So this is just today and yesterday at PLO. Look at those 15 buyin swongs baby. The first 90% of it is 2/4 plo, then the brutal 3.5k straight loss near the end is 5/10 cap PLO with me tilting pretty bad and playing poorly in general and the quick upswing at the end back to even is 5/10 plo. I’m really disappointed in myself for tilting and I don’t do it often but I’ve noticed it happening lately when I lose a couple big pots in row which happens pretty frequently in plo so I’m trying to figure out ways to avoid it in the future. I’m thinking either some sort of stoploss or 5 minute break every time I lose a grand or something is probably best but both of these are easy to come up with but hard to implement when I need them most.
Yesterday started out great with me up 8 buyins 4.5 hours in to the day or so and I was all excited because it was going to be my first big day at 2/4 plo but the last 30 minutes was just brutal ending in me giving back 5 buyins in spots I think were pretty standard but not so sure. Example.
Today I started off down 3 buyins without anything too interesting happening besides this hand where I got bluffed. I’m thinking I should probably just be check calling or check folding this river as I have the 2nd nuts & blocker to the 3rd nuts so it’s hard to get paid anyways. I then tilted some off at cap playing poorly & getting owned in general then took a break and came back later tonight and played a bit of really good 5/10 plo games. At 5/10 I find I play REALLY REALLY good and table select really well and make very player specific plays. My concentration is also 200% better because the stakes are higher. The same thing tends to happen to me in hold’em. I talked about this last time but I really need to work on table selection and concentration skills when playing 2/4 and below.
I signed up for 2 hours of coaching with michaelsc from deucescracked earlier today so I’m hoping he’ll really be able to reduce my variance a bit and definitely increase my winrate. I’ll let you know how it goes. Happy swongs!
And its not a healthy addiction either. I’ve been playing alot of it recently and been mostly breaking even/losing. I think I pokerEV’d it and I was running slightly bad but I’m also making lots of clear mistakes and I’m sure loads of mistakes that I don’t even know about. I’ve been watching some more videos recently and hoping to figure out this game soon so I can start crushing it.
Anyways I haven’t posted in awhile cause I feel like every post I make is “look at my results” or “these are my goals for x time period” and feel like it’s getting pretty boring/played out. Maybe I will stop posting results soon who knows. Having said that I had a very good January clearing like $19k not including rakeback. Something like +$20k in holdem over 25k hands and -$1k in PLO over 10k hands. Pics don’t include laptop hands.
Yea so opportunity cost wise my time spent playing PLO is kinda a waste/depressing to think about but I’m getting kinda obsessed with beating it and I’ve really nitted up my game selection recently at 5/10 NLH and grinding 2/4 NLH is just REALLY REALLY boring for me. So these two factors combined results in me playing plo alot when the higher hold em games aren’t very good which seems to be alot recently, sadface :(. Games are definitely getting tougher PLO wise as well. Just 6 months ago I remember playing and people would fold to 3 bets literally 0% of the time, but people seem to be figuring it out now and folding some of their junk sometimes but having said that games are still great IMO but I’m just not very good either yet.
One thing I’ve been struggling with recently is maintaining good focus and concentration when playing lower stakes. Ideally I’d like to grind more 2/4 because it’s lower variance, I can beat it for good money and it’s just the smart thing to do to maximize my hourly alot of the time. The problem I’m finding now is that I just don’t get excited/interested in it when playing and find myself bored playing my B game. I recently got done reading “Broke” by Brandon Adams (which was a decent read, it’s only 90 pages and took my like an hour) but anyways in it he talks about how poker players always build up their roll and continue to increase stakes until they are playing in games they are no longer favorites in. One of his friends he says is a favorite in just about any hold em game but the ones he sits in are some of the highest limits spread and he’s likely a small dog/breakeven player in most of the games he sits in. I don’t want to be that guy. At some point I’m going to have to stop going up in stakes I just don’t know when that is is the problem. This is not to say I will not continue to move up over time, I just think I need to realize at some point my improvement as a player is going to taper off quite a bit which I think is happening now in NLH and I need to realize that doing the boring grind 6 tables for a living for long hours a day facing no interesting spots at all to pay the mortgage but somehow trick myself into staying focused/interested while playing is a real possibility that I am going to have to deal with at some point. Right now though PLO keeps me sane/interested and thankfully NLH is still there when games are good to subsidizes my addiction and helps pay the bills.
Also: I’m looking for vegas house and roommates for wsop. I made a post in cardrunners vegas life section so check it out or leave a comment here if you’re looking for either/or.
Looking back on 2008 with a full years of being a “pro” under my belt I had one goal in mind to start the year:
Play 500k hands
While I did not achieve this, something like 120k hands short I’m still happy with the way 2008 went, feel that my game has progressed tremendously and that while I may not be 10 times the poker player I was a year ago(though I have improved a ton maybe only like 3 times) I certainly believe I am 10 times the professional poker player I was a year ago having improved in many other aspects that goes along with this profession. As for 2009 my goals are the following:
1. Not play any 10/20 until I make a post showing I have 100k online
2. Stick to my new schedule and focus on getting 25-30 hour tilt free poker playing in per week
3. Always maximize my hourly rate when playing. If this means 6 tabling 2/4 because that’s the best games running now so be it. If it means 2 tabling 5/10 so be it. The one exception I will add to this is learning a new game. So for example I’ve been playing some more PLO recently and obviously 1 or 2 tabling 1/2 HU PLO is not maximizing my hourly but hopefully this will improve my lifetime hourly rate as a poker player. This also means game selecting well, playing longer when winning, quitting if I am starting to tilt etc.
Sure only one of these goals is really quantifiable and measurable but I think having a I want to make x money is bad and doesn’t really accomplish anything while these goals are something I can work on from day to day, week to week and always be in the back of my mind.
Now that that’s done I’ve been playing on stars again a bit recently trying to unbusto my account because more high stakes game run there for some reason – I have no idea why but there’s a lot of minor things that tilt the shit out of me on stars as follows. I’m not going to go into the reward system or no pot button BS everyone knows about those but these are minor but way more tilting things IMO.
1. When starting new tables the visitor gets the button. That is if you start a new table and someone sits down to play you THEY get the button for the first hand. This is just ass backwards and encourages people to grim you. Clearly the person who was there first is more likely to stay for the long run while the vistor is likely to leave after only a couple hands and is why the first person there should always get the button like it is on FTP.
2. When opening a table the lobby is minimized. This one fluke alone probably doubles my clicks and wastes a good 10 minutes of my time per day when I play on stars. It also causes me to only open one table at a time where as on FTP I just click them all and open them and find the best ones to play.
3. When two people are all in the hands are not flipped over until the you see the river. Seriously wtf, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten all in with AK, board has ran out K54J75 and I’m like ship me the pot only to see them flip over JJ at the last second. So tilting not knowing what outs to root for/against.
4. a)You can’t buyin for more than 100 big blinds.
b)Game speed is slower
c)Game selection is harder (no colored notes or tags, lobby minimizes, can’t datamine, etc.)
You might be wondering why I threw all these together into one category and how they are related. These are not software flaws so much as how stars does things and contributes to how the games play on stars IMO. I played a couple thousand hands of 2/4 6max on stars and they played like complete monkeyfests with lots of games that are just 6 regs sitting with each other(poor game selection) who play a million tables at a time (slow gamespeed promotes this), who 3 bet loads (100bb deep this isn’t bad its just unoptimal IMO but 200bb deep which you can’t buyin for its really bad when out of position)
Sitting in these games I still won decent but my variance was huge and think mine, along with other regs winrate, would be way bigger if any of these things were changed. For example when alot of my profit is coming from flatting AK or AQ vs someone who’s always 3 betting A9 an ace only flops so often when I stack them where as if I’m deep I win double when this happens. The other way you can go is just auto 4 betting AQ and 99+ in position or whatever but then the game is all preflop and is basically like playing shortstacked which I hate. Dunno why I post this, just to let off some steam I suppose and maybe they’ll change some of this stuff in the future who knows. Happy new president day.
First half of 2008 desktop NL results
First half of 2008 desktop NL all in luck
Second Half of 2008 Desktop NL Results
Second Half of 2008 Desktop NL all in luck
Desktop PLO Results
Desktop PLO all in luck
So total profits on desktop are about $38k over about 300k hands. I also made something like 5k on Cakepoker, 13kish from rakeback and I’m pretty sure I lost quite a bit on tournies & playing live but I don’t really know how much. So overall totals are somewhere in the 80k range over about 400k hands.
In terms of run bad I ran about 48k below expectation in all in luck for the year. It’s really disgusting to think about considering I’ve played <10k hands at 10/20 and above but there's nothing I can do other than hope 2009 the boomswitch year. I also realize "oh I might have gotten more AA than people's KK pf" but until you have some way of measuring that I think its a pretty bad argument. I would also like to add that I've been working on ways to reduce my variance in spots so I get it in as a bigger favorite than I would otherwise. For example, raising or reraising a particular hand may be +EV in itself but calling or even folding in certain spots can be way more +EV or at the very least reduce variance. I'm not going to go into specific hand examples but alot of pf spots come to mind if you think about it long enough :-). I also lost $6k this year on my failed internet business venture. I’ll just go ahead and spill the beans that it was supposed to similar to tableratings(it would have been more customizable in terms of how the data could be searched and displayed) but I was going to charge after 5 searches or whatever for the day just like sharkscope does. I have no idea how tableratings makes money (I doubt they do) but more power to them. I learned alot from the failed venture and as an open invite to anyone with alot of free time if you are interested in pursuing the Indian web development PROVAB – DO NOT HIRE THEM ON YOUR OWN!! – further to get them to finish the project feel free to leave a comment or email me. It would basically entail going on skype every evening and calling them asking them why they haven’t done any work in 6 months. I can’t pay you(already $6k in the hole) though I would give you a stake in the company should it ever come to fruition. Basically, they are halfway done, I paid them $6k and they stopped working, I owe them $4k upon completion which I would pay if they ever got done, but I just got sick & tired of dealing with them every night and them never getting shit done. I’ve been thinking alot about 2009 goals and whatnot, that will probably be my next post but I think alot of people have fundamental flaws in their 2009 poker goals. Everyone who has $$ goals its kinda pointless, are you just gonna quit when you reach it? obv not. And to everyone who has goals of moving up to x limit 5/10,10/20,25/50 or whatever realize that just because you are playing in those games does not mean you are maximizing your hourly. I kinda realized this in the past couple months breaking even in tough 5/10 games(oh btw shipped like $15k in Dec so that was nice and played like 90% at 2/4). Cool red pro forums on pokerroad if you haven’t checked them out yet. Each post is insightful because no donks are allowed to post.
I’ll leave you with a finance quote from a book that I’ve been reading recently which I find pretty similar to poker.
“Some men wrest a living from nature and with their hands; this is called work.
Some men wrest a living from those who wrest a living from nature and with their hands; this is called trade.
Some men wrest a living from those who wrest a living from those who wrest a living from nature and with their hands; this is called finance.”
-Old epigram from 19th century Great Britain
Back home at my parents for the new year so I’ll post the desktop results when I get back to Seattle in a couple days.
Laptop NL Graph
Laptop NL All in Luck
Laptop PLO Graph
Laptop PLO All in Luck
I also played 500 hands on pokertracker 3 over which I lost about $3k but I didn’t think it was worth posting. So totals are something like +$27k over 75k hands.
Bringing in the new year well with MOOOONKEY VIDS!
Just stumbled upon this tonight. Haven’t read it yet, just some skimming but looks good so far.
The video I made for the leggo contest can be found on the member contributions forum here Feel free to leave comments here or in the forum. My play itself isn’t all that interesting, I mostly just play pretty straightforward and nitty. This was my 2nd try(1st time I recorded & a decent number of interesting spots/bets came up but couldn’t figure out how to record audio after the fact and was overall just tired of dealing w/ something I wasn’t getting paid to do) but the first couple minutes is kinda cool imo.
This month has been going pretty well pokerwise. I’ve really gotten back to my roots as a “low limit grinder” and I’ve already played 25k hands and 52 hours of poker for +$7k(+$8k with rakeback) all at 2/4. Shoutout to Jason who I spoke with briefly a couple weeks ago who really got me motivated. I’ve been adhering to a pretty strict schedule as follows:
9:30ish wake up eat breakfast
10:15-noon play
noon-1 break, eat, shower, take dog out
1-3 play
3-4 break, watch tv
4-6 play
I take Sundays and one weekday off to relax/do whatever and I’m really liking this so far. I could definitely play more, for example alot of times I will wake up late & not hit the tables til 11 or so, and I could also play another 2 hour session in the evening like Jason does but so far I think this is a pretty good amount for me. Some other benefits of this schedule and stakes
-stress level is wayyyy down: the majority of my days are small losers or big winners and even on days when I “lose big” its like $2k which is way easier to swallow than the -$5k daily swings you have to deal with at 5/10+
-chances of me having a losing/breakeven month doing this is super super small
-overall daily happiness has gone way up – poker is just way less stressing of a job when you are grinding out small profits over large amounts of hands/hours than trying to always play your A game & squeeze out every single +EV play in 30k hand months of 4 tabling. Monthly variance goes way down and so does tilt because running bad is way harder to do over a larger hand/hour sample. Basically I’d rather just play my B game 6 tabling 2/4 than always trying to play my A game that can turn into D game after a few run bads at 5/10.
-rakeback is NIIIIIIICE
Favorite hand of the month so far
Least favorite hand of the month so far
Quick note about my topset/AAA hand from last post. I definitely misplayed it and the turn is a bet 100% of the time. His quick call on flop told me he had some weak showdown and people just don’t turn this into a bluff all that often so I need to be betting, how much I’m not really sure tho.
Random poker link I found that has helped me out in some spots
how often?
If anyone sees me playing above 400nl or headsup(headsup at 6max table doesn’t count) before Dec 25th I will ship you $500 on the spot. Brutal day today losing $9k which puts me back to even for the month.
Here’s a few hands.
10x pot shove with gutterball is good
biggest pot I played Thought alot about this one and I’m fine with the way I played it. Villain had VPIP% of 44 and fold to cbet% of 18 over a large sample.
To be fair I probably bluffed off about $3k unnecessarily, but I did also manage to run -$3.5k below equity for the day plus ran KK into AA but whatevs. As for headsup while I think I have the raw poker abilities to play it well I do not have good enough discipline. When playing headsup I am prone to tilting, have trouble dealing with the overall variance of it and have poor game selection.
I take full responsibility for my results lately and I am not going to blame it on poor luck.
That is all. Good luck at the tables.
PS I made a vid for the leggo contest, if I don’t place or anything I may upload it for your viewing pleasure anyways.
Haven’t felt like blogging lately and don’t really see a reason to tbh. Lost monies in October again (about $8k or something), just wasn’t playing solidly enough but in November after spending a day w/ John aka puddlepirate I think I’m playing much better and will dig myself out of this slump. Will post 2008 recap when the time comes but really having a hard time coming up w/ reasons why I should keep this blog right now so just consider this a blog hiatus I guess.
Lost $600 on cake which I plan on playing alot more of in October. Lost $3900 playing 10/20 one night on laptop. Won $1700 playing CAP plo.
Ran about -$17k this month in all in luck so that was fun, but to be fair I think I ran like +$15k last month. Ya that’s right I ran +$15k or something in all in luck last month and still managed to lose -$8k. That should give you an idea of just how badly I played in August. Anyways, October is a new month and I feel like I’m playing extremely well lately and I hope I can close out the last three months of the year strongly. Prop bets anyone?
PS Check out http://www.pokerswaps.com if you need transfers. I am a partner there now.
Weeeeeee I rly shouldn’t whine – check out the creepy little girl remix.