundred quid due to the strengthening US dollar, and accordingly I’ve taken the opportunity to withdraw a heap of money from my dollar accounts such as Party and Absolute Poker.

As an experiment I’ve been playing 1—2 tables of £0.25/0.50 or £0.50/£1.00 in addition to my regular tournaments. Thus far the cash games have had the intended effect of lowering my variance, and it’s been fun to do something a bit different. Actually I haven’t had a single losing session at the cash tables lately.

Which begs the question: WTF am I doing tormenting myself with luckbox flipfest tournaments?

Cool Hand Poker

Poker is easy when you spike a boat versus a lower boat: :)

No-Limit Hold'em, £0.25/£0.50 BB (6 handed)

UTG (£50)
MP (£168.89)
CO (£49.45)
Hero (Button) (£76.38)
SB (£76.32)
BB (£52.53)

Preflop: Hero is Button with [Td Ts]
1 fold, MP calls £0.50, CO bets £1.50, Hero raises to £4.80, 3 folds, CO calls £3.30

Flop: (pot £10.85) [Ac 8d 5h] (2 players)
CO checks, Hero bets £5, CO calls £5

(Naturally I’m intending to shut down after he calls my c-bet on this dry board. At a pinch I suppose I could be beating 9-9?!)

Turn: (pot £20.85) [Ac 8d 5h] [Ad]
CO checks, Hero checks

(The second Ace changes nothing: I’m still either way ahead or way behind.)

River: (pot £20.85) [Ac 8d 5h Ad] [Th]
CO bets £12.50, Hero raises to £39.65, CO calls £27.15 (All-In)

(Bingo! It’s pretty sick if he has A-T or the more unlikely A-A, but he should stack off with several worse hands so I have to shove for value.)

Total pot: £100.15 | Rake: £1.80

Results:
Hero had [Td Ts] (full house, Tens over Aces).
CO had [5s 5d] (full house, Fives over Aces).

Outcome: Hero won £98.35 pot with full house, Tens over Aces

One Equation At A Time

2010-05-16T15:01:00.010+01:00

Monday 3rd May. Played some shit-hot poker – REALLY pleased with myself. :)

I’ve been having a crack at a few SCOOP events on PokerStars (Spring Championship of Online Poker). There are low-, mid- and high-stakes versions of each game in the tournament series, but I’ve been mainly sticking with the low buy-in games. The high-stakes games include $2,000 freezeouts and $500 rebuys, yikes!

The games feature large fields, large prize guarantees, large stacks, and lots of play due to the slow blind structures, yet some affordable buy-ins. Naturally this means the probability of winning is very, very small, but what the hell – it’s fun to buy a lottery ticket every now and then.

Event #3, a six-max rebuy, has been my favourite so far; I played the low- and mid-stakes versions, with $5 and $55 buy-ins respectively. I think I should have gone deeper in the low-stakes game, as I got off to a great start but (close to the money) ultimately made a slightly rash play against a player who was probably not good enough to fold. Indeed I think I sometimes have a problem taking the lower buy-in games as seriously as the bigger games, which is obviously senseless.

Choosing My Battles

However I’m super-happy with 98% of my play in the mid-stakes 50r. As I’ve mentioned previously I love the six-max format, as you often get to stay at the same table for long periods and really get to know your opponents, and there are lots of opportunities to play pots against the fishiest players at the table.

As the tourney progressed and I made it to the money, the game became tougher than $50-rebuy tourneys I have played on any other site. Nevertheless, even in the late stages, there was a mixture of strong and weaker players on every table.

There weren’t any donks of the same calibre I see on Party or iPoker, but even on my last, toughest table, I identified leaks in certain opponents’ games that I was able to exploit. Fortunately the six-max format does to a certain extent allow you to ‘choose your battles’, in that I would frequently try to isolate the players with the biggest leaks and play pots heads-up with them.

Call My Bluff

For example there was one player who, having raised from early/mid position, almost NEVER folded to any of my 3-bets; he would call out-of-position with holdings as weak as A-9. I didn’t get to see too many of his hands at showdown, but I inferred that he could rarely hit a flop very hard playing such a wide range. Even though I was playing fairly tightly compared to other, more aggressive players at the table, he failed in my opinion to adjust specifically to my play.

Knowing that he would often have weak or medium strength hands at best, and having position on him each time, I managed to make some good value bets with strong hands, lost the minimum when he out-flopped me, and also won some chunky pots with ballsy multi-street bluffs, since I (correctly) figured he would not have a hand strong enough to check/call several barrels.

Ultimately I placed 349th out of 4444, not amazing but not to be sniffed at. My $295 cash is a relatively modest return on my $105 investment, but the game was a great experience and a big confidence boost, as I felt I could really hold my own even against tougher opposition than I’m usually faced with.

I was using every weapon in my arsenal: selective two-barrelled bluffs, bluff-raises on the river, thin-value raises when I thought my foe was making a blocker-bet on the river, four-bet-bluffs pre-flop, and a couple of three-bet stone bluffs on the flop over some of my more frisky opponents... I also hero-called a 3-barrelled bluff with an unimproved mid pair, securing a very tasty pot against a player who I thought was tilting.

Bluffing is FUN. :)

Poker Star

I don’t normally play much on PokerStars as it’s one of the toughest sites, and a lot of the tournaments have HUGE fields making them very high-variance affairs.

Nevertheless I’m pleased with my recent results in their low-stakes tourneys, and seem to have been finishing in the money very frequently considering the size of most of the games I’ve been entering (see pic).

I don’t think I’ve ever won a MTT on Stars, I’m not even breaking even on my tourney buy-ins, and it’s not going to become my ‘main site’ any time soon, but I shall continue to play a small number of games on there for the experience and for the possibility of winning a game against a big field.

Three is a Magic Number

Monday 10th May. Played some reasonable poker – fairly chuffed. I racked up a couple of third places: 3/302 in Party’s $10K Gtd Speed Rebuy for $975, and 3/67 in Absolute Poker’s $8K GTD (1R+1A) for $1,080. Both a mite disappointing in the end (the Speed Rebuy awarded $2,900 for first; the $50 rebuy $2,320) but I ran fairly well to get that far.

Short-handed in the $8K I lost my chip lead when I was ‘coolered’ with two pair v a set, then had my Aces cracked to finally bust out, but I sucked out a bunch to get that far so I’d better not complain. $1k is not a bad return on my $155 buy-in, considering the relatively small and not super-tough field.

I’m running pretty well on Absolute. It’s only based on a small sample of MTT results, but my Sharkscope graph looks highly respectable thus far:

ZAP! POW!

Friday 14th May. Played like shit – REALLY unhappy with some of my play. A little tired, a bit impatient, and sorta playing on autopilot. Not good.

Most notably I ‘stationed’ off a ton of chips with what, deep down, I suspected was the second-best hand, several times over. Being a payoff-wizard (or POW, as I signify it in player notes) is my biggest leak, and it’s exacerbated when I’m tilted, tired, bored, impatient, etc.

When I’m on form, when I’m playing my AA-game, I suppress my tendency to be a calling station and I bring myself to make those loathsome lay-downs. But at my worst, the latent station inside me resolves to give away all my hard-won chips, unable to resist the allure of the go-on-just-click-me CALL button on the river. ‘But I have a set... he might be bluffing a missed flush draw...’

Miraculously I only lost a hundred quid or so over the day, owing to a couple of final table finishes (8th in both the $55 Speed and the $66 Speed on Party).

One Equation At A Time

Saturday 15th May. Day off required! Put my feet up, had a good natter to some friends online, and tucked into my latest book purchase, the long-awaited Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand at a Time: Volume II which arrived a few days ago courtesy of Amazon.

Volume I ranks as one of my top five poker strategy books, and I’m not at all disappointed with Volume II. I’ve always said that poker is a game for people who think spreadsheets are ‘cool’. Well, Volume II is a geek’s delight, with lots of in-depth EV analysis of tricky, commonly occurring hand scenarios.

Indeed many of the analyses are very much reminiscent of Excel spreadsheets I’ve rustled up in the past, to work out optimal bet sizing or shove/calling ranges.

There are some absolute gems in the book, such as Apestyles’s six-page analysis of how to play A-Qo, out of position, having whiffed the flop in a 3-bet pot when his opponent has an awkward stack size of 1.5x the pot. Apestyles concedes that he had never analysed this scenario in such detail before, and that he’s probably been misplaying hands for years prior to this case study!

Sunday Warm-Up

Sunday 16th May (today). I’ve been for a jog – I can’t say it was pleasant, since I’ve not been for a couple of weeks and frankly it showed. Feeling bright and breezy now though. :)

Returned from my jog and cranked up some techno (including some old favourites). A blast of great dance music in morning (turned up to 18 on our living room hi-fi) is better than caffeine for picking me up. Thank the good Lord for subwoofers and detached housing.

Made a batch of pesto – three jars’ worth, after I’d set aside a big blob for my death-by-pasta lunchtime feast. Pesto is the food of the gods, and homemade stuff is so much better than the premade pesto you buy in supermarkets.

Now it’s pokertime. GL me!

April Review

2010-05-12T11:20:00.002+01:00

A friend of mine remarked that my life as a poker pro sounds ‘glamorous’. Is it glamorous?

It certainly has its upsides. There are all the plus points of being self-employed – I can work my own hours, take time off when I like – together with the advantages of working from home. No daily commute, and I can play in my dressing gown if I so choose!

Moreover, there is a real sense that, like starting out in business, the sky’s the limit: there’s no artificial constraint on my wage, no industry-imposed career path, no need to negotiate pay rises. I can risk as much or as little as I care to, and (variance notwithstanding) I’m paid exactly what I’m worth.

And let’s not gloss over the fact I’m essentially getting paid to play a game. Call me a professional sportsman, if you like!

Downsides & Downswings

Grinding tournaments is no bed of roses, of course. To quote PokerPlayer magazine, from this month’s interview with Chris Moorman:

‘The life of an online tournament pro...is distinctly unglamorous. It’s a life of takeaways, five-minute toilet breaks and frenzied mouse-clicking.’

There is definitely a health trade-off – not that my previous life as a computer programmer exactly promoted an active lifestyle or was kind to my eyesight! I’m sat on my arse all day, and my diet is markedly worse than it used to be.

And then there’s the variance. The good times are great, but the bad times, well they really suck. There is no minimum wage in this profession – in fact I’ve gone two-and-a-half months without making any profit whatsoever (see graph below). This is rather sobering!

In stark contrast, before that I managed to rack up $17,500 (over £11,000) in a period of less than eight weeks. This is the life I have chosen.

Losing The Plot

Another of my friends was shocked when I told her how much money I’d blown in one day. She said ‘don’t you sometimes cry yourself to sleep knowing you’ve just lost £XXXX?’

Well I’ve never got deeply upset over any of my losses, but it’s an interesting question. Naturally one becomes conditioned to ever bigger swings, but there is always some level of losses that is going to really sting. I can rationalise to myself that losing a couple of $k is no big deal in the grand scheme of things (it’s only a small proportion of my bankroll), though occasionally when I have a truly dreadful couple of days, burn $3k in buy-ins and win next to nothing – not even one final-table finish – I retire to bed with a sigh and a slightly hollow feeling in my stomach.

There have been one or two horrid hands and brutal river cards that have left me reeling too; those ‘so near yet so far’ moments, when you are inches from winning serious money, but the poker gods have other ideas.

Greater than any of those things though, is the pain of knowing I ballsed up! The knowledge that my mistake cost me money is, for me, the biggest kick in the gut; and for that matter it’s the one event that tilts me more than anything else.

However, this emotional investment in my own performance cuts both ways. Playing (in my mind) expertly, and being rewarded, is an unbeatable feeling. And I readily anticipate my next big reward – it’s long overdue.

If I can stop busting out in sixth f**king place in tournaments, I might break this cycle of breaking even...

Highlights of April 2010

A. 01-Apr
$700 - 4/370 in Party’s $10K Gtd Rebuy ($9 buy-in)
2x $640 seats – Monthly Million satellites ($70 & $172 buy-ins)

B. 07-Apr
$2,700 – 1/265 in $10K Gtd Speed Rebuy ($11 buy-in)
$852 – 5/111 in $12K Gtd ($109 buy-in)

C. 18-Apr
$3,308 – 1/151 in Party’s $10K Gtd Rebuy ($33 buy-in)
$742 – 5/190 in Absolute’s $7.5K GTD Rebuy ($22 buy-in)
$594 – 7/457 in PokerStars Turbo ($44 buy-in)
$464 – 6/180 in Party’s $7K Gtd ($33 buy-in)

D. 28-Apr
$640 – 2/194 in iPoker’s $5,000 GP Rebuy ($7.70 buy-in)
$448 – 6/100 in Party’s $7K Gtd Speed Rebuy ($22 buy-in)

E. 29-Apr
$640 seat – Monthly Million satellite ($70 buy-in)
$580 – 6/150 in $10K Gtd Rebuy ($22 buy-in)
$318 – 8/300 in $10K Gtd Speed Rebuy ($11 buy-in)
$280 – 6/690 in $7K Gtd ($9 buy-in)

F. 30-Apr
$1,105 – 6/278 in iPoker’s $20,000 GP Rebuy ($33 buy-in)
$771 – 3/257 in PKR’s $5,000 GTD Late Night 6 seater ($33 buy-in)
$640 seat – Party’s Monthly Million satellite ($70 buy-in)
$508 – 6/517 in $8K Gtd Rebuy ($9 buy-in)

Donkism of the Day

2010-04-27T00:18:00.006+01:00

Most low-stakes NLHE players will have borne witness to ‘I put you on Ace-King’ syndrome. It’s the old story... you raise from EP... a donk calls with unpaired hole cards, flops one pair, and proceeds to push all-in. All very well when the raiser has an unimproved A-x type hand; not so good when he has an overpair.

A parallel scenario: an EP player pushes all-in for 12bb; a donk calls the shove with a small pair like 6-6. The donk is essentially gambling that he is up against A-Q or A-K, as opposed to 9-9 or Q-Q. As if he can possibly know what hand you have! This is ‘I put you on Ace-King’ syndrome. They ‘put’ you on the hand they PRAY you have...

Double Soul Read

It’s a low-stakes satellite on Virgin Poker, on the Boss network. I shove 9bb from EP with A-J. The player on my immediate left quickly shoves for 10bb – oh dear. :(

Then to top it off, the big stack in the cutoff overcalls! He has another 42bb behind, but merely flat-calls the shove rather than reraising to isolate. It looks ominous.

The first caller has T-T. The flop comes Jack high – I have him crushed! For what it’s worth, the turn delivers another Jack. I’m set to triple up.

The river looks like a blank, the board now 8-5-J-J-7 with no possible flush draws.

But hang on... the pot is scooped by the overcaller. He called the two EP shoves with... T-9 suited. And rivered a straight.

Erm, wtf?!

Thankfully a rational explanation is on hand. You really couldn’t make this stuff up:

Hero: genius
Dude With Pocket Tens: how can you call?
Donkey: put you on AQ and AK

Forever Blowing Bubbles

2010-04-26T20:58:00.021+01:00

How can I bubble EVERYTHING?!

Okay, slight exaggeration, but I did bubble five games last night. Here come the edited lowlights of my Sunday grind:

Set-Up

I didn’t waste too much time on Party’s $300K Guaranteed Sunday this week! I donated 62% of my 83bb stack on level 2 with a set of Threes. Could have been worse, but actually I think I could have lost less.

It’s a five-way, raised pot and everyone checks the fairly dry 9-7-3 rainbow flop. A four on the turn puts a possible straight on the board, but completes the rainbow board. UTG+1 pots it; I flat-call in position, everyone else folds.

The turn is a Jack. He thinks for a good while before betting 2/3 the pot, approximately half my stack. I feel I’m being taken to value town! My hand is sort of under-repped, and sort of not. I mean, I’m supposed to have something like a set to play a big pot here. Weirdly, on this board, in what was a multi-way pot, and given the flop check, it’s hard to imagine many hands worse than bottom set that would two-barrel, and I wonder if this is a spot where you can get away from a set fairly cheaply.

Well, I didn’t! I flat-called and paid off his flopped set of Nines. It was the straight possibility, more than anything, that saved me from raising at any point in the hand. But I overlooked a crucial piece of information: he was the pre-flop raiser. UTG limped, and UTG+1 raised to 4bb with 9-9. It would be very unusual for him to have 6-5!

In the midst of multi-tabling, I failed to notice that it was the UTG+1 player, not UTG, that made the raise; UTG actually limp-called. So with hindsight, his line absolutely stinks of a set (whether flopped or turned). Funny how the most deceptive line would have been for him to c-bet the dry flop!

Call Me

$33 Rebuy. 18 left, 16 paid. I fared reasonably well until a little setback where I jammed 8-8 into Q-Q; now I’m one of the shorter stacks.

I find Q-Q, a sight for sore eyes! I push my last 9bb utg. I’m hesitantly called by 9-9 (great!) and overcalled by K-K (not so great!) Game over. Fairly standard.

The Bubble That Wasn’t

PKR’s $130 buy-in $25,000 GTD Sunday Classic begins badly as I lose a big pot with pocket Queens on level 1. However after wallowing in mediocre stackdom for ages, chipping up very slowly, a late rush of cards sees me suddenly surge into the ranks of the biggest stacks. Tournament poker for you!

85% of the 229-strong field have been eliminated. It’s bubble time – 31 left, 30 paid. I have a loose image after an earlier shove-frenzy: when there were 41—42 players left I mistakenly thought the top 40 spots were paid and that it was the bubble (d’oh) so I was pushing all-in like it was going out of fashion!

Indeed I received a torrent of abuse from one guy (‘learn to play poker!’) after he finally hero-called one of my EP shoves and I flipped over T-8s. Well, I had everyone at the table covered, most had very short stacks in relation to the blinds and antes, and everyone was folding, so it seemed a good risk-reward ratio. Unfortunately for said player, my titanic Ten-high got the better of his K-Ts, a rivered straight sending him to the rail in 42nd place. How I larfed.

So back to the ACTUAL bubble, 31 players left, I mistakenly believed I was already in the money! Not that I would have played my hand any differently...

Flipping For Fun

Once again, lucky Queens in EP. I have a relatively good 21bb and raise it up to 2.2bb. The guy on my immediate left shoves 25bb. Sigh, I can’t be very far ahead of his range here, but I have to gamble. Win this showdown, and I would take the chip lead and surely be favourite to take down the $6,870 first prize!

He reveals A-Ks and catches an Ace on the turn. Meh. Bubbling doesn’t bother me per se – it’s only $247 for coming 30th. I suppose I took a bullet for all the micro-stacks who were clinging on for dear life. :)

Pocket Queens not doing me many favours today! Aren’t they supposed to be the third-best starting hand...

Poetic justice for the bubble bully?

Small World

Tense bubbles are par for the course in Party’s smaller-field tournaments, and the late-night $22 Speed is no exception. Unlucky gashminge (er, nice name!) takes 5th place, gambling pocket Tens against a light utg raise and losing to K-Jo.

Now there are 4 left, 3 paid. I’m second in chips and a desperate Wodny has just 2.5bb, another guy wielding just 5bb to my 12bb. I’m carefully avoiding the 28bb stack, who thankfully is on my immediate right.

The stakes are small, but it would be nice to win something half-decent before the day is up! Biggest cash of the day so far = €225 for placing 5/96 in Virgin’s €3,000 Guaranteed.

Alas victory begins to slip through my fingers...

Fall From Grace

The shorty doubles with Q-9s against A-K.
I am compelled to call a 3bb shove in the BB with A-4o, and lose to A-9s.

But no sweat, a couple of uncalled shoves and I’m second in chips again with 11bb, and the shorty is back down to 3.5bb...

I push Q-7o from the button into the shorty (SB) and the 7bb stack (BB), reasoning that (with the SB so close to extinction) the BB can hardly ever call if the SB folds. As for Wodny in the SB, I think he is capable of folding weaker hands here...

He value-calls with J-9s and wins the flip. Gah! No matter, I’m still in it, but now there are three of us roughly equi-stacked.

A few hands later the button pushes 3.5bb into my BB. I have little choice but to call with pocket Sixes, though it’s for 55% of my chips and I know I will often be flipping here.

My 6-6 loses to A-9s.

How the mighty have fallen! Now I’m the micro-stack. A series of junk hands and an absence of fold equity condemn me to the horrid UTG ‘shove and pray’ fate. At least I’m shoving into the big stack’s BB; the mid-stacks should be somewhat averse to making light calls with the big stack behind, and as it happens my 7-6o isn’t the worst hand imaginable (42% against a random hand).

I lose to the BB’s J-8o. gg

Single Table Torture

I’m sure anybody who has played many sit’n’gos will have muttered ‘standard’ at some point here. With just three spots paid and no massive premium for coming first, these small-field MTTs essentially become STTs in the later stages, and low-stacked bubble play is a high-variance business. I kinda respect people who grind SNGs successfully, but personally I think it would drive me mental.

Testament to the high-variance nature of STTs, is a quote from the pages of this month’s Poker Player magazine:

‘300 games is a pretty small sample size for SNGs. You should be looking at more like 3,000 games to get a good idea of your win rate.’

Umm, rather you than me!

Loaded

In the $8K Gtd I enjoyed a top-three stack for much of the tournament, having won a monstrous pot with pocket Queens just 55 minutes into the game.

The $8K is frankly hilarious. The following hand is not atypical of the standard of play in this $33 buy-in tournament:

UTG limps;
UTG+1, I make it 4bb with Q-Q (committing 9% of my stack);
Three early position players cold-call (one of them committing 28% of his stack!)

The big blind jams 11bb... with A-6o. Well, I suppose he’s getting semi-reasonable value IF he gets the pot heads-up against me!

I’m thankful he has re-opened the betting, and promptly jam to isolate.

The UTG+2 player calls with A-Ks... fair enough. I’m 55% to scoop the 70bb pot. A-6o has 9% equity!

Five blanks fall, it’s a double knock-out, and I’m minted. :)

The Mighty Fall (Again)

With so many chips at my disposal, I’m easily able to coast to the late stages, but as it happens I go card-dead and enjoy minimal success in building my stack further. I find you can’t get away with playing too loosely in these donkaments, so you do need to pick up a hand or two.

I make it to the money but my luck is all over the place. Lots of preflop pushing action; not a lot of doubling up. I get lucky with Fives against Aces, I get unlucky with Nines against Fives. ‘V’ for Variance!

The blind structure of these tournaments isn’t great – the late stages invariably descend into an open-jam fest. Still, it’s +EV with so many muppets about, and the prize money is decent at over $2k for first.

Not that I get within grabbing distance of the big bucks. I peak at 47,000 chips, but lose a heap after a calling station with sub-19bb decides to defend his BB with 5-3o (gc m8) obviously flopping a Five. I fire at the turn with my pair of Fours and he calls. I don’t know whether he would have folded to a second barrel on the river – now holding just third pair with no kicker – but I’m tempted to think that if he’s calling with 5-3o pre-flop then he’s kinda committed to go all the way on a Ten-high board with his crappy pair.

I can beat a busted flush or straight draw, so I check the river and hope my pair is good. It isn’t. ANNOYING.

I narrowly miss the final table, busting in 12th place after losing A-Q v 9-7o, then with just 4bb left, pushing A-5o into A-T. Duh me.

Drama Queens

Party’s $11 Rebuy. 7 left, 6 paid. A donkey limps, I make it 4bb with pocket Tens in the BB, and he calls (as I knew he would). Effective stacks were 27bb at the start of the hand, with him having a handful more chips than me.

Q-Q-J flop, two hearts – not great. But this guy limps quite a wide range and never folds to a raise, so I’m ahead of A-x and all his small pairs.

I’m out-of-position and decide to c-bet, but I reckon I should have checked. He calls. Yuk.

The turn is a third Queen, improving my hand to a boat. If he called with a draw on the flop (very plausible) he’s now drawing thinly, likely drawing only to three high-card outs, or a Jack to split the pot.

Little has changed if he had a Jack (he’s still way ahead) or a small pair (he’s still way behind). However I think this particular donkey would have raised the draw-heavy flop with a Jack, figuring I’m never fast-playing trips, so in fact I believe he’s more likely to have four Queens than Queens full of Jacks.

I check again, and he hesitantly bets about half the pot. Calling this bet basically commits me.

Last Stand

I convince myself he doesn’t have the Jack. TBH it really does look like he has quads, and it’s quite bold of him to commit most of his chips on the bubble without a very big hand. But by the same token, I wonder if he’s getting stubborn with a small pair and is betting to (in his mind) ‘protect’ his hand, scared of losing a big pot on the bubble. I do know from my player notes that he limps a lot of broadway hands like K-J and Q-T, but I believe I’m beating his full range of pocket pairs at this point, so I stick my chips in and pray.

It’s one of those ugly ‘ugh, I kinda feel I’m beaten, but can I really fold when there’s only ONE hand that’s ahead of me?’ moments.

A.K.A. ‘LiquidEyes, you would make a lot more money if you weren’t such a calling station’ moments.

He did have quads – true to form he called my pre-flop raise with Q-T offsuit. Grrr! Grrr at him, and grrr at myself. I think I messed up here; knowing his tendency to play these sorts of hands I could have got away on the turn. After all, I was dead to any Jack, even if I wasn’t really ‘feeling it’ that he had a Jack. To be honest I wasn’t feeling a pair of Fours either.

Power Trip

2010-04-26T11:36:00.008+01:00

I kicked off my Sunday grind with a few satellites at lunchtime, and all seemed to going well until there was a funny clicking noise – the sound of my computer’s battery backup device kicking in – followed by a cacophony of burglar alarms sounding along the street. We’d had a power cut.

It’s less than a week since our previous power cut! Grrr, it really is grim up north. What with our internet connection also being the most unreliable I have experienced at any of the five addresses I’ve lived in the UK in the last few years, it’s hard to recommend the shanty towns of the northwest of England to any aspiring internet poker professional.

As I mentioned I have battery backups; in fact this is the first time they’ve been tested in anger. I have a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) for my main PC in the study, where I ‘work’; another for my array of screens; a third for the PC in my bedroom; and a fourth UPS for the wireless ADSL modem which is downstairs. Yes, I have batteries coming out of my ears. Not literally.

The technology did not let me down. While fellow citizens floundered without electricity, it was GAME ON at the poker tables!

Deadline

Except... our previous power cut lasted over an hour. Meanwhile my battery backups are only rated to keep my equipment running for about 15 minutes – and I’ve never actually tested their longevity in practice.

So I prepared for the worst: I assumed that this would be another long power cut, and that I had ten minutes to ‘chip up or bust’ in several of my games. With five or six tournaments running, many of them satellites, I had to make a judgement as to how best to play each game, based on the blind structures and payouts.

If mains electricity still hadn’t returned after ten minutes, and if I had any games worth salvaging, I could fall back on my mobile broadband stick for internet access, whilst my laptop might have enough charge for an extra half-hour of play. I could eke a few more minutes out of my laptop by plugging it into my bedroom UPS – food for thought if this happens in future when the stakes are bigger.

Fortunately none of the games were for very high stakes, but I didn’t want to write off any tourneys unnecessarily if I had any decent amount of equity.

Jamming Like a Crazy Man

The speed tourneys were no-brainers. I had to get jamming! I opened up my shoving ranges a few notches, and continually tried to re-evaluate how long I would last if I were sat out.

I had enough chips in one of my satellites (which had full 10 minute blind levels) to survive for at least 30—60 minutes, so I continued to play normally.

(As an aside, it’s intriguing to think that, if you had an estimate of how long you would lose your internet access for, and for how much longer you would have internet access in the short term, then mathematically speaking there must be an optimal level of looseness. It would surely become correct to make ordinarily -EV plays, for the mere possibility of chipping up quickly, thus accumulating a stack that can last for 20 minutes, or 30 minutes, or whatever.)

Power Up

I played on battery power for about ten minutes before deciding to shut down my PC. I busted out of about half my games, and was resigned to being possibly blinded away in two of them, depending how long the power was off.

Just as I was powering down my PC and turning on my laptop, electricity returned! All that kamikaze play for nought. Sigh.

Easy Come, Easy Go

2010-04-24T18:47:00.008+01:00

Win a heap; lose a heap.

Yep, it’s the usual story! True to form, I’ve picked up some respectable cashes lately, but failed to hang on to my winnings. My profit & loss chart continues to look like it was generated by an oscilloscope.

Soon I’ll have a good run and I’ll be rolling in wonga, mark my words!

Sunday Success

Last week I had my first properly profitable Sunday for what feels like aeons. Seemingly I couldn’t stop reaching final tables...

$3,308 – 1/151 in Party’s $10K Gtd Rebuy ($33 buy-in)
$742 – 5/190 in Absolute’s $7.5K GTD Rebuy ($22 buy-in)
$594 – 7/457 in PokerStars Turbo ($44 buy-in)
$454 – 6/180 in Party’s $8K Gtd ($33 buy-in)
$159 – 9/153 in $5K Gtd Speed ($44 buy-in)

It’s a shame that I only sealed the deal in one of these tourneys – with just an ounce more luck I could have made a killing, had I placed top-three in a couple more games, perhaps won one. $8k+ left on the table!

You can’t win ’em all... though it would have been nice.

Goalazo!

Anyhow, I can’t overstate how chuffed I was with the 33r victory. Regular readers may recall that it was one of my goals for 2010 to ship this tourney, and (not a moment too soon) I’ve crossed off the first of my resolutions weeeee!

The $3.3k score is my biggest single cash on PartyPoker to date. This came not two weeks after I won Party’s $10K Speed Rebuy for $2,700, which now slots in at ‘number three’ in my top Party cashes.

Positive Variance

Fellow PartyPlunderer Philgreen111 has experienced the ‘wrong sort of variance’ of late. A prolonged dearth of wins has seen both our bankrolls battered.

I’m very pleased to see the tide has turned for Phil. On Sunday – before I myself embarked on a welcome winning streak – Phil was proud to share news he’d landed a lunchtime bounty, shipping Party’s $7K Gtd Speed Rebuy for a cool $2,000.

(It’s another of my resolutions for 2010 to ship that tourney – Phil’s beaten me to it!)

That $2k is eclipsed by his latest score. Last night Phil took down iPoker’s Friday $100,000 Guaranteed (a $100 rebuy), besting the field of 451 players for a $25,300 jackpot. Holy five-figure payday Batman!

Flushageddon

I shall close with the comedic highlight of my week.

Silly calls are par for the course in low-stakes tournaments, and Tuesday’s WSOP Sub Qualifier was no exception. Poker whiz kid otonyo888 saw fit to ravage my chip stack, first with the mighty 8-4s (‘they were suited guv’!’)

I raise over a serial limper, and otonyo figures this would be a good spot to cold-call, out-of-position with Eight-high in the blinds, even though I have committed a fifth of my stack.

His psychic abilities pay off, because as he anticipated the flop delivers an Eight AND a Four. He check-raises, attracting a call from another donk who has got himself pot-committed with King-high. otonyo’s miracle two-pair holds up.

My foe’s sense of humour proves to be on a par with his psychic powers...

Shortly later I find A-8o and it’s folded to me in mid position. I push my last 7.5bb pre-flop and he calls with Q-Ts. Obviously he bingoes me, rivering a sodding flush.

LiquidEyes: oh come on...
LiquidEyes: you thought Queen-high was the best hand?
otonyo888: no was goin for a flush and got it

March: Best Forgotten!

2010-04-10T16:12:00.023+01:00

Oh, Variance!

Variance, all at the same time, you are the source of all my work-related stress, and yet you are the one thing that keeps me sane. Without you, every day would be the same; my life would truly be a grind.

Occasionally you are my saviour when I mess up a hand. The river to the rescue! Other times you are the sting in the tail, when I make the right read but fate has other plans.

You are my poison of choice, my drug – my high, and my comedown. (A lot of comedowns.)

Variance, the bane of my life. And yet, the spice of my life. You ARE my life.

Data & Wiggling

Variance. Trends. Expectation. Independent probability. Sample sizes, least mean squares, significance testing and other shit. LiquidEyes The Mathematician eats this stuff for breakfast! He can sit back and clinically apply statistical principles to abstract data.

He can filter the ‘noise’ to see the overall trend – falling house prices, rising FTSE Index, whatever.

He can estimate, predicate, extrapolate, and other things ending in ‘8’.

Poker profits and losses are like any other data. They can be analysed after the fact; inferences can be drawn. As we learn in mathematics, the more data the better! As we look at 500 tournament results, then 1000 results, then 2000, then 4000, long-term trends begin to manifest themselves.

The Mathematician looks past the short-term zigzag of day-to-day tournament results and witnesses LiquidEyes The Winning Poker Player emerge from all that interminable wiggling.

Expectation: you are a strange concept, an intangible construct; merely guesstimated, never static, and never truly realised.

Variance: you are the background noise, a distraction – a short-term inconvenience that forever obfuscates the identification of that elusive property, actual long-term expectation.

Yes, The Mathematician knows all of this.

Riding The Wave

But I am not LiquidEyes The Mathematician.

To LiquidEyes The Gambler, The Grinder, LiquidEyes Homo Sapiens, all that pesky noise IS my day-to-day life. Variance is not merely an abstract principle, an erratic plot on Microsoft Excel; it is the ocean wave that I actually surf from one day to the next.

Expectation is not a thing that I ever experience or feel. Theoretically variance may be but a distraction, a hindrance for my long-term realisation of expectation – but it is the only thing I do feel!

I do not have the privilege of stepping back from the ‘here and now’, impartially setting my current up- or downswing in the wider context of past present and future, as though studying a profit & loss chart I haven’t yet generated.

Outrunning God

Cute expressions abound in the world of poker. We speak of ‘running good’ and ‘running bad’ (the grammar nit inside me prefers ‘running well’ and ‘running badly’, but I shall reluctantly acknowledge the convention!)

Intriguingly these figures of speech are frequently bandied about in the present tense. At the risk of reading too much into this curious turn of phrase, as it’s almost as though we expect (in the immediate term) to carry on ‘running’ as we have been most recently!

Of course our perceived ‘running’ is just an abstraction of a bounded set of data:

I ran badly = between 18th March and 7th April I suffered a short-term trend of losing, on average, £1,200 per week.

I ‘am’ running like god = over the last 35 minutes I have sucked out seven times in one game, each time as a 40-60 dog or worse.

One can almost hear one’s mathematics tutor from school, insisting: ‘just because you threw a die ten times and rolled a six every time, you are still no more or less likely to roll a six on the next throw!’

Probable Cause

And this is the sobering truth of poker. As grinders we LIVE independent probability; indeed the winning player capitalises on it.

Yet this is a double-edged sword. As humans, with tangible emotions, it is both exciting to know that after a seemingly probability-defying winning streak we are no less likely than before to win again – luck is not a commodity that can be ‘used up’ – as it is crushing and demoralising to grapple the notion that after the cruellest downswing, we are still no more likely than before to reverse that trend.

Lady Luck can be a bad debtor.

I have heard more than one poker pro remark that they ‘wish there was no luck in poker’. I know what they mean when they say this (it is a thinly veiled brag, no?) but aside from the obvious problem that the bad players would very quickly give up, can you imagine variance-free poker?

Subject, of course, to one’s ability to play one’s A-game consistently, every one of us would continually earn (or lose) money at a fixed rate! Wouldn’t that be a bit like having a regular nine-to-five?

Change of Scenery

2010-03-28T16:37:00.005+01:00

I’m presently in Scotland, visiting my folks for a sort of working holiday. It’s very peaceful here in Aberdeenshire and the expanses of landscape – and minimal evidence of civilisation – make for some great views. Not that I’ve left the house!

I have played some online poker, done quite a bit of reading, played some card games with my mum and stepdad, and enjoyed the company of their copious cats. I am surrounded by felines! They have seven or eight cats, the eldest three of which I grew up with. They have ‘official’, sensible names, but in our teens my brother and I concocted all manner of derogatory names for our pets, such as Thickie and Smelly. One that tickles me is Robocat, a rather cruel nickname. Remember how the stop-motion-animated Terminator walked in the original film, when he had shed all his skin? (The special effects weren’t so special back then.) Robocat earns her name on account of her awkward, arthritis-induced gait.

My favourite cat is Blobby, a beautiful tabby. When I sit down in the study to play poker, she wails at me until I pick her up and place her on my lap, whereupon she will fall asleep and keep my legs warm while I gamble.

I’ve always liked a game of Scrabble, although admittedly my ‘table selection’ has historically been poor – my parents, and my ex-girlfriend, all wield vocabularies that dwarf mine so rarely do I emerge victorious. My folks recently purchased a similar board game called Upwords, which although it looks like it might be an inferior Scrabble variant, is actually really enjoyable. So we’ve whiled away a good few hours stacking tiles and racking our brains for anagrams.

I packed four books for my Scotland trip, including Vicky Coren’s For Richer, For Poorer which I am halfway through. This is LOL-funny in places and is highly recommended. I also packed Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand at a Time which I have read once before, but I knew after the first read that it would be one to return to. Incidentally I eliminated Pearljammer (one of the authors) from a tournament the other month, hehe. Okay, admittedly I just got lucky and won a race 8-8 v A-K. :)

I’m enjoying the change of scenery, it’s great to see my parents, and it’s refreshing not to have to constantly answer the door to children who have kicked their ball into the back garden. On the -EV side, just as I had managed to shake off my cold, I have picked up yet another cold from my folks grrr.

Oh, and there’s the small matter of my latest $3.5k downswing...

Maybe I’ll turn things around tonight? It is distinctly +EV being pampered and fed by my parents, and my stepdad has obligingly cooked me an early dinner and rustled up a sandwich for later, so that I can proceed with my main Sunday evening grind uninterrupted. What a star!

It really would be nice to win something tonight. I’ve earned just enough money in March to buy a round of drinks. Or perhaps a few tins of Kitekat. Hmm, which is it to be? Sorry, Robocat...

Get Rich or Cry Tryin’

2010-03-28T14:59:00.003+01:00

I have formulated a bulletproof ploy to attain long-term financial security.

DAY ONE: win truckloads of money at the poker tables.
DAY TWO: do not go on a losing streak and wipe out half of yesterday’s profits.
DAY THREE: do not proceed to lose the other half of the money as well.
Return to step one / repeat ad infinitum.

As Sly Stallone might remark, “the theory’s sound”.

I’m just having problems with the implementation phase – step one NO PROBLEM, but steps two and three are proving peculiarly troublesome.

As can be seen from my March profits & losses, it seems at the moment what goes up, must come down.

The Ups

I racked up another nice score since my last blog update, finishing 1/85 in Absolute Poker’s $8K GTD Rebuy ($33 buy-in) for a cool $2,500. I made an audacious comeback after being short for much of the final table, crippled by a series of bad beats from one particular player. I snapped off a series of his repeated light shoves, but he got lucky every time and found himself rolling in chips.

However I had the last laugh. After I eliminated a number of the remaining players, it was he and I that found ourselves heads-up, roughly equal in chips. He was quite aggressive and (I think) bluffing a lot, so I played a little different from my usual style, taking a more passive, trappy line.

This pays off in one key hand, where I flat his usual 2.2x raise out of position with K-9s, and slow-play top pair on the K-T-5 board (two diamonds). This would not be my usual line, but I figure there’s very high probability he has total air, and based on previous hands I reckon he is capable of two-barrelling on a bluff.

I check-call the flop; the turn (an innocuous Three) goes check-check; then on the river, another Three, I take the risk of (hesitantly) checking again. Of course I could be missing some value here, but I figure I can make more money by snapping off a bluff. I could easily have Q-J or a missed flush draw, so he might think he can take down the pot by firing again. Sure enough he bets 70% the pot, and I quickly call. He shows down 8-4o.

I scoop another nice little pot thanks to a lucky turn card. I limp J-3s on the button and semibluff the Q-T-8 rainbow flop when he checks; however I’m ready to give up on the hand when he calls. Christmas comes on the turn, a Nine completing my straight. He checks and I check behind. There is probably an argument for betting here, but I figure he may just have a marginal pair, the board is scary, and up until now I’ve played fairly conservatively so I doubt I can extract three streets of value because my hand will look so strong. He’s getting short on chips too, so he may feel he’s playing for stacks if I bet again on the turn.

A blank falls on the river, he checks and I make a fairly substantial 2/3 pot bet. He calls and mucks 9-8, having picked up two pair on the turn, and naturally I wonder if I could have stacked him by betting every street!

Nevertheless I now have a 3-to-1 chip lead, and it’s time to switch gears. I get aggressive pre-flop, frequently open-raising and 3-bet-jamming until he’s down to 12bb. He makes one of his trademark light pushes with 4-3o, I insta-call with K-Qo, and a King on the flop leaves him drawing almost dead. The turn blanks; victory, and $2,523, are mine.

Hat Trick

Last time I reported a couple of tiny cashes in Full Tilt Poker’s Mini-FTOPS tournament series. I completed the hat trick by cashing in Event #13, a $33 buy-in, six-max ‘shootout’.

For the uninitiated, these are a little different from normal multi-table tournaments. A shootout is a series of winner-takes-all single-table tournaments, so to win the shootout you have to win every STT. Round one was three-handed, as the 3934 entrants had to be whittled down to 1296. Thereafter the game was six-seated.

Survival and ICM go out of the window in these games: you have to win all the chips at each stage, so it’s more like a cash game than a normal tourney.

I had a good run, and incidentally outlasted all eleven of the ‘red pros’ (FTP-sponsored players), winning the first three rounds to make it to the penultimate table – woohoo! There were now just 36 players spread across six tables, the winner of each game destined for the FT and a payday of $2,400—$23,250. Sadly I didn’t fare too well in my final round, most of my aggressive plays backfiring as I think my timing was off and my foes had big hands every time I 3-bet pre-flop or bluffed post-flop.

Never mind though, I’m not disappointed with my 22nd place finish and $810 prize, my best score by far in the Mini-FTOPS series.

I played three more events, including the $55 buy-in Main Event in which I ranked a respectable 800th out of 19,309 players, taking a modest $154 for my trouble. I think I played really well in this, apart from one hand where I made a slightly zealous 4-bet shove with A-K. The move wasn’t terrible, and I wasn’t especially deep-stacked, but looking back the evidence was there, based on the dynamics of recent hands, that one or other of my opponents had a pretty big hand, and I had no fold equity against the 3-bettor. As it happens he had K-K and I was crippled.

In fact I made a spectacular comeback from 2bb to over 20bb, but finally met my maker when I took a risk and 3-bet shoved A-8o over an LP raise; my foe, after quite a bit of thought, called me with A-9s AGH!! A Nine on the flop sealed my fate. Can’t complain too much overall, though I was reeling from the sickness of his call for a while afterwards...

I feel four cashes out of six is definitely something to be proud of, especially considering the huge fields in the Mini-FTOPS events.

Too bad I’ve failed to hold onto my winnings!

Sunday – Running Hot

2010-03-16T00:09:00.008Z

The evening began rather agreeably. I ran well in Party’s $5K Gtd Speed, placing 2nd for over $1,100. I’m very happy with the second place as I was simply ‘coolered’ in short-handed play, losing my chip lead when I jammed K-6s into the second-biggest stack and ran into his Queens, OUCH. I love this tournament and it’s less than a month since I last won it.

Meanwhile I played three of the majors and managed to accumulate a few chips in two of them.

The Highs

Embarrassingly I’ve yet to cash in Mermaid’s €200 buy-in €100,000 Guaranteed, but this time I came with 11 spots of the money by placing 101/602, my deepest finish yet. The game doesn’t have a great structure but there are some very fishy players. It was refreshing for once NOT to lose all my chips with set-under-set or some similar cold deck in the early stages. Ultimately I was very short and jammed K-To in MP, running into Kings. Oopsie!

I’m pleased with my play in the Sunday $300K – though sometimes you don’t actually need to be any good to acquire chips. I was the beneficiary of an early chip dump when, 120bb deep, a donk raised utg, flatted my utg+1 3-bet, then fired three barrels out of position on the Q-Q-2 board. The pot was massive, yet he folded to my river min-raise (putting him all-in) so he can only have had air as he was getting 5-to-1. I had flopped quad Queens, no less!

OfficialPokerRankings.com says he usually plays for micro-stakes, so he should probably stick to that – at least he’ll lose his money less quickly.

It’s often hard to know what to do with quads. In this case, since the flop was so dry I thought he had either a pocket pair or nothing, so it seemed best to let him keep betting away. I had position so I’d bet any time he checked; by the river he’d have pot-committed himself if he had a pocket or had picked up any pair.

An hour or so into the game the Queens are kind to me once again, and I extract a couple of streets of value from a guy’s lower pair. He flats my EP raise in position, then min-raises my c-bet on the Eight-high flop, but when he checks the turn and river I’m confident my hand is good and stick in a chunky value bet. He calls and mucks his pocket Tens.

Jam Dodger

A few hours in, I’m set back from 16bb to 12bb when a cutoff blind-steal with 4-4 fails. In retrospect I could have simply open-jammed (the unopened pot was 1.8bb including antes) though all three stacks behind had me covered.

The villain fires at the turn and river on the J-9-9-8-K board, which puts running spades on the board for a 3-flush, so even if he was semibluffing the turn a ton of hands got there on the river. I lay it down.

I pass up a value opportunity when the SB jams 5.7bb into me and I find Q-Js in the BB. I’ve subsequently scoped him online and he’s a successful player at fairly high/mid stakes, so I guess he should be jamming quite wide here. However I’d hardly seen him shove until this point, so with the clock ticking away I convinced myself his range was perhaps tighter than it ‘should’ be. The call was for nearly half my 10bb stack, but to be honest I think folding was a mistake. I won’t lose too much sleep over it, although it’s always satisfying to sick-call them with Queen-high and they turn over J-9o!

I meet my maker when a slowplay backfires. I’m down to 9.75bb, a shortie jams 2.3bb and I decide to flat-call with Aces. I think this play is reasonable, although shoving is obviously also good. There are four players behind me and I induce overcalls from the blinds.

Unfortunately the BB flops top two pair and leads out at the horrid 8-7-6 board with two hearts. I can’t fold but I know I’m busting a fair amount of the time here. I jam, and even though I’m behind I’m nearly getting the right pot odds. Thankfully the SB folds and it’s a three-way showdown.

It’s a car crash of a hand... I’m 29% to win the side pot and only 24% to win the main pot, as to top it off the short stack has Q-9s for an open straight draw LOL! Long-term, there’s probably not much in it between the pre-flop isolation shove and the flat-call when you take into account reverse implied odds, but again I don’t hugely regret the hand, I was pretty short anyway, technically nobody was getting the right implied odds to out-flop me, and it was obviously a very unlucky board.

So that’s me out, 416th/1497 (200 or so places from the money).

The Lows

The cards were unkind in PKR’s $215 buy-in Prime Time #7, though despite raise-folding a bunch and blinding away for 45 mins, I did manage to get back above my starting stack on the back of a couple of bluffs. First I make a re-steal with Q-7s over a button raise, putting him all-in. He has 20bb behind, thinking for a while before folding, showing his pocket Sevens! Phew. It’s such a big mistake to show what you folded IMO...

I win a nice pot in a blind-on-blind confrontation. I limp J-8o in the SB and check the A-A-9 rainbow flop. The BB fires twice in position. He can certainly be value-betting a Nine on the flop, but I doubt he would very often play an Ace this way. I could certainly have limped an Ace here so I float the flop and check-raise the turn; he folds and shows a Three, which he paired on the turn. I think he made a big mistake betting his Three after I called the flop!

I’m now a little above my starting stack, with 27bb, but it doesn’t last long. There is an EP 2.8bb raise and I flat in position with pocket Queens. The SB ships his last 15bb, and although I know he’ll sometimes have A-K or K-K here, I can’t get my chips in fast enough. The EP guy timebanks, but eventually folds and I gladly call. I’m hoping to see Jacks or Tens, and I’m not too disappointed when he reveals A-Qo. However an Ace on the flop relegates me to the ranks of the short stacks.

I get a few chips back – but sadly no action – when the same guy as before button-raises, and I jam A-A just as I jammed my Q-7s. Again he folds and shows, revealing one of his cards, an Ace; I show him my two Aces. gf

A few hands later I push 16bb from the cutoff with A-To, over a MP limper. The limper folds but the BB wakes up with Aces, argh! It’s a crappy 93/142 finish for me.

Big Field, Big Bucks

As well as my usual games, I had a crack at two of Full Tilt Poker’s Mini-FTOPS tournament series. These games have relatively small buy-ins, but good structures and ENORMOUS fields of players.

I played a $13 ‘knockout’ (bounty hunter) game with nearly 27,000 players, and a $33 event with over 20,000 players. What I soon realised from the chat box is that many of the players had qualified via satellite for as little as $1! So as one might expect there was some very fishy play, particularly in the early stages.

I cashed in both games, though only for tiny amounts, finishing around 1100th place (top 5—6%) in both. I’m beginning to enjoy playing a few big-field tournaments to vary my schedule; although the chances of winning a game of this scale are miniscule, it’s satisfying getting deep against so many players, and it’s surprising how quickly the field diminishes.

The Mini-FTOPS schedule continues for another week so I certainly plan to play two or three more of these mammoth tourneys over the next few days.

It’s often said that it’s rather telling how the same top players get deep in big tournaments again, and again, and again. I noticed that relatively well-known online pro AJKHoosier1, usually a high-roller, played the $13 tourney and made it to the last two tables, placing a very impressive 17th.

Though I suppose his $926 score will feel like a disappointment compared to the $38,800 first prize!

Sunday – The Lows

2010-03-15T20:37:00.011Z

Bleurgh. I’ve had worse Sundays by far – I’m a few hundred quid down, no more – but I feel disgruntled. Yes, true to form Lady Luck delivered a number of exquisite jabs in the gut, but bad beats notwithstanding I think I’d be closer to break-even but for a few tilty plays. MUST TRY HARDER.

I have my moments of greatness and flashes of inspiration but I think of myself as a highly imperfect poker player. Sunday wasn’t quite an ‘off day’ but I had my ‘off moments’, and I mean to document my poker affairs warts’n’all. So I’ll get the warts off my chest and write something more positive later on. :)

I made a bad shove in iPoker’s $6,000 Double Stack Freezeout. I’d been unlucky enough to run Kings into Aces a few hands earlier, and when I picked up pocket Threes in the SB I was itching to ship my last 8bb.

Unfortunately there were a couple of limpers ahead of me, a double-edged sword – lots of money in the pot, but a higher chance of attracting a call. I should have just completed the SB and mined for a set, but the pot size had a seductive effect and with dollar signs in my eyes I tried to steal it. Of course my fold equity was poor and the first limper isolated with pocket Eights, precisely the kind of hand I should have put him on. Urgh!

To make matters worse I never looked at the tournament lobby, failing to realise I was but ten places from the money, making the play even more -EV.

Fold Equity? Qu'est-ce que c'est?

I made an ill-fated, if not ill-conceived bluff in Party’s 33r. I was a little annoyed having lost five full buy-ins in the rebuy period (getting my chips in ahead repeatedly) only to forget to purchase my add-on, so I began the second hour with a mediocre stack. Perhaps a tad tilted, I made a high-variance play that served only to prove it’s futile attempting to bluff most players off top pair!

It was fairly obvious the villain in question had limped an Ace and flopped top pair (I guessed with a Jack or lower kicker). Meanwhile I flopped a straight draw and although I missed on the turn, a third broadway card fell, meaning a ton of hands better than his fairly transparent top pair had got there.

There was a chance he’d caught two pair or possibly flopped a set of Twos, but with A-x he’d be drawing dead to K-J and drawing thin against numerous plausible two pair hands. Figuring it should be fairly obvious to him that I know what he has, and that I must therefore have top pair beaten, I check-raise all-in.

Silly boy... they don’t fold top pair do they – not even in games with buy-ins of $90+. He calls with A-J, top pair Jack kicker (at the better end of the hands I put him on).

There’s no help on the river and I’ve donked off my stack. Oh well, if he had folded it would have been a great play, obv!

The exercise goes to prove not only how pointless bluffing is against a random unknown player, but also how much value there is in chasing draws against people who can’t fold top pair. On paper the implied odds of trying to spike my straight were marginal, but it looks like I was winning his stack 100% of the time if I hit.

Note to self: chase those gutshots and milk them when you get there!

Satellite Suicide

I’m just plain annoyed with myself for my untimely exit from Party’s $172 buy-in Monthly Million satellite. As I stare at the hand history for the final table I can only plead to myself, ‘WTF were you thinking?’

There are nine players left I’m the third biggest stack. We are fighting over three $640 seats, plus three runner-up cash prizes of $96—240.

With less than 25bb in my stack, three similar-sized stacks at the table, and just three of the nine players sat on less than 13bb, I’m not home and dry: there are chips to be won.

Not so long ago I was the chip leader, but suffered an irritating setback when the SB open-shoved 11bb with A-7o and beat my A-Js, hitting a flush on the turn.

It all goes wrong when I overplay pocket Jacks against the next-biggest stack, who cripples me with his Aces. A shortie ships 9bb in EP, and with three players yet to act he flats with A-A. After some thought (clearly not enough) I shove to try and isolate the short stack, and in doing so dig my own grave.

LiquidEyes = mug.

Even if I thought there were some hands he was folding to my re-shove – which is doubtful as he had invested 40% of his stack – or even if he was calling my shove with a worse hand than Jacks, I had to think that at best, I would be flipping against at least one of the two players. I blame overthink: the guy with the Aces is very succcessful player, one of the highest-ranked on PartyPoker, and somehow I convinced myself he’s too smart to only flat-call with monster hands!

Even though his results say he is good, I do have specific player notes saying he sometimes makes dubious calls late in satellites. In the heat of the moment, searching for an excuse to call (when I should have been searching for an excuse to fold) the player notes may have swung the decision. But in spite of his previous loose calls, I still should have laid down my Jacks.

Obviously I should lay down Queens and Kings too, if I think his flat-call means he literally always has KK/AA!

Now, if I thought his flatting range sometimes included A-K to mix up his play (as it happens I don’t – not in a satellite anyway) I would have a tricky decision with Kings...

So that was a few hundred dollars of equity blown in one overly eager click of the RAISE button.

The very next hand: A-Ks, a gift from the gods!! There is an EP shove from a mid stack, and I have a fighting chance of turning my meagre 3.6bb into 8.8bb and worming my way back into contention.

I’m flipping with Jacks and lose, sigh. Next game...

Patiently Waiting

There is a running theme to these cock-ups, isn’t there: IMPATIENCE. Normally when you try to make a fast buck it has the opposite effect.

I would do well to keep in mind a particular pearl of poker wisdom – I’m not sure where I first heard it? – which is that you can’t win a tournament in one hand.