Managed to make it all of about 2.5 hours of play in this one. In the first level a got a number of big pocket pairs and didn’t see a flop with any of them. I’m sort of conflicted because people seem to fold to my 3 bets with Aces but if I just flat then I inevitably get 5 way action. There may actually be some merit to a ridiculously small min 3 bet. You accomplish your goal of getting value and getting the pot headsup but I think it gives away your hand, gives the villain odds to suckout on you and overall is just a fishy line. I dunno.
I didn’t play too many interesting hands so I’ll just give you three. Blinds are 50/100, I make it 250 to go from middle position with black kings. Older guy who’s been the most chatty at the table and is mostly just passing time as he’s waiting for his day 2 of the $10k stud to start up again flats me on the button, big blind who is some old guy who has probably never played an event in his life fumbles with his chips for a bit and minraises to 500. Probably the most donk play I’ve seen so far this summer. I can’t let the button set mine vs me so I just make it 1550 to go and they both fold.
Blinds at 75/150 folds around to me in the cutoff and I open to 400 with 8s9s. The big blind is the chatty guy from above who flats. Flop is Jh7d5s so I have a double gutter and a backdoor flushdraw. Effective stacks are 3100, he checks and I bet 500. He calls. I think there is some merit to checking back here to make sure I see a river for one bet, but that’s probably results oriented thinking. Turn is the As so I have an open ended straight flushdraw and he donk overbet shoves his remaining 2600 into the 1875 pot. I don’t have odds to make my hand and I pretty unhappily fold.
A couple hands later the big stack at the table opens utg to 400, MP calls, CO calls and I look down at KQo in the big blind. My stack is 4200 and the pot is already 1425. I think KQo plays pretty terribly 4 way so I hate calling here. I talked this hand over with some of my roommates and I believe just folding and waiting for a better spot is best but I decided to squeeze to 1600. Utg who I may have folded to if he shoved folded and MP who has me covered insta shoves, CO folds. Back to me with 2600 remaining and 5675 in the pot, the only hand I was really worried about was AQ so I put the rest in and he shows 77. Flop is AJ3 giving me some hope but turn and river are blanks and I’m out. Playing the $1k donkfest today, wish me luck.
Managed to make it 7.5 hours in this one yesterday to bust ~114th of 650 when 64 pay. It was pretty grueling especially because pot limit events don’t have antes. It started out 10max and switched to 9 handed when we got down to 200 or so. You have to play mega tight in these things it’s ridiculous. I probably average one hand per hour or something. I really wish all tournaments were 6max and started with antes but you gotta make do with what you got. These tournies are really a test of your patience than your ability to play a wide variety of poker hands well.
Anyways on to some hands. I should have busted in level one but managed to make my first suck out of the series. Blinds were 25/50 and you start with 4500 in chips. French canadian lady opens utg, everyone folds and I have two red queens in the big blind. I decide to just flat. It looks super strong if I 3 bet and I’m not really sure what to do if she 4 bets. Lol 10 handed play. Flop is J64 rainbow, I check, she cbets 300, I contemplate just calling, but decide to make it 1000 to go. She pretty insta makes it 3000. I think her play is pretty terrible with anything but some sick bluff cause if she just calls I commit myself on the turn but I figure I’m behind her whole value range as I REALLY doubt she does this with AJ and it’s only like 3 hands into the tournament at this point and there’s certainly better spots so I just muck.
Next round utg opens and I look down at two red queens again utg+3. Same spot as above and I think I should have 3 bet this one just to get it headsup and try to make some soul read if he does 4 bet. I end up just calling and 3 more people call behind me so pot is 750. Flop is J93 with two diamonds and the sb leads out pot. Two people fold and it’s on me with a little over 3k to my stack. I doubt he does this with a set so I thought he had J9 or a big draw, neither of which I have great equity against, but I’m not really in any mood to fold another overpair with shallow stacks so I make it 1650, lady folds behind me and sb ships I call and he shows J9. Turn is a King, river a queen and I double up.
Nothing interesting happens for awhile, I called an utg raise with TT at the 50/100 level. Called a cbet on KdQh3d, turn Q, check check, river is 4d and he leads out 2/3 pot and I tanked for awhile and mucked. I called an open with 77 from the blinds and managed to turn a boat on QQ573 board and got two streets of value vs KK. I raise called a shortstack shove for 2k with AJs vs his AQ and didn’t manage to suckout.
I then folded for what seemed like an eternity and dwindled down to 2300 chips at 300/600 before doubling up by winning a flip with my KJs vs 77. My crippling hand then came at 400/800 when my stack was 6500 and the button shortstack committed himself with JTo, I shove with ATo and he turns a Jack. I’m left with 1BB after this and shove the button with K9s, bb obviously calls and shows K4o, but 4 on the flop and I’m out.
I have a funny Ivey story for the day. I was railing the $10k stud event for a short while during my dinner break and Ivey is just chilling getting a massage and watching the lakers game on one of the flat screens while playing. This guy walks up next to Ivey’s table and takes a picture with flash. There is no flash photography allowed in the poker room and Ivey mutters something about it to the guy. The guy just says, “Hey, I just think your awesome. If you saw someone awesome you’d take a picture too wouldn’t you? Actually my wife just loves you.” Ivey replies, “Oh yeah? Where’s she at?” with a big grin on his face. Camera guy says, “Back home. With my baby. Although I guess you’d be on the list of people it’d be okay, ya know?” Ivey just smiles and puts his headphones back in. LOL, Ivey is so baller some guy just told him it’d be fine if he slept with his wife.
It’s been a busy couple of days. I just got back to Seattle from the Indy 500 on Sunday, and then flew out to Vegas on Tuesday to my first wsop event of the year today. May ended up with me losing $27k which is not so bad. I really just like to think of it as I made $5k in April and $5k in May which is the equivalent. I have some pics and videos of the Indy 500 which I’ll try to get up here eventually but it’s almost midnight here and I’m playing the event tomorrow so I’ll try to write up the hands from the event today quick before I go to bed.
Anyways, I roll into the Rio around 11am to check out what’s changed this year. They opened up the pavilion room to play poker in and it’s much bigger and roomier than the amazon room which I’m happy about. I saw a couple poker buddies princessdonk, puddlepirate who were playing the event as well which was cool. I also saw a slew of the poker celebs like Barry Greenstein and Greg Raymer but I’m kind of over being in awe of any poker players (with a few exceptions like Ivey) so it’s not really a big deal anymore.
I take my seat in the 2 seat and say hi to the people sitting next to me. Everyone is very quiet for much of the play today. After about 5 mins of waiting to get started Taylor Caby sits down in the 8 seat. Weee, my table draw was not very good and people were playing pretty tight and weren’t even talkative to make it entertaining. Pretty bad table overall. Blinds started at 25/50 with 4500 chips and the first eventful hand I am in the sb. Btn opens to 150, I look down at AdJd and make it 450 to go. I flat here sometimes, but I think early on it’s not a bad idea to 3 bet someone from the blinds to discourage them from stealing light on you in the future. Anyways, he calls, flop is A52 rainbow, I cbet 600 and take it down.
A couple rounds later in 50/100 it folds to me in the cutoff and I open 5h7h for 250 and am called by the btn. Flop is gin for me, AhKh5c. I decide to go for a check/raise as the preflop raiser. Villain does not oblige and checks it back. Turn is another 5 giving me trips, I bet 400, he calls, river is a blank, I bet 900 he snap calls and flashes an ace which is no good.
I play a few other very small pots in the first hour but nothing eventful. In level 2 the most interesting hand was utg+1 opens to 250 at 50/100 and I flat with AhQh utg+3. Everyone else folds. Flop is Ac4c4s, he cbets 400 into the 650 pot and I flat call. Turn is the 3h and he checks. In a cash game I just about always bet here since I’m beat by so few combos of hands, but I’m proud of my check behind here as it’s a nightmare when I do get check/raised and while it’s not happening very often this is a good example of exercising good pot control in a tournament and how your play should vary when playing tournaments as opposed to cash. The river is a 6s so any 2 makes a straight, but once he checks to me I’m 90% sure that I both have the best hand and that he doesn’t have an ace so it’s just a matter of figuring out the max he will call with a pair of Jacks or something. I decide 600 into the 1450 pot is the right amount and he does too apparently after tanking for 2 minutes and reluctantly calling.
After quick break I’m moved to a new table with around 7500 in chips and feeling pretty good. Blinds are 75/150 still with no ante and I play tight and fold for awhile until the following hand. I’m in the BB and it folds around to the sb who is some old irish guy who loves to look at his cards preflop, move around some chips like he’s going to make a preflop raise carefully counting out 3 big blinds and then deciding better of it and mucking. He does this a lot and it gets annoying. Anyways in this hand he has ~3200 in chips and he makes it 450 to go. I look down at AQo and am pretty ecstatic to ship on him. He snap calls and I’m pretty demoralized to see him flip AKo. I don’t suck out and I’m down to less than my starting stack of 4500.
I open a few hands, completely miss the flop and check/fold. Finally, I pick up two red Jacks on the button and open them with about 3600 at 75/150 and the big blind ships A6o on me. I snap call, hold up and double up to about 7k again. I slowly bleed away again back to 5k when my bust out hand arrived at the very end of level 4 of 100/200 no ante.
I open the cutoff with Ad6d and this loose Russian guy defends his big blind. Flop is gin for me, AhKh6s, he check ships over my cbet of 575, I call obviously and he flips Jh6h. I pokerstoved it and I’m 65% here. Turn is a blank, river is a Qh and I’m out. Not much I can do, pretty happy with the way I played today. Wish me luck in the pot limit event tomorrow.
If anyone is here in Vegas and would like to meet up just leave a comment or shoot me an e-mail.
Edit: mean’t to send this out before my trip, but ran out of time. Just deal.
For me anyways. I plan on playing pretty much every event I can under $3k that’s not 2-7 or PLO8 as those games I have very little experience at. I’m getting pretty pumped and while I know I’ve been slacking with only 1-2 blog posts per month so far this year I’ll really try to ramp up the posting when I get out to vegas and start playing some events. My goal is at least one final table. I’m not going to get greedy and say a bracelet or anything like that though obviously this is what I’m gunning for. Gotta take baby steps. Last year was my first wsop cash, and hopefully this year will be my first final table. One thing I’m not sure about is which events to play on days when I want to play both the noon and 5pm tournament. Last year I didn’t have this problem as I had no idea how to play most of the games, but this year for example on June 14th is both the $2.5k 6max nlh and the $1.5k stud8 event. I’m not sure which is better value for me. I’m not baller enough like Ivey to enter both and just get blinded away in one or go play the other one while in breaks from the other one so it will probably be a day of decision for me.
This month has been a rough one for me pokerwise. I’m currently stuck about $31k and feeling pretty good about it actually considering I was stuck almost double this amount at one point. I took a shot at a 250/500 7 game and it went pretty horribly with me losing like $40k in 200 hands or so. In the beginning of the month I was constantly getting hit and ran and running terribly only stuck $10k or so but still playing pretty well, but the tilt just kind of slowly built up over the past month of running bad until finally erupting on that day. I also blame full tilt’s auto top up feature. I highly recommend turning it off when taking a shot at higher stakes than you are used to. I originally went in with a $10k stop loss plan but I nearly hit that after like 10 hands and auto top up makes it hard to keep track of and doesn’t force you to manually reload your stack when you get stacked to give you an opportunity to quit. The first big hand I played and lost was http://weaktight.com/2354167 I’m scooping three way on the turn and on the river I hit one of exactly three 2s left in the deck that leave me getting scooped. Both of my opponents play in this hand is pretty terrible. After this I started tilting and played a bunch of big nlh and plo pots where my opponent made the nuts in big pots and I paid him off and the few times I made big hands or the nuts in the big pots he managed to find a fold on the river. Anyways, I tilted, I played bad, I didn’t keep with my stoploss and I paid for it. I’ve accepted it and am over it.
Since then 7 game has hardly been running so I’ve been kind of lost as to what to grind every day. I feel I’ve always been pretty fearless when taking shots as I always figured I could move down and make it back playing lower but that’s hard to do if games just disappear altogether. I deposited on stars again and busted that account multiple times this month, shocker, (-$4k there) and I’ve been playing some 30/60 stud games and o8, some 2/4 nlh and plo on full tilt and doing well at that. It’s no wonder that so few fish are playing high stakes these days when it’s just so difficult to get a significant amount of money online quickly. I know full tilt won’t accept wire transfers for deposits and on stars I wanted to deposit like $10k but they increase my deposit limits very slowly and basically I just repeatedly bust the $600 or $1000 they let me deposit that day playing with my whole roll on table. Kinda frustrating but it’s the state of online poker right now and just kinda have to deal with it and roll with it. Hopefully it won’t be too much longer now before online poker’s legalized but who knows.
In more interesting, less whiny non poker related news things have been going pretty well. I’ve bought some new things and have some travel coming up. I bought a new couch and computer.
I’m super happy with the couch as it’s really comfortable and easy on my back unlike the last ghetto couches my gf and I had which we got two of for $150. My new computer runs fast, boots up quickly, has loads of hardrive space which was everything I was looking for but moving over all my files, hand histories and setting everything up on it has been a huge pain in the neck.
Tomorrow I’ll be doing some traveling to Indianapolis for my cousin’s wedding. Should be a good time especially cause I got Indy 500 tix for Sunday. I’ve never been to a race before nor do I really know anything about racing I just hope it’s entertaining with maybe a crash or two and I’m not bored after two laps of seeing cars go really fast. May try and get some pics to bring back who knows. I get back on Sunday, then on Tuesday I fly out to vegas to play my first event on Wednesday. Getting pumped just typing about it. Anyone wants to meet up when I get out there shoot me a comment or an e-mail and I’d be glad to.
April ended up being a great month for me. My best ever in fact with me winning ~$37k. HEM Graph below. Obviously most of my winnings came from the stud games, as I ran pretty poorly in the big bets.
I made some vast improvements in my O8 and stud8 games last month and am feeling good about these games going forward. I’ve been taking a look at my year to date results and I’m a winner in every single game now with the exception of stud hi. This is kind of perplexing because when I first started playing the stud games, stud hi was the only game I won at while losing at all the other stud games which means I either got worse from studying the game and watching other people play or my opponents got significantly better as I moved up in stakes. I imagine a little bit of both has happened to be honest and when I just played super tight when starting out because no one ever folds anything instead of doing all this math with pot odds calling down with the worst hand to hope to hit aces up or whatever has just made me worse. Regardless, it’s clear I have some work to do on this game moving forward.
Now you may be wondering why I’m feeling a bitter after coming off my best month ever. Well it’s for a lot of reasons. Most notably is that since April 1st I’m -$64k in EV and my year to date EV graph is below.
It’s been absolutely disgusting latley. I sit there and grind and grind away at the limit game rounds of the 7 game rotation slowly accumulating chips only to lose all them all literally every single time I get all in during the PLO or NL rounds where my opponent has any sort of equity. It’s to the point where I get a sick feeling in my stomach every time I play a big pot because I KNOW my opponent’s going to suck out on me.
To make matters worse the state of the ftp 7 games is pretty annoying. The bad beats don’t usually bother me too much as long as I get to keep playing afterwards but the games don’t run that often and if I’m playing someone headsup and they win one or two big pots off my they instasit out afterwards. Couldn’t help but save the screenshot below as I thought it was hilarious.
Yesterday I’m playing Richard Ashby headsup for maybe 60 hands (20 mins) and as soon as he’s done coolering me in a big pot for the second time he instasits out and leaves. Whenever I play someone headsup I always tell them “15 more mins” before I’m leaving and it seems no one else feels obliged to the same common courtesy. I also don’t understand why if you think you have an edge on me (if you don’t think this then why are you playing me headsup?) why you would stop playing after you won a big pot. The past pots you’ve won should have virtually no effect on your quitting decisions unless you think you will play worse after being up or down a lot.
Other players will buy in for like 20 big blinds and just open ship every hand preflop. One well known reg nadremark was doing this to me yesterday and I told him in chat “we can do flips if you want” because it’s basically what we were doing and he goes on a 10 minute tirade about how rude I am being and he can buy in for whatever he wants and how he has an edge with a shortstack blah blah blah. Um shutup? And it makes no sense to be playing the limit rounds with only 4 big bets on the table. I don’t get it.
The optimist in me says poker is just saving up all my run good for the world series which would be fine with me, but until then poker is becoming very frustrating. The other thing I’ve thought about is poker is trying to teach me a lesson that life isn’t fair and neither is poker. You can play good all you like and not be rewarded for it just how in life sometimes really terrible things happens to good people for no apparent reason other than bad luck. Anyways, enough bitterness talk I kind of hate myself for complaining here especially for all the chastising I do of other poker players for their complaining but I’m only human and it is somewhat cathartic to get off my chest.
In other news, my grandfather passed away a couple weeks ago. He was 95 years old and I flew back to Michigan for the funeral. It was all pretty sad, but he lived a good long life, had a big loving family and influenced a lot of people. It really puts things into perspective. For all the problems in your life you may be having at least you have your health. Things could be a lot worse and you should never forget that.
Since my last post I’ve read a couple of interesting books.
Fooled by Randomness
This book is all about how results oriented everybody is. We all look at successful people who took on a lot of risk and were rewarded for it like Bill Gates and say “how did you do it?” What we don’t look at is all the Bill Gates wannabes who tried just as hard as him, failed and ended up going broke because of it.
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
Micheal Lewis’ (author of the blind side and liar’s poker) most recent book about how a handful of people saw the housing crisis coming and made a bundle of money as a result.
Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections on and Off the Court
John Wooden (UCLA’s head basketball coach who won 10 national championships in 12 years) talks about his philosophy on life and method for motivating people. If you’re looking for a motivational book to help stop you from being so lazy and not working hard enough or going to the gym enough this book is really helpful.
Here’s a couple interesting hands from the past month or so.
I called him with Jack high! I know limit hold’em isn’t very sexy or exciting and I actually think this hand is pretty standard since he’s not taking this line with A or K high, but it still made me happy to call and win here.
Turning 3rd pair into a bluff I try not to bluff to much in the big bet games of 7 game because all the limit players are so showdown bound and never fold anything, but the villain in this hand was a well known nl pro who I thought could make some laydowns. I think most people would call or fold in this spot, but with his betsize I just really didn’t think he had a queen and it’s a tough call with anything less as I could take this same line with any 2, Q8, KQ, or AQ hand.
If you’re looking for some time to waste browsing the web like I am way too often you make enjoy
The true account of a former US spy plane pilot
The Thrill of Flying the SR-71 Blackbird or
A 2+2 thread of a former rafting guide who tells his life story travelling the world and his crazy experiences doing so
Both are fairly long and hard to stop reading halfway through so don’t click unless you have some serious reading time on your hands.
Lifewise things have been going well. I just became an Uncle on Wednesday when my sister in law had her first baby so that was very exciting. I gotta get out to Colorado and see him soon. In other more sobering news I paid taxes which is always a bit of a downer. I’m a teensy bit worried about it as I had to write the IRS a bad check since I’m so life busto. I requested a wire transfer from FTP last Saturday to cover my taxes and it was finally deducted from my FTP account Wednesday, but still hasn’t shown up in my bank account yet. I checked last year’s dates and the IRS didn’t cash my check last year until the 27th so my ftp monies should be there on time and leave me in the clear. It’s just adding some unnecessary stress to my life and just about the last person you want coming after you is the IRS so keep your fingers crossed for me!
Pokerwise I’ve been doing well and am up about $14k for the month at the moment but that could all go away with one or two bad sessions. I really wish four tables of 50/100 7 game ran all day, but I have to play what’s running and if that’s 150/300 which is obv a bit above my bankroll so be it I just have to suck it up and play basically. Here’s some of the more interesting hands of the month. No surprise that they are both river decisions IMO.
A PLO tough river call. I have some blockers to the straights and just didn’t believe he’d take this line with 67 or JT.
http://weaktight.com/2243098
I get minraised on the river and decide to 3 bet bluff him off a chop. May or may not have been a good bluff, but someone from my last strat post was asking about capped ranges and in this spot I think the best villain can have is a one card jack high straight where as my range can be as strong as quads.
http://weaktight.com/2243277
March ended up being a pretty good month for me. I made ~$34k online and lost $6.5k playing live for a total of around $27.5k. I’ll take it!
Live I played a $1,100 tournament out at Tulalip and only managed to last five hours of play or so. I wrote down most of my hands in a rough draft of a post wsop style, but I dunno if people like these tourny writeups so let me know if you want me to spend the extra 45 mins or so it would take to get it finished up. I had just gotten done reading Gus Hansen’s Every Hand Revealed
Online my graph is a bit deceiving as I won a bunch in the hold’em rounds, both LHE and NLH, a little in O8 and PLO and continued to donk off a bunch in the stud8 round. The good news is I’ve since played a decent amount of low limit stud8, got some more coaching from Chipsahoya over at stox and am proud to say that so far this month stud8 is my biggest winning game at +$11k and it feels great to finally have fixed some leaks and having some success in that game.
HEM Graph
Stud Games
Stud Hi: -$5.5k
Stud8: -$13k
Razz: +$6.6k
This month so far has been a bit rough. I started out immediately on a -$20k downer, followed by a +$25k upper followed by an -$8k downer. I’ve been running good in the stud games and atrociously in the big bet games. I’m currently like -$40k under EV just this month so far, but blah blah blah you don’t care. Basically I slowly grind up my stack a bunch in the limit rounds only to lose it all and then some in some huge $10-$20k pot which I get bad beat or lose a flip in over and over this month. I will spare you the beats and instead show a hand I think I played poorly.
Seat 1: rezzydezzy1 ($6,330.75)
Seat 3: andr3w321 ($16,632.75)
Seat 5: Jeetorious ($4,598)
andr3w321 posts the small blind of $20
Jeetorious posts the big blind of $40
The button is in seat #1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to andr3w321 [Qd Qs]
rezzydezzy1 folds
andr3w321 raises to $120
Jeetorious calls $80
*** FLOP *** [5h 6h Ah]
andr3w321 has 15 seconds left to act
andr3w321 checks
Jeetorious checks
*** TURN *** [5h 6h Ah] [3c]
andr3w321 bets $200
Jeetorious calls $200
*** RIVER *** [5h 6h Ah 3c] [5d]
andr3w321 checks
Jeetorious has 15 seconds left to act
Jeetorious bets $477
andr3w321: stupid 5
andr3w321 has 15 seconds left to act
andr3w321 calls $477
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Jeetorious shows [5c 7c] three of a kind, Fives
andr3w321 mucks
Jeetorious wins the pot ($1,593) with three of a kind, Fives
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $1,594 | Rake $1
Board: [5h 6h Ah 3c 5d]
Seat 1: rezzydezzy1 (button) didn’t bet (folded)
Seat 3: andr3w321 (small blind) mucked [Qd Qs] – two pair, Queens and Fives
Seat 5: Jeetorious (big blind) showed [5c 7c] and won ($1,593) with three of a kind, Fives
Notice my chat. I know I’m beat, call anyways and cost myself an unnecessary $477. I could show you countless hands like these this month in LHE or O8 or PLO or NLH where I know I’m beat on the river, but simply refuse to fold something at the top of my range in a spot because it’s too “exploitable”. The fact of the matter is it’s only exploitable if the villain both realizes it’s exploitable and then does something about it (aka bluffs me) and 90% of opponents aren’t going to notice these little things and will just play their hand face up most of the time. Even I’ll see a spot from time to time that may be +EV to jam the river on, but will end up passing and checking cause I don’t want the extra $4k variance or whatever when I get him to fold 55% of them when I only need him to fold 50% of the time. So ya, not much I can do but keep improving, not let the beats get to me and strive to play better during the bad run than an opponent in my shoes would (aka win Tommy Angelo’s reciprocality game).
Another quick read I recently got done with was Super Freakonomics
book and Malcom Gladwell’s The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
1. All nosebleed players were basically in the right place at the right time. I’m not sure if that’s the best way to put it, but basically the book and some of Malcom Gladwell’s books bring up the point that 90% of hockey players were born in the first three months of the year. Why? Because growing up the junior hockey leagues (and most kid sports) divide up the players into elite and mediocre leagues/players. Well it’s only natural that the relatively older kids (aka the ones born at the beginning of the year) are going to be separated and put into the elite league. As a result, they get to play with the better players and they get better because of that and then the same thing happens again next year and this competitive advantage just builds on itself all the way to the professional level.
Well the nosebleed players are no different in this regard. In order to be a nosebleed player you need to have been playing professionally in the ’05 to ’07 range and have built up your roll enough to start playing in the 25/50, and then 50/100, 100/200, 200/400 games as they were introduced and then you’d have to run good enough so you had an opportunity to play in the good nosebleed games with Guy when they ran. I mean every single one of the nosebleed players today basically came up at the exact same time. I mean sure, Taylor came first, followed by Btown, followed by Stinger and cts and Galfond and Durrrr and the Dang bros, krantz etc. but I bet if you did a study and found out the exact date that each of these players played their first hand of 5/10 or first joined cardrunners or first decided to go pro and start grinding every day you would find a remarkable correlation in dates. All of them are slightly different ages, Stinger being the youngest I can think of at 21/22(I think?) and most being 25-27ish, but in terms of poker career they all started at about the same time and moved up in stakes together. The reason not really any new faces have arrived at the nosebleeds since these guys’ rise is there just isn’t as much money in poker anymore. It’s simply not possible to win as much as quickly anymore. There is no Guy feeding the high stakes games or donks giving away their stacks at 25/50 anymore. There is also the live group of players, Ivey, Antonius, Negreanu, Cunningham, Lederer etc who basically all came up at the same time too and have very similar poker career timelines as each other.
I hope the analogy makes sense and I did an okay job of explaining it… obv all those guys all have tremendous talent, but they owe a ton of success to simply timing and being in the right place at the right time.
2. It’s hard wired into our brains for losses to hurt more than wins feel good. Ever feel absolutely sick to your stomach if you have a -5 buyin(or whatever -$x amount day) and just feel kinda good if you have a +5 buyin day? You’re not the only one. “Superfreakonomics” has a great epilogue where they talk about a series of experiments conducted on monkeys. My favorite experiment was one where they introduced two gambling games. In one game a monkey is presented with one grape and by a random coinflip either received only that grape or got a bonus grape too. In a second game, a monkey is presented with two grapes and by a random conflip either receives the two grapes or has one grape taken away. In both games the EV of the game is one grape, but the monkeys strongly preferred the first game that started with only one grape. The monkeys apparently suffered from “loss aversion” where the pain from losing one grape was greater than the pleasure from gaining one.
So there you go, even monkeys feel less good on winning days than bad they feel on losing days! It’s hardwired into us!
The game of life is coming!
It’s been awhile since my last no limit strategy posts Playing the Player and Exploiting a Regular and people seem to enjoy them so I thought I’d give another one a go. I’ve been grinding some 2/4 NL lately so I’ve noticed that pretty much all the regs mass table with a tight, straightforward and predictable style. I’m a firm believer that people play worse when they see something they’re not used to seeing and haven’t dealt with 1000s of times already.
I’m not saying you should do things differently just for the sake of doing them differently, especially if it loses you EV in the hand, but I am saying it’s important not to play like EVERYONE else. Just look at Phil Ivey, in headsup no limit hold’em, he defends his big blind at least 70% of the time and has success doing it. These other online pros are simply not used to having to play so many marginal hands, even in position and Ivey just owns them because it’s something he’s very used to and comfortable with. Look at Isildur1, have you ever seen someone overbet the river so frequently?
Some people may view some of these hands as just fancy play syndrome, but I tend to disagree and think they are pretty good “standard” lines, they require more thought than your standard cbet 90% of the time 2/3 pot strategy so most people will not adopt them however. One more caveat and this is VERY IMPORTANT, I am not suggesting every hand you play you need to be making a move, or making a nonstandard bet size or something. It’s fine to play standard like everyone else in most hands, because for the most part it’s the optimal line. It is important to have some wrinkles in your game from time to time that makes you different and difficult to play against however. These were maybe 8 hands out of 1800 hands or so that I played that were nonstandard.
If you haven’t watched Phil Galfond’s “Philosophy” videos on bluefirepoker.com, do it. Those videos along with Nutedawg’s first concept video on cardrunners.com have taught me more about poker than all other poker videos combined. The reason I bring this up is because I recently watched “Philosophy 3” which talks about floats and the triple deke which inspired some of these lines.
9Ts float
Any time you flop a backdoor straight flush draw, and you know your opponent is cbetting close to 100% on this board texture, it’s not a bad time to float. You have 9 flush cards, 6 pair cards, and between 4 and 8 open ended straight draw cards that can improve you on the turn for a total of 19-23 “outs”. On the turn once he bets again, you may be thinking it’s an easy fold since you don’t have odds to hit your flush (you need 52/172=30% equity), but you have to consider implied odds, as well as bluff equity. On a blank river, I think 90% of people will be betting trip aces or better again to get called by worse, instead of checking to induce a bluff, which means when he checks a blank river to you, you will have a bluff that will work 90% of the time since he almost never has a hand as strong as trip aces that he can call with.
http://weaktight.com/2179916
KQs float
This hand is very similar to the above 9Ts hand where I have 10 outs to improve my hand on the turn, which may or may not make me the best hand, but the river bricks off and I get a chance to realize my bluff equity that I talked about above.
http://weaktight.com/2179933
Q high call
Most people would not defend their BB here, and it’s certainly marginal, but the button was stealing very light and as a result I’m going to be defending my BB light. The flop is all bricks and I think my Q high is the best hand a lot of the time here.
Board: 4s 4c 2s
Dead:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 45.317% 42.49% 02.83% 331875 22104.00 { QsTc }
Hand 1: 54.683% 51.85% 02.83% 405027 22104.00 { 22+, A2s+, K2s+, Q2s+, J2s+, T2s+, 93s+, 84s+, 74s+, 63s+, 53s+, 43s, A2o+, K2o+, Q3o+, J5o+, T6o+, 96o+, 86o+, 76o }
I have 45% equity vs 70% of hands on the flop which is certainly worth a call considering I only need (18/62=29% equity).
I also have some implied odds of hitting my Q or T and a backdoor Q high flushdraw so I call. As you can see he barrels the turn, and on the river I thought I had the best hand, but wasn’t 100% sure about it, or whether he would call a checkraise with a pair of nines so I just called, but it’s certainly something to consider. This is also good for your range here, because most of the time you will have something like 66 which you will have to fold either the turn or river and this will prevent people from being able to mercilessly barrel you in the future.
http://weaktight.com/2179929
Kings checkback
This flop check back is pretty standard, though I imagine a lot of 2/4 regs probably cbet this anyways, it leaves you open to being bluff check raised on the flop and hating life. Anyways, the interesting part is the turn check back. I believe he would lead most aces into me on the turn so once he checks it to me, I think most of his range is a weak pair like 99-JJ. These hands only have 2-6 outs against me and I don’t think I can get two streets of value vs them. It’s much easier for villain to call my single river bet, knowing he gets to see my hand, as opposed to calling the turn bet when he has to be worried I will be betting the river too, making him much more likely to fold the turn now. This is definitely one of those spots where just because you have a good hand doesn’t mean betting is the best play IMO.
http://weaktight.com/2179930
T8s triple deke
This play is from “Philosophy 3” Basically by betting the turn small I get value from really weak hands and find out if my hand is good. Since I think he would raise this small bet with a King, I am free to bet big on the river knowing I have the best hand. Most people check or bet 2/3 pot on this turn, when 1/5 pot may be optimal here.
http://weaktight.com/2179931
KTs check back
It’s okay to not cbet in 3 bet pots. Here I have some equity and check it back, once he checks the turn to me, like I said in the Kings hand, I think he almost never has a pair of aces and I have a much more profitable turn bet than a flop cbet.
http://weaktight.com/2179940
T8s check raise as pfr
This play is fairly standard in plo, where you checkraise as the preflop raiser with a draw, hoping the villain incorrectly bet/folds some marginal made hand. A cbet never folds out a jack or nine but a checkraise can get these hands to fold, plus get value from bluffs or low pairs that decide to bet/fold. If he takes a free card on the flop, great, we just got to realize some free equity with our draw.
http://weaktight.com/2179948
Q9o turn overbet
Villains range is capped here with something like AT or AJ which he chops with all aces. My range here is can be anything. I may make this same play with any ace, any five or a bluff like I did.
http://weaktight.com/2180091
I hope you enjoyed and learned something! Leave a comment if there’s something you’d like me discuss in more depth or have a question about. For more poker tips check out tips4poker.com or if you’ve never deposited on pokerstars before, check out pokerstars.net for a 20% deposit bonus.
I wrote this up right after my trip way back in mid December but lost the file and just refound it today and thought I’d post it finally. Better late than never right?
I had a blast during my New Jersey/Philadelphia trip this past week. The trip started off with a trip to Atlantic City and a stay at Tropicana. We gambled a bit and ended up going to the club Providence. It was alright, but nothing spectacular by any means. I was expecting to see loads of drunk guidos here but to my disappointment they are all pretty much from long island I learned (basically no one from the Jersey Shore MTV show is actually from NJ). I manage to see a few here and there, but definitely not the stereotypical 12 of them dressed identically in their double popped collars with their new haircuts ordering jager bombs and heinekans all night.
Gambling wise I won a bit, and my gf and college buddy lost a little bit. It was a bit disappointing for me as I’d much rather have it the other way around as losing a couple hundred bucks doesn’t really bother me, but other people will “real life” hourly jobs just aren’t accustomed to losing money gambling and it can really upset them. The Pai Gow and craps gods said otherwise and I benefited at their expense.
The next day we checked out the Borgata as I had read it was the nicest casino in AC. It was definitely up there, but certainly no Bellagio or Wynn in my opinion obviously. On Saturday around noon they had one $30/$60 stud game running which I was excited to play in but had to wait til our girlfriends were occupied later in the trip.
Next day was Philadelphia touristy stuff. Saw the liberty bell, Ben Franklin’s grave, their market, the rocky statue etc but the most exciting thing I did that day was eat a declicious philly cheese steak from Jim’s. It’s not one of the famous two rivals right across from each other, but my buddy said it was better than either of those. I got a “whiz wit” which means with cheese whiz and onions. The cheese whiz sounds gross, and I’ll be the first to tell you that, but it’s the local traditonal way of having a cheesesteak and besides my gf got provolone cheese instead which I got to try, and the whiz was definitely way better. I also had the exciting experience of having a gas attendant fill up my gas for me. Didn’t even have to get out of the car. It was awesome, definitely the second best highlight of the trip. Even kept my receipt.
Delicious Cheesesteak
Reading Terminal Market Sign
My gf and I with the Liberty Bell
My college bud and I chillin with the Rocky statue (ran up the stairs which are right behind him)
The next day I mostly just rested up as I was still tired from the redeye I took over from Seattle. Just played some video games and watched the Sunday Night Football game where the Eagles played a great game vs the Giants. Monday, I made it out to an amazing “rare game” restaurant Half Moon where I tried blackened alligator and a kangaroo burger for the first time. They have rotating game specials every day and I love trying new food. It was the first time I’d ever tried either of those animals and they each definitely have a distinct taste to them. The gator was a tough kind of almost chewy meat and the kangaroo was a hard to describe texture which I don’t have the vocab for because I’m no food critic. I did really like the place and would definitely go back though. After that it was off to Herrs chip factory where I got to see loads of assembly lines of potato chips being made with warehouses and warehouses stocked full of boxes of them and even ate fresh potato chips that were peeled just 6 minutes before. I think what made them taste so great was they were still warm.
After that it was off to Atlantic City again to finally get some poker in for the trip. I was hoping to play some live stud for the first time ever, but it was Monday night and nothing was running. I ended up playing a little $10/$20 limit hold’em, followed by about 5 hours of $20/$40 limit hold’em. It’s the first time I’ve ever played LHE seriously at a casino(as opposed for just fun) and I actually kind of liked it because:
The hands go fast – people make decisions very quickly, there’s no 5 minute tanking like there is in no limit and in general people make their decision in 20 sec or less I’d guess so you get in more hands
I can play more hands – I often get bored playing live, but limit hold’em kind of helps because I can defend my blinds much more, and in general just see more flops which is more fun. With a hand like QJs I’m almost always in the pot and am not getting squeezed out of the pot or have to fold preflop nearly ever after I commit some chips to the hand
Things I didn’t like were:
The hands go fast – there wasn’t really any time to pay attention to live reads or anything like that. I mostly just had to play like it was an internet game and make my decisions based on board texture and potsize.
We were playing with small denomination chips – even though the Borgata has $10 and $20 chips, which a few people used sporadically, greater than 90% of the chps in play at the $20/$40 game were $5 chips. I fumbled around a lot and had a hard time counting out 8 or 16 chips at a time and had to dedicate way too much of my time stacking 4 or 8 high chip stacks ready for betting as opposed to paying attention to the other players or hands.
It was Monday night and most of them were regulars – I’d say more than half the people at my table knew each other and were calling them by their first names. Now, I was playing the highest LHE game going on at the time, and it was a Monday night, but it’s never a great table when Tom is talking to Juno who’s talking to Steve and a couple other guys who clearly go there every night and know each other very well.
Having said that I ended up winning $268. Might have been enough to pay for my whole trip even minus flight of course. I started off hot winning a couple hundred, then had a big losing streak and was down about $600, but then starting running hot again, got up about $400 and finally quit up $268. I don’t think I played that great and made more than a few mistakes, but my opponents, even the regulars seemed to make a lot of mistakes too. I was surprised how often they would check back the river with the best hand or fold the river for one bet or how little they bluffraised in spots which are pretty standard online. Anyways, I learned a couple things and hope to be back at the live pokers soon.
Awesome british rap by Christian Van Vuuren who had to spend 7 weeks in quarantine cause he got TB
February ended up being a pretty epic month. I squeaked out something like $10k, but I’m going to go ahead and call this month a fail. I was on pace for my best month ever got up pretty quickly to $80k at my peak, but after that it was basically just straight down to finish up only $10k. I had one +$30k day and two -$30k days along with a bunch of plus or minus $5-$20k days thrown in. I think my game selection really fell off at the end of the month and when good 7 or 8 games stopped running I still really wanted to play and ended up sitting with some fairly tough regs which it’s pretty questionable about whether I had an edge against or not.
On the bright side, I think it improved my game immensely (though cost me a lot to find these leaks), improved my tolerance to big $$ swings and I did manage to end up with a pretty good profit I suppose. It’s just a bit frustrating I let the monster month get away from me but you know what they say, “Easy come, easy go” right?
For March I’ve officially sworn off pokerstars. I seem to continuously bust my account and have to redeposit there. I don’t know if it’s the software, the players, my bad luck, my psyche from having a large % of my stars roll at each table at any given time or what, but I’ve been losing there for months now. It took me awhile to accept it, but much like Dodgyken did I’ve just decided I’m going to stop playing there with the exception of the occasional Sunday donkaments as it’s just a big money pit for me which I’ve got to stop.
Here’s a breakdown of the various games for the month. I’m positive I’m missing some hands as there’s like a $7k difference between my recorded and actual results and obviously the 2-7 TD hands aren’t here, but this is what I’ve got.
NLHE
Not much to say here other than I played some big pots this month. I had both some run good hands and not so run good hands
LHE
I had another session with BigBadBar the other day which went great. He really hammered home some nice points and plugged a couple of leaks I was obviously having. Since then I’ve been playing some 5/10 to 15/30 headsup LHE and really improving in this game I feel. The only problem with headsup is the rake can be a real KILLER as pretty much every pot sees a flop and at least a cbet which is obviously raked and starts to add up pretty quickly.
PLO
Pretty clear I ran bad in plo this month as it’s one of my best games relative to everyone else and there’s just no way my expectation is breakeven here. These hands come to mine where I hit my nut anti-gin card and easily fold the river otherwise. Binking bottom set and Q high flush no good
O8
My run bad in plo is obviously made up for my run good in o8 here. I think I have a firm understanding of this game and play it pretty well now. Clearly my “tuition” aka huge losses I took almost six months ago when first learning this game are starting to pay off.
Stud Hi
I changed my style a bit this month and tried to play a bit more pots and fold less. It didn’t work out so well. I’ve gone back over my hand histories and tightened up considerably since, and hope to see my results go back to the green for this game next month.
Stud8
Pretty clear I still suck at this game. My goal for march is to play a lot of low stakes stud8, get some more coaching and finally crack this game and figure out what I am doing so wrong.
Razz
By far my best stud game right now. Some good 100/200 razz games were running for a couple days I had a nice win in. I’m definitely still learning and improving though. Here’s a monster razz hand I played. I played it bad, but Eli played it even worse. At the time I thought I had 35-40% equity on 4th, but was a bit surprised afterwards to learn I was only 32%. Definitely messed this one up and overcalling 4th is absolutely the right play. 7th is a bit interesting I think, in pro poker tools I’m 54% vs alexonmoon if he has two cards seven and below that are unpaired on 4th and got a random 7th street. I have Eli boardlocked and know he’s calling, still not sure I like the raise and this just shows the danger of not drawing smooth (76 is so much worse than 75).
Thats it for now, gl in March!