Friday, September 10, 2010
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Sunday MTT Report
This past Sunday, I played another round of tournaments. Obviously, for me, a "round of tournaments" on Sundays doesn't mean the Sunday Million and Warmup and the Second Chance and the 750 and the Brawl and the Mulligan - it means the $5.50 GSOP and the BBT Freeroll.
I ran extremely hot and won the GSOP, which was PLO8 this week. I know nearly nothing about PLO8 and basically just coolered the hell out of everyone the entire way. Ship the $48 and 2nd GSOP bracelet this season to noted MTT specialist and excellent poker player, me.
Then in the BBT freeroll, I again managed to catch every card in the deck and made the final table, though I ended up busting in 5th. By far the most interesting hand I played the entire time was already posted as a comment in my previous blog entry by one of the villains, and I feel like it deserves some deeper analysis.
The Hand
Villains are two red pros. I had Ali something like 17/14 going into this hand and Jeremiah something like 30/23. Both are obviously competent and appear to be playing seriously, and both have seen me playing nothing but very straightforward poker and luckboxing my way to a huge stack. Preflop, I strongly consider squeezing but I think I fold all worse hands except pairs and I think Ali might even lay down 88 to me here, so I ultimately decide to take a flop in position. This reasoning might be wrong and I might just want to ship for value here - I don't know, I know nothing about MTTs.
On this somewhat drawy low flop, I think Ali bets a lot of his missed overcards this way. I think he makes a larger bet if he actually has the overpair that I think he is trying to represent, so I think his range is pretty weak and I basically decide to float and steal the pot on the turn. But then Jeremiah calls. I feel kind of the same way about Jeremiah's range here - I think he usually raises with top pair or better on a flop like this, so I don't think he's very strong most of time, and I think there are a lot of floats in his range because he also thinks that Ali's range is weak. I call getting 3:1, figuring that sometimes I can make a pair and have basically the nuts and sometimes when I miss the turn I can make a move and take it down. The fact that I have the ace of diamonds will give me some flexibility going into the turn and also militates in favor of floating.
When the turn misses me and checks through, I stick with my plan and bet to take the pot away. I'm basically trying to rep to these two good players that I'm even more of a fish than I actually am and that I flatted the flop against two opponents with a strong made hand. I think I can make these two red pros buy that story a lot of the time, since I think they know that a lot of the players in this tournament will do what I'm repping I did. So I put in a bet that I think a fish with the nuts would make. Ali folds but then Jeremiah shoves over me, and when he does, I basically hate everything and want to die.
I'm confused as hell and I have no clue what he could possibly have when he takes this line. I'm not sure if he would play a big made hand like 66, 22, 77, 76, or possibly slyly-flatted JJ+ like this - I feel like he would have raised on the flop with those holdings, but this is a tournament and I know nothing about tournament play and I feel like maybe slowplaying hands like that for value is something people do. His bluffs include hands like 33, 44, 55, and hands like mine that he still has because he had a plan similar to my own on the flop going into the turn and is now following through. If he has missed overcards, I'm ahead of him, and if he has any sort of draw, I'm ahead of him, but the thing that ultimately pushed me toward folding was that fact that a decent portion his bluffs are underpairs that are actually ahead of me.
Afterwards, Jeremiah claimed to have 54 and in the hand history he posted on the last entry of this blog, he has 5s4s. The possibility that he could have been semibluffing with a draw was a pretty remote consideration in my head during the hand. I think this is because I personally like to raise on the flop with strong draws to balance my value raising range, and I feel like this is a pretty standard policy and I expect a lot of other players to do this. I also feel like there are so many bad turn cards that can ruin the value of a draw on the flop that flatting with a draw is really dangerous. I guess I'm not really sold on the whole idea of semibluffing the turn, even though I've seen it advocated by a lot of people including Barry Greenstein, just because I feel like even with a strong draw, there's only one card coming so your equity when called can't be that fantastic. But I guess if I was willing to consider the possibility that he does this with a set, I should have been willing to consider that he would do it with a draw to balance.
Even if I had weighted his draws heavily, I still I think I probably would have folded, partially because of fear of the top of his range and partially because of MTT dynamics and fear of busting leading to reluctance to make extremely thin high-variance herocalls.
Finally, I briefly considered the possibility that I was being leveled, but quickly dismissed it because I didn't think I'd given Jeremiah any reason to think that I would be capable of thinking deeply enough to be leveled.
Hands like this basically make me feel like I'm hopeless at poker. I guess this is why Jeremiah is a pro and I'm just some random scrub-a-dub blogger.
I ran extremely hot and won the GSOP, which was PLO8 this week. I know nearly nothing about PLO8 and basically just coolered the hell out of everyone the entire way. Ship the $48 and 2nd GSOP bracelet this season to noted MTT specialist and excellent poker player, me.
Then in the BBT freeroll, I again managed to catch every card in the deck and made the final table, though I ended up busting in 5th. By far the most interesting hand I played the entire time was already posted as a comment in my previous blog entry by one of the villains, and I feel like it deserves some deeper analysis.
The Hand
Villains are two red pros. I had Ali something like 17/14 going into this hand and Jeremiah something like 30/23. Both are obviously competent and appear to be playing seriously, and both have seen me playing nothing but very straightforward poker and luckboxing my way to a huge stack. Preflop, I strongly consider squeezing but I think I fold all worse hands except pairs and I think Ali might even lay down 88 to me here, so I ultimately decide to take a flop in position. This reasoning might be wrong and I might just want to ship for value here - I don't know, I know nothing about MTTs.
On this somewhat drawy low flop, I think Ali bets a lot of his missed overcards this way. I think he makes a larger bet if he actually has the overpair that I think he is trying to represent, so I think his range is pretty weak and I basically decide to float and steal the pot on the turn. But then Jeremiah calls. I feel kind of the same way about Jeremiah's range here - I think he usually raises with top pair or better on a flop like this, so I don't think he's very strong most of time, and I think there are a lot of floats in his range because he also thinks that Ali's range is weak. I call getting 3:1, figuring that sometimes I can make a pair and have basically the nuts and sometimes when I miss the turn I can make a move and take it down. The fact that I have the ace of diamonds will give me some flexibility going into the turn and also militates in favor of floating.
When the turn misses me and checks through, I stick with my plan and bet to take the pot away. I'm basically trying to rep to these two good players that I'm even more of a fish than I actually am and that I flatted the flop against two opponents with a strong made hand. I think I can make these two red pros buy that story a lot of the time, since I think they know that a lot of the players in this tournament will do what I'm repping I did. So I put in a bet that I think a fish with the nuts would make. Ali folds but then Jeremiah shoves over me, and when he does, I basically hate everything and want to die.
I'm confused as hell and I have no clue what he could possibly have when he takes this line. I'm not sure if he would play a big made hand like 66, 22, 77, 76, or possibly slyly-flatted JJ+ like this - I feel like he would have raised on the flop with those holdings, but this is a tournament and I know nothing about tournament play and I feel like maybe slowplaying hands like that for value is something people do. His bluffs include hands like 33, 44, 55, and hands like mine that he still has because he had a plan similar to my own on the flop going into the turn and is now following through. If he has missed overcards, I'm ahead of him, and if he has any sort of draw, I'm ahead of him, but the thing that ultimately pushed me toward folding was that fact that a decent portion his bluffs are underpairs that are actually ahead of me.
Afterwards, Jeremiah claimed to have 54 and in the hand history he posted on the last entry of this blog, he has 5s4s. The possibility that he could have been semibluffing with a draw was a pretty remote consideration in my head during the hand. I think this is because I personally like to raise on the flop with strong draws to balance my value raising range, and I feel like this is a pretty standard policy and I expect a lot of other players to do this. I also feel like there are so many bad turn cards that can ruin the value of a draw on the flop that flatting with a draw is really dangerous. I guess I'm not really sold on the whole idea of semibluffing the turn, even though I've seen it advocated by a lot of people including Barry Greenstein, just because I feel like even with a strong draw, there's only one card coming so your equity when called can't be that fantastic. But I guess if I was willing to consider the possibility that he does this with a set, I should have been willing to consider that he would do it with a draw to balance.
Even if I had weighted his draws heavily, I still I think I probably would have folded, partially because of fear of the top of his range and partially because of MTT dynamics and fear of busting leading to reluctance to make extremely thin high-variance herocalls.
Finally, I briefly considered the possibility that I was being leveled, but quickly dismissed it because I didn't think I'd given Jeremiah any reason to think that I would be capable of thinking deeply enough to be leveled.
Hands like this basically make me feel like I'm hopeless at poker. I guess this is why Jeremiah is a pro and I'm just some random scrub-a-dub blogger.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Battle of the Bloggers Tournament
You may notice that in the sidebar of this blog, there is a little Battle of the Bloggers badge. This is because I have been playing in the BBT for the past few weeks. This blog got noticed by someone at Full Tilt and I got an invite to play in this series of freerolls, and, being the degenerate edgemonger that I am and salivating over the prospect of like $7 of equity, I've been playing in them almost every week. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to play tournaments and I haven't cashed a single one of them. But hopefully I can luckbox at least a few free dollars out of this before it's over, and maybe get some new readers for my blog.
However, I did manage to bink the $5.50 NLHE tournament in the Goon Series of Poker a couple of weeks ago - ship the $40. I ran really good at every crucial stage of the tournament and don't at all feel like I ever outplayed anyone the entire way and was generally clueless like I am in every tournament. Sometimes a monumental run of cards is all it takes.
I've given some serious consideration to switching from cash games to tournaments, largely based on the reasoning that tournaments attract more fish and are better propositions for a strong player in the long run even though they are much higher variance. I still have a few hundred Gold Chips and some Gold Cards left on Cake and I've been thinking about using them to play satellites and freerolls to learn tournaments. But I think that, at least for the time being, I am going to keep my primary focus on cash games. I feel like there are still a lot of things that I want to prove to myself in the cash game arena before tackling MTTs.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Back in the Saddle
I just wrapped up my first session in about a week and a half and came out nicely ahead. Most of my big winning hands were just people doing retarded things and me running really good. As always, my losing hands were much more interesting.
Hand #1
Cutoff is a 17/16 and small blind is a 32/8. I pretty much hate my life when the fish 3bets, since his range is basically QQ+ and AK. Just folding pre occurs to me and I'm still not convinced that isn't the best play. When the flop comes ragged and he leads, I'm not even sure if AK is still in his range. Folding again occurs to me but I dubiously include some worse pairs and AK in his range and talk myself into getting it in. Thoughts?
Hand #2
I strongly considered folding on the turn here, but I didn't because I was still including some draws in his range; unfortunately, there are so many ways for him to be ahead of me that folding might still be best. But then he instapotted the river, which to me could either mean that he rivered the nuts (88, Kc6c, 57) or he's bluffing. It occurred to me that some of his bluffs could actually be ahead of me if he has something like Ad3d that he thinks is no good after I call two streets and decides to turn it into a bluff. That pushed me a little toward folding, but I felt like there were so few ways for him to have the nuts and so many ways for him to be bluffing and his sizing made me level myself and I called. Unfortunately he showed up with a sick range-merging top two pair that he instapotted on the river with a paired 3-flush board. I struggle in these spots because I am still really bad at assigning accurate ranges to nonstandard things like the 1/3-pot donk.
Hand #3
I suspect it might have been best to raise on the flop and try to get it in against his draws and pairs. I flatted because I wanted to try to get more value out of him on later streets, but I think most of his pairs are shutting down after I flat and I don't know if I can avoid paying off his draws when they hit, as one did.
NL50 Progress
$405.80 / $500.00 after 24,555 hands
I haven't been back to the Horseshoe, but I got a coupon in the mail for a free $20 bet at a table game so I'm going to try head back some time soon and put it all on black.
Horseshoe Progress
-$646 / $2,000.00 after 54 hours
Hand #1
Cutoff is a 17/16 and small blind is a 32/8. I pretty much hate my life when the fish 3bets, since his range is basically QQ+ and AK. Just folding pre occurs to me and I'm still not convinced that isn't the best play. When the flop comes ragged and he leads, I'm not even sure if AK is still in his range. Folding again occurs to me but I dubiously include some worse pairs and AK in his range and talk myself into getting it in. Thoughts?
Hand #2
I strongly considered folding on the turn here, but I didn't because I was still including some draws in his range; unfortunately, there are so many ways for him to be ahead of me that folding might still be best. But then he instapotted the river, which to me could either mean that he rivered the nuts (88, Kc6c, 57) or he's bluffing. It occurred to me that some of his bluffs could actually be ahead of me if he has something like Ad3d that he thinks is no good after I call two streets and decides to turn it into a bluff. That pushed me a little toward folding, but I felt like there were so few ways for him to have the nuts and so many ways for him to be bluffing and his sizing made me level myself and I called. Unfortunately he showed up with a sick range-merging top two pair that he instapotted on the river with a paired 3-flush board. I struggle in these spots because I am still really bad at assigning accurate ranges to nonstandard things like the 1/3-pot donk.
Hand #3
I suspect it might have been best to raise on the flop and try to get it in against his draws and pairs. I flatted because I wanted to try to get more value out of him on later streets, but I think most of his pairs are shutting down after I flat and I don't know if I can avoid paying off his draws when they hit, as one did.
NL50 Progress
$405.80 / $500.00 after 24,555 hands
I haven't been back to the Horseshoe, but I got a coupon in the mail for a free $20 bet at a table game so I'm going to try head back some time soon and put it all on black.
Horseshoe Progress
-$646 / $2,000.00 after 54 hours
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Update
My blog entries have become pretty sparse recently, and this is largely because I just haven't been playing much poker. I'm not sure why this has been, but I suspect it's a function of my brain realizing that the rest of my life is so desperately out of order that it's on the brink of becoming a disaster, and diverting all resources away from secondary concerns like poker and toward trying to get my shit together for a last-ditch push into the end of the semester, exams, and trying to find some sort of job this summer.
A few nights ago, I went back to the Horseshoe for the first time in a couple of weeks, with a college friend. Two hands stand out in my memory.
Hand #1
I open from the cutoff with Js9d and get called by the button, a 30ish guy who seems like a pretty typical TAGfish, and big blind, who is a pretty typical loose-weak player who sees a lot of flops and folds on nearly all of them. The flop comes 6d7dTd. Big blind checks and I cbet $22 into $30. Button shoves for $104 all day, making it $82 to me to win a $156 pot (well, $154 after rake). Big blinds folds, I think for a while and call. The turn comes Jd and the river bricks off and the button shows 4d5d and starts berating me with standard shit like "I guess I was wrong, you are a donk after all!" and "how can you possibly call?" His friends at the table join in and for the rest of the night they refer to me as "the donk." He briefly succeeds in semi-tilting me and I respond with "okay, next time I'll fold - is that what you'd prefer?" and he tanks for a second and says "YES!"
A couple of hours later, Alex and Micah from Cardrunners show up and briefly rail me while waiting for their seats. Villain from this hand starts telling them "your friend is a donk" so I tell them the story of this hand. From time to time villain interjects something like "and he didn't even have a pair!" and everyone involved laughs - but we're not laughing WITH him, we're laughing AT him.
Hand #2
UTG, a meek East Asian woman who was at the table with her South Asian husband and has been playing pretty tight, opens for $10 and it folds around to me in the small blind and I look down at AA and 3bet to $35. UTG calls and the flop comes Qxx. I bet $40 into $64 and she calls without much hesitation. Turn bricks off and I shove for about 3/4 pot and she again calls without much hesitation...and tables AJ, drawing dead into the river. She didn't seem like the kind of player who would do something like this and I have no clue what she was thinking here but I'll take it.
Yesterday I played an online session for the first time in a couple of weeks because Goodeh offered to sweat me for a few minutes.
(After I check/call the turn and the river comes off and I check again:)
[16:13] <Secret_Asian_Man> prob folding to a shoefv here...
[16:13] <Goodeh`laptop> i call
[16:13] <Goodeh`laptop> i call
(I call and lose.)
[16:13] <Secret_Asian_Man> lol oops
[16:13] <Secret_Asian_Man> look at me, listening to goodeh and losing a bi
[16:14] <Goodeh`laptop> lol
[16:13] <Secret_Asian_Man> look at me, listening to goodeh and losing a bi
[16:14] <Goodeh`laptop> lol
I deviate from the standard jam-jam-jam line with a big overpair here because I'm experimenting with seeing turns and rivers postflop with big pairs and trying to learn how to play them correctly on later streets, and also because we're 140bb deep. Goodeh seemed to advocate just trying to get it in on the flop and that might be the best course of action.
Similar situation, we're 140bb deep and I have a big pair and I flat with it to try to play postflop poker. Again, I feel like this may have been Fancy Play syndrome and just jamming might have been optimal.
Villain is a 60/15 fish. His river range is either Qx or air and I call hoping to pick off a bluff but he had it. But I'm not sure if calling is right against this type of villain because I'm not sure how often he's bluffing.
[16:26] <Goodeh`laptop> dont hate turning kj into a bluff here
[16:26] <Goodeh`laptop> dont feel that good about my hand
[16:27] <Secret_Asian_Man> yeah i was considering it
[16:27] <Secret_Asian_Man> i was considering foldin gturn tbh
[16:28] <Secret_Asian_Man> and that river would have been rgeat to bluff...
[16:26] <Goodeh`laptop> dont feel that good about my hand
[16:27] <Secret_Asian_Man> yeah i was considering it
[16:27] <Secret_Asian_Man> i was considering foldin gturn tbh
[16:28] <Secret_Asian_Man> and that river would have been rgeat to bluff...
After Goodeh left, I started running good again and clawed my way back up to -$30 for the session from a low of about -$150.
NL50 Progress
$336.40 / $500.00 after 23,661 hands
I feel the need to track my progress at the Horseshoe as well as my online progress, so I'm setting myself a goal of winning ten buyins at 1/2 there and then taking a three-buyin shot at 2/5. Unfortunately I'm still stuck a bunch so that may take a while.
Horseshoe Progress
-$646 / $2,000.00 after 54 hours
Saturday, April 3, 2010
I'm Back
I haven't been able to blog for the past couple of weeks because I haven't had Internet access in my apartment. I have an arrangement where I pay my neighbors for access to their wifi, and recently something went wrong with their connection while they were both out of town for spring break and it wasn't fixed until today. For the same reason, I haven't been able to play online at all for the past two weeks.
However, I have logged another 25 hours or so at the Horseshoe playing 1/2 and grinding out free buffets. Ridiculously, I'm now stuck $834 over 50 hours of play. This translates to about -4bi over about 2,000 hands, which I think is within the range of results that could be characterized as standard, but still makes me feel pretty shitty because I feel like my edge at live 1/2 should be massive enough to make this kind of result highly improbable.
The unfortunately reality, though, is that I've been making lots of pretty serious mistakes and losing sizable pots for stupid reasons like not looking at villain stack sizes before barreling and having to fold to a shove getting like 7:1 because I have no pair and no draw. And the times I actually do have a pair, I get raised on the turn and don't know what to do and end up folding and having to wonder, or, worse, getting shown a worse pair by some smug fat old guy. And worst of all, nearly all of my big wins that I can recall have come from sucking out and coolering people. I feel like I've been getting more than my fair share of good luck overall and yet I'm still stuck almost a grand at a game that I feel like I should be annihilating.
Now that March is over and the free buffet promo is dead, I'm undecided about whether or not I'll be going back to the Horseshoe to try to get unstuck. About a week ago, I ran into some Cardrunners employees at my table - a guy named Micah who does graphic design and video intros and also Alex Huang, who is the brand manager for Stoxpoker. I told them I was a TFPT member and hung out with them for a while and they ended up giving me a ride home so I wouldn't have to take the degen bus. We spent the entire ride home talking poker and I gave them my contact info and they told me they would let me know the next time they went and possibly bring other Cardrunners people, so I think I'm just going to sit tight and only go with those guys instead of going back regularly and aggressively trying to get unstuck. Hope they were serious!
In other news, I finally got a new computer. It's an MSI U230 that I got on the recommendation of the Netbook thread in SH/SC on the Something Awful forums. I'm pretty happy with it overall - it's light and handles streaming video well, which it should since it has a dedicated graphics processor in addition to a dual core CPU. It should be sufficient to handle Mikogo streams so I can finally cash in on offers from #smallstakes to sweat me and help me figure out why I'm barely staying afloat at NL50.
NL50 Progress
$367.25 / $500.00 after 22,898 hands
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Horseshoe Update; Redline Thoughts
I've been playing a lot of 1/2 at the Horseshoe over the past week and overall I'm stuck $361 over maybe 25 hours of play, which, hilariously, probably works out to less than 1,000 hands. I initially lost almost 6 buyins through a combination of bad luck and horrific play, but I booked a huge win last night to recover a good deal of it. At one point last night, I was sitting with a $1,000+ stack and couldn't stop giggling every time I looked at it.
Online, I think my play recently has been just okay. I've able to avoid making too many huge mistakes recently but I feel like I'm still barely staying afloat and not crushing the games like I feel like I should be able to crush them. Troublingly, I've developed a massively negative redline deficit, the telltale sign of a TAGfish. This is really frustrating and embarassing because I thought I had solved this problem a months ago, since I kept a nice breakeven and even frequently positive redline when I was playing NL100 and 1/2. Now that I've moved back down to NL50 and my redline looks like a fucking waterslide again, I'm no longer sure why this was the case. Was I doing something different during that stretch to play more monstrously that I've now somehow forgotten how to do? Or was it just because I was getting really good cards and the regs at those stakes were good enough to fold their pairs to my third barrels instead of paying me off?
One hypothesis I've been considering is that I've adjusted suboptimally to villains at NL50. I know that the average bad player at NL50 is more stationy. What I've been doing so far in response to this is one-barreling lots of hands against them. My rationale for doing this is twofold: first, the flop cbet is just so good at getting people to fold and works so often even against players who have a general tendency to be calling stations that it's probably still profitable, and second, checking the flop as the preflop raiser just seems so pathetically weak and basically like begging your opponent to take the pot away from you. As a consequence, my flop cbet% hovers around 80-90%.
But it definitely seems possible that there are flaws in one or both of these components of my reasoning. I've been considering that there may be certain types of loose-passive villains against whom one-barreling does show a profit, but against whom a polarized strategy of either checking or committing to multiple barrels would be more profitable. And there may also be villains - possibly the same villains - who will still play weakly and won't stab at the pot even after the preflop raiser shows weakness by checking the flop. It seems possible that at least part of my enormous redline deficit has come from one-barreling against these types of players, which could be a significant leak. This is something I will try to keep in mind at the tables.
NL50 Progress
$336.60 / $500.00 after 22,365 hands
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