How NOT to Bluff Checkraise the River

Just played this atrocity of a hand. River seems like a pretty obvious check/fold and even the flop is arguably a fold against this TAGgish villain with nit tendencies. But since I am a poker genius, I decide to turn top pair/top kicker into a bluff on the river. Villain valuebets enough to allow me to shove for more than the pot and I somehow convince myself that I can make him fold his AT, sets, and weak flushes if I do so. Obviously, I get snapped off by TT - seeya later, $322!

My thought process is absurd. Nobody is ever folding a set or a weak flush here. The only hands villains folds are the ones I'm already beating, and possibly AT, and there are very very few of those in his range (he maybe, MAYBE takes this line with an ace and the queen or jack of diamonds) compared to sets and flushes. I need to be making this play for value only, and only when I actually have the nuts. But obviously, the next time that happens, villain will fold and show the second nut flush.

I can't believe that after all this time, I still have this much trouble folding TPTK in the face of sustained aggression. You would think that after this much time, I'd have made some progress on this front, but it seems like I'm just discovered new and even more insane ways to avoid folding. I don't understand why it's so hard for me to just get away from these hands. I absolutely have to find some way to start doing so.

Beat: I'm Being Scammed Out of $6.6K by Cake Poker?

Early last week, I requested my cashout check for the balance of my account on Cake and I've been looking forward to receiving a check for about $6,600. Imagine my surprise when I checked my email and saw this message:

We have been informed by our check processor that your ID, although adequate for our purposes, is not clear enough to be used as ID verification for check issuance. We would request that you provide another digital copy of your photo ID that is much cleared and has better contrast. Our check processor will then be able to complete the processing of your check. We apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause you.

Please let us know if we can be further assistance

Kind Regards.

Alejandra

Cake Poker Cashier

What the fuck is this?

It's pretty standard for poker sites to require some sort of identity verification before they allow you to withdraw any money, but I've already jumped through this hoop. In order even to enable the check request cashout option on my account, a few months ago, I had to send them an 11MB png-format digital photo of the top half of my bank statement and my passport. Every word on every document is perfectly legible. But apparently it's not enough for Cake's "check processor." I would love to hear the rationale behind this and I would love any guidance on what would be "clear enough."

Tomorrow morning, I'm going to try to find a scanner at school and do a high-resolution scan of my documents and send them in again. But if what they already have isn't good enough, I can't imagine that any sort of scan will be. This is especially weird because Cake's service and support has always been prompt and helpful in the past and I've never had any problems with them until now. I really don't know what the next step is if they still won't let me cash out and I'm kind of freaking out about this because my Cake bankroll represents a fairly large percentage of all of my assets. I really, REALLY hope that they just want a slightly higher resolution image and there's a scanner at school I can use and I get my check soon.

gg, irs.

I've been working on my taxes recently and, since 2009 was the first year I've made any actual money playing poker, I've been familiarizing myself with the tax provisions relating to poker winnings. Now, I should say at the outset that politically I'm more or less a social democrat and I don't at all mind paying taxes to contribute to the maintenance and upkeep of our government and the multitude of services it provides us. If anything, I think taxes in this country are in general too low and I'm in favor of broader government-administered social welfare programs. But what I've learned about the way poker winnings are taxed, especially the way MY poker winnings will be taxed for last year, has been pretty tilting.

[Nothing is this post is legal advice, and nobody should rely on it. This post is simply a recitation of my best understanding of the way poker winnings are taxed. I'm not a lawyer or an accountant and I'm especially not YOUR lawyer or YOUR accountant. If you want legal or tax advice, you should seek the counsel of a lawyer or accountant licensed to practice your jurisdiction.]

Basically, the IRS treats poker winnings like any other gambling winnings, requiring that you declare your winnings as income and allowing you to deduct your losses, but only to the extent of your winnings. So if you are stuck on the year, you can't take a deduction for the amount you're stuck; you can only deduct up to the amount of your winnings.

This is pretty shitty for poker players, since a poker player being stuck for the year is not really that different from a business being in the red for the year but the business can take a deduction for its net loss and the poker player can't. I think the rationale behind this policy is that productive business is something the government wants to encourage, so it's willing to subsidize bad years for businesses, but gambling is something the government doesn't really want its citizens doing, so it doesn't give the same tax advantage to gambling losses. This seems ridiculous. A poker pro having a losing year is much more analogous to a business having a losing year than it is to some degenerate spending thousands on scratch tickets, yet for tax purposes it's treated like the latter rather than the former. gg irs.

Initially, I thought I could just net my winning and losing sessions and report the net as income, but I dug a little deeper and it turns out that the IRS requires poker players to report all of their winning sessions as income and itemize deductions and deduct all losing sessions as itemized deductions. Furthermore, the IRS has never explicitly defined what constitutes a "session." While the limitation on deductions for losses is mildly tilting, this itemization requirement combines with the murkiness of the definition of a session to put me on apoplectic hippo-tilt.

The most aggressive position I could take with respect to the definition of a session would be that a session lasts until I move money from my Cake account to my bank account. Under this definition, my entire play over the course of the past year has been one long session. But I doubt this would hold up in an audit or in court, since it would basically allow me to skirt the itemization requirement entirely.

The most extreme way to define a session in the other direction would be to say that every hand you play counts as a "session." Even less extreme than this, you could say that, for online poker, every table session counts as a session, and it would still impose incredibly burdensome accounting requirements on online poker players who multitable. Trying to track every single buyin at a table, auto top-up, and the amount in my stack when I close the table would be a goddamn nightmare. And I, a casual microstakes online player for 2009, would end up having to report probably somewhere in the neighborhood of $100,000 of income and then take itemized deductions for $98,000. This would be completely ridiculous.

The compromise that's most widely advocated by people who have written publicly available materials on this subject is to define a session as any continuous period playing the same game. This definition is pretty much in line with what most multitabling online players consider a session and basically allows us to use the "Sessions" tab of Hold 'Em Manager to account for our sessions. It's still needlessly burdensome, but it's not nearly as burdensome as trying to track every auto top-up. I've adopted this method and will be using it to prepare my return.

My anger over these policies is driven by three considerations. The first is that, regardless of the definition of a session, in nearly all cases, reporting all winning sessions as income and then deducting losing sessions ultimately creates the exact same tax liability as netting winning and losing sessions and reporting the net as income. So all of the tedious bean-counting serves really no purpose other than to force poker players to waste time and effort keeping records. gg irs.

You may have scratched your head when your read the word "nearly" in the preceding paragraph. Well, it turns out that the only situation in which this system changes the ultimate tax liability of the taxpayer is...SURPRISE, the situation that I am in! My situation is that the total of my losing sessions for last year is less than the standard deduction. So I still have to report all of my winning sessions as income, but it doesn't make sense for me to itemize my deductions since the standard deduction is still larger. So I, and various other poor people similarly situated, end up paying a much higher marginal tax rate on our poker winnings than richer poker players for whom itemizing deductions makes sense.

How sick is it that our supposedly progressive income tax scheme creates such a horribly regressive result? How sick is it that the only situation where the burdensome accounting measures imposed on poker players make any difference in their final tax liability is when it increases the tax burden on the very poorest of players? This is such a fucking brilliant and devious way for the government to punish poor people for gambling. gg, irs.

Now, the third and final consideration that tilts me when I think about this is the fact that in practice, nearly no poker players will have given this as much thought as I have or researched this as deeply as I have. I am confident that the majority of them will not even report their poker winnings as income, and the majority of those who do will simply net their wins and losses for the year. And they will probably be fine because they won't be audited. So the real effect of these arcane regulations is to punish people who make a good faith effort to understand and obey the law. gg, irs.

In sum, with respect to poker, the federal income tax harshly penalizes impoverished, law-abiding citizens. gg, irs.

I can sort of understand the rationales behind these policies. Poker is not productive work in the sense that it doesn't really create, it just transfers consumption. Society would rather have people donig some value-creating productive work than grinding away at the tables and taking money from fish who do. Furthermore, the government doesn't want poor people gambling with what little money they have, so it imposes regressive taxes in an attempt to discourage this behavior.

But I'm not a pro who sits in the Venetian all day preying on drunk tourists and banking six figs a year who never plans on doing anything good for society. I'm a 23-year-old who is trying to get through law school. I'm looking forward to a long and productive career practicing law, advising entrepreneurs and investors in small businesses. I also want to defend people accused of crimes who would otherwise be swept into overcrowded prisons by an overstressed and imprecise criminal justice system, and stand in court to vindicate the rights of people who have been wronged. I live off $1,200 a month in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in one of the biggest cities in America, scrimping everywhere and making substantial cutbacks on my standard of living in an effort to keep my student loan debt as low as possible.

I'm not some degenerate gambling addict who spends an entire minimum wage paycheck on scratch tickets and ends up on public assistance. I started grinding microstakes last year, mostly for the fun and challenge of the game, with some hope of maybe creating a little side income for myself to enjoy life a little bit and not have to live like such a pauper. I played smart and ran good and ended the year a couple thousand bucks in the black. Now I sit down to do my taxes and find all of these nonsensical rules robbing me of the value of my standard deduction.

Surely, there are better places for the IRS to find the $700 of taxes that I have to pay than my meager bankroll. Surely, the IRS can find that $700 somewhere other than my empty pockets. But just as surely, it doesn't give a shit and will happily take its disproportionately large cut of my modest poker winnings.

gg, irs.

Interesting Spot, Possible Mistake

I ran into this spot at 1/2 Rush just now.

I don't like squeezing preflop with AJo - I have to fold to a 4bet so it's basically turning AJo into a bluff and I think calling and taking a flop gives me better chances.

The idea of my checkraise is to fold out some of his weak value hands like 55-99, possibly even TT and JJ, K9, QT, etc., and also to build a big pot against his stronger hands so that I can win a big pot if I hit. I'm pretty much planning on getting it in if he 3bets me since I still have 12 outs against his sets and two pairs and 7 outs against his flushes. But in that case I'm expecting to 3bet to $100 or so, some amount that signals that he's willing to call it off, not to shove his entire remaining $200 stack into this $70 pot. So sick.

I hadn't taken into account the decision that I would have to make if he shoved over me, since I see that so rarely. And I think his shove is just barely enough to deny me odds to call. Against even a fairly generous range of 44, KQ, and connected and 1-gap clubs, my equity is roughly 35%, which is barely what I need to call $170 to win $260 profitably. If we take out some of his KQ combinations and add in a few more club combinations and a few KK and QQ combinations, I can be as bad as 30% to win. But if we add some bluffs into his range, I start to rise back up to break-even equity. It's so close and so sick.

One big big mistake that I made in playing this and that I didn't realize until I started stoving postgame was not realizing how badly his boat redraws hurt my equity if he has a set or two pair. I have 12 clean outs against those hands, but he has so many boat outs that I'm still only 35%. I knew that fading cost me somewhat but I didn't realize that it cut that deeply into my equity. I'm glad I know this now.

The other I might have been able to better to make this an easier decision would be to size my checkraise differently, either smaller to make it an easier fold or larger to make it an easier call. The size I chose is basically perfect to make it impossible for me to play against a shove. I wonder if villain realizes how sick this really was.

Rush Degeneracy

Over the past few days, I've played exclusively 1/2 Rush and pretty much only during Happy Hours - gotta get those Full Tilt Points and save up for a CardRunners membership. I've been running amazingly good, taking full advantage of the initial deposit boomswitch, and I'm up about $1,000 so far this month over about 3,300 hands. I'm going to finish clearing the first $100 of my bonus within the next few days, certainly before I can deposit again using eChecks. I'm also faithfully grinding Iron Man and I'm pretty optimistic about making it. 200 FTPs a day isn't hard at 1/2 Rush.

A few days ago I shocked myself by making an the sickest, most unbelievable herocall I think I've ever made. Here is the hand history.

Calling the 3bet preflop is marginal at best and is actually probably losing in the long run. Since this was Rush, I really had no read on him and no idea about his 3betting range from the blinds against a button open, but his raise was just so small and I'm getting 2.5:1 and I have decent equity against a lot of hands that people 3bet there.

On the flop, his smallish cbet on that extremely connected board starts to trigger some of my bullshit detectors. I think he could make a bet that size with his missed AK and AQ to collect dead money if I also missed, but I think his strong made hands bet more on that flop to protect against the multitude of draws that could still be in my range - any two spades, any 7, any J, of which there are potentially still a ton in my range. This really illustrates why it's terrible for him to make such a small 3bet preflop and let me call with such a wide range.

In spite of how weak I think he is at this point, raising is not really a consideration for me. I have middle pair and a backdoor flush draw and it's still possible that he has something like JJ or a set that is strong now and still has decent equity if a draw gets there, or even just a badly played KK. So I elect to call and peel a turn here.

The turn card is great for me, giving me 9 flush outs in addition to my second pair with A kicker. I'm pretty sure all 9 of my flush outs are clean here, since even the board-pairing Td only puts him ahead of me if he already has a set, and he seldom does when he takes this line. Likewise, I think my A outs and 9 outs are clean most of the time, since I don't think he takes this line with AA or AT. So when he makes that less-than-halfpot bet on the turn I think he's actually laying me good odds to try to make a flush, two pair, or trips on the river.

I call. The river pairs the 8 on the board. Villain shoves $212 into a $120 pot. Unless villain is Spirit Rock playing on a friend's account, I think this is rarely if ever a bet for value and is almost always a bluff. If he actually has a hand that he think he's betting for value, I don't think he makes this shove overbet because he's afraid of folding out all of my medium-strength hands that would call a more reasonably-sized bet. I don't think he's willing to make this kind of play that would basically be a bet on my ability to herocall.

As I click to call I'm literally shaking IRL and when he shows and the pot ships to me I feel this massive adrenaline dump and I'm basically euphoric for the next 15-20 minutes. I still think it's supermarginal and if I hadn't been good, this post would likely be dedicated to berating the shit out of myself for making such a retarded call. But I was good, and it's one of the greatest feelings I've ever had in poker.

The combination of running really good and making sick plays like this and having them work out has me feeling extremely confident in my game.

First Few Days on Full Tilt

I finally deposited on Full Tilt a few days ago after confirming with their email support that I could get the full bonus. This wasn't clear because the eChecks initial deposit limit is $100, but I explained to them that I'm going to be depositing much more than that later and they are usually willing to credit the rest of the bonus to an account in these circumstances. Also, my last rakeback payment came in on Cake so I requested a check for my entire account balance. I'm pretty excited to receive it and curious about what it will look like. I'm also kind of anxious about whether or not my bank will actually accept it, since I hear it's pretty standard for poker sites to use sketchy checks from small disreputable foreign banks.

I've been grinding up my initial $100 mostly at the Rush Poker tables and I've been running really hot and I'm up to about $600 now. Rush Poker is amazing. It's just so easy to put in volume and clear out bonus and grind Iron Man. It's also easier for me to process cognitively than multitabling. I'm still not sure how it compares to normal multitabling in terms of game EV, since I'm not really sure if the Rush attracts more grinding regs like myself or more action-junkie fish. Also a factor is that my HUD doesn't work correctly on Rush, and my HUDless handreading skills are pretty useless in Rush since opponents change every hand. I'm going to give more thought to these factors before making a decision to switch mostly or possibly even exclusively to Rush.

This is the one massive instance of rungood that represents basically all of my winnings on FTP so far. The flop seemed pretty much perfect and I was more or less hoping to get it in, and when I saw that big bet and call I was basically fistpumping. But then I get 3bet and 4bet all-in by these two superdeepstacks and when the action comes back to me I'm actually strongly considering a fold, even getting better than 3:1 on my call. My fear at this point is that there's a pretty good chance that my pair-and-draw is up against both a stronger made hand and a stronger draw. I think that a good percentage of the time, one of these guys has AA/KK/a set and the other has Ahxh. I made the call, which I think is ultramarginal at best, figuring that sometimes I'm up against two worse draws and I'm ahead and sometimes I'm up against two made hands and all my flush outs are good, but I don't know how frequently those situations occur compared to being totally dominated. In retrospect, I think I'm seldom if ever actually ahead here after a UTG+1 preflop raiser make a fullpot cbet in a 4-way pot on the flop and shoves over a call and checkraise, and with two deepstacks getting it in ahead of me I don't think my non-nut flush draw gives me clean outs that often either.

What it really comes down is that I may not be psychologically capable of folding such a "pretty" hand in a 3-way pot, even given the strong evidence from the action ahead of me that I'm crushed. Leak?

McRib is Back, Part II: The Triumph of Reason

Yesterday, in a brazen act of rationality, I went back to McDonalds and got a McRib meal for lunch and ate it. I did this largely just to prove to myself that I could, and to smash the irrational results-oriented part of me with the sledgehammer of reality. I know that McDonalds has pretty immaculate standards of food cleanliness, making it unlikely that it was the cause of my illness. I also heard that a bunch of other people around my school got sick with similar gastrointestinal problems around roughly the same time I did, and seemingly none of them had eaten McRib or even gone to McDonalds.

Yet, in spite of all of this evidence, part of my brain is still tries to convince me that a causal connection exists where only correlation can be observed. Inferring causation from correlation is something that humans seem pretty much hardwired to do, which makes sense in light of how potentially useful this sort of rudimentary pattern recognition would be in nature. I'm sure my distant ancestors benefited from their aversion to eating any more of those bright red mushrooms in the woods by the stream after they got curious and ate one and nearly died the next day. This is the same basic principle of classical conditioning that allows animals to be trained. Even if this sort of results orientation weren't heritable, it would still certainly be taught, and aspects of it are probably even learned without active instruction during the early stages of development.

This is why I think of eating McRib as a psychosymbolic act of defiant rationality. It's a manifestation of the ability of the complex, high-functioning, uniquely human parts of my brain analyzing reality and coming up with an answer contrary to the one that's being broadcast on full power by my crude reptilian brain. It's the triumph of reason over ignorance, enlightenment over fear, thought over instinct.

I did not get sick.