Diary of a Poker Journeyman
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "The Jersey Worm" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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03:52 pm
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What would you do? -- Draws and sidepots.
Hello again, everybody. I took a bit of a break from the tables after my last post, although in the past couple weeks I've logged a few sessions, but just haven't gotten around to blogging about them. Mostly because nothing interesting happened. :) But I had an interesting hand last night that I'm still sort of taking apart in my head, so I thought I'd post an open question and see what y'all think. The setup is, as usual, 1/2 no-limit hold 'em.
Blinds are posted, and UTG blind raises to $6. (The rest of the world calls this a straddle. One of the many peculiarities of Atlantic City poker is that there is no straddle, in that blind raises are just raises: you get no option to re-raise yourself.) You're UTG+3, and it folds to you, and you flat call with 6h5h. Several people call behind you. We saw the flop maybe four or five handed, I can't remember. So between the unspecified number of callers, blinds, and rake, I'm calling the pot $25. The flop comes out 8h6d3h, giving you middle pair, flush draw, and some backdoor straight possibilities. UTG (the blind raiser, remember), bets out $13. You flat call, deciding to see how this plays out, since most of the action is behind you. A short-ish stack behind you moves all-in for $64 on top. It folds around to UTG. He gives it just a little thought, but then calls. It's apparent he thinks this is a stronger move than it actually is. He very vocally does not expect you to stay in the pot (thanks to your small acting job hesitating before calling his flop bet).
Okay. So here are the vital statistics.
Short stack is just a hair short of decent as a player, but he's not terrible. He has been known to overvalue his hands, but he's nothing close to maniacal. You give him at least top pair. Overpair is possible, but not extremely likely, since he'd probably re-raise pre-flop. If, if, he's got an overpair, it's probably nines, maybe tens; anything higher he'd reraise. Most likely he's got a big eight. Or maybe even not so big an 8. But at the end of the day, you're likely to have all your flush and pair-plus outs against him (trip up or hit your kicker -- call it 14 outs; against only him, it's an auto-call).
UTG is obnoxious, but pretty skilled post-flop, and tends to be careful. More careful than his persona would suggest, anyway. He also marries himself to his blind-raised hands, though (as you've seen in the past), so it's very hard to nail down his range. He's not stupid about it, but he's more loose, say. He's making a point of talking up his hand to the short-stack, and he really seems to want you out of the pot. (Basically, as you contemplate, you get the feeling that he's regretting calling instead of jamming; he just assumed you were going to fold.) You suspect he is not strong, but you don't know if that just means weak or drawing.
The numbers: The pot is currently $192. You're facing action of $64 to call. You've got a total of $171 behind, and UTG just has you slightly covered (which is to say, if one of you stacks the other, the loser will be effectively felted).
The situation: You feel you are behind short stack for sure, but with plenty of outs. You're not sure about UTG, but there's a good shot that the situation is the same with him. The big worry is that he's got a better flush draw than you. Ironically, though, if that's the case, that puts you ahead of him currently, though his equity would be huge, as he's not only drawing to a better flush, but also has at least an overcard. Remember that with short-stack all-in, any action beyond you calling this current bet is going to be in a side-pot with UTG.
What do you do?
Analysis and results next time. Happy pokering, everybody!
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10:15 am
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Short and sweet
Contrary to the usual routine, I skipped any poker-playing on Sunday, but I managed to make it to the tables for a few hours on Monday. I was pretty much planning to go anyway, but the deal was sealed when Momz ended up coming to town and beating me to the casino, so...there you go. Anyway, I'm happy to report that the losing streak has ended, and I closed out Monday's session booking a pretty decent win. Yay! Nothing really spectacular or specific to report. I just played pretty solid, caught decent hands, and caught some opponents willing to pay. Nothing magical about that. :) I had AK actually hit flops a couple times, which was amazing. I think I caught all of one whole set this session (jacks), but didn't get any action anyway, so whatever. Nothing particularly sneaky or wily went on; it was just a straight-up good run.
Two things to add.
One: we knew this already, but this session just drove it home once again -- stack size is so important. The stakes are 1/2, and I bought in for the max of $300. The two biggest stacks at the table when I sat down only barely had me covered. This is so much easier of a lineup than that previous session where I came in and half the people had upward of a grand in front of them. A lot of the money I made came from short stacks being committed to pots when I had them dominated. That's the kind of thing that happens when you play short-stacked; you find yourself in situations where you just can't fold, even though you should. Even better, people would rebuy short. This guy would bust, and buy back in for $70. That guy, $100. Bust again. Repeat. Those are my favorite kinds of opponents. Playing short-stacked has one thing going for it: it makes your decisions a lot easier, because you commit to a pot so much faster. But the downside of that is that, as your opponent, it makes my decisions easier, too. And a mistake for you is a lot more damaging than a mistake for me.
Two: Today marked the beginning of a new experiment for me in bet sizing. I've been reading No Limit Hold 'Em: Theory and Practice by Sklansky and Miller. Sklansky is, well, Sklansky. Miller has been my latest favorite since Small Stakes Hold 'Em, which I found a fantastic aid back during the heyday of my limit career. I've been absorbing a lot of new tactical tidbits from this book, especially in the arena of bet sizing, and I've been made to wonder (once again, as I've mused in this blog before) if I'm really betting enough. Based on the results of Monday's experiment, I'd like to say: probably not. Previously I'd been sitting pretty low in the bet size ranges (postflop, I mean), mostly as an artifact of early training when was more rooted in, well, teachings with different roots. My previous style would hold, for example, with a flop bet of around 2/3 to 3/4 the pot as standard. This make sense under certain contexts. First, it makes sense heads-up, which was my own fault for misapplying in a multiway situation. But beyond that, it also takes into account a balanced bluffing strategy and a certain degree of postflop tightness among your opponents. Basically it assumes that chips are worth something to your opponents, such as they would in, say, a tournament. However, we're talking a low-stakes cash game. This is a situation in which pot size on the flop is often meager compared to stack size, and you also tend to face a lot of unnecessary postflop loose-passiveness. That is a time where you want (1) less bluffing, and (2) more value betting, and that is a time where you want bigger bets. So I ramped up my flop bets to be closer to pot-sized, and for this particular session, anyway, the results have been pretty good. Not just for value, either, but also for a cascading effect on other people's action.
Wow, even I am not sure what I just said. :) Okay...it's like this. A real example from that session: I had 96o in the big blind. We had eight limpers see a flop of 765. I have middle pair and a gutshot (and an over, but that is one dangerous overcard if I hit my second pair). Mediocre at best. Pot is $16, and I bet $15. A calling station calls it behind me, and then a guy in late-middle pops it to $65. I don't know about you, but I insta-fold. Later on the guy said he'd flopped a straight, and I believe him (the flop was two-suited, so he was looking to protect it). Contrast that to how it might have gone previously. If I bet out $10 there instead of $15, the raise probably only goes to like $30 or $40. I'm much more likely to call in that spot, getting a cheaper price relative to stack size, and so getting better implied odds on my admittedly-still-pretty-crappy draw. So even spending more to make it easier to get out of hands seems to work out well; that wasn't even close to the only time I had bet-folded that day, and in some cases I feel like I might have bet-called if the bet sizes had been smaller. So that's another nice side-effect of bigger flop bets.
Anyway. This is all rather vague and still largely experimental anyway. Just something I wanted to jot down before I forgot it. Stack size important. Bet size important. Onward!
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07:44 pm
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What would you do? - conclusion
In this post I'd like to wrap up the "What Would You Do?" section from this post, so we can all move on with our lives. :) If you missed that post, you can check it out now, if you'd like, before we move on to the analysis. If you don't want to, that's fine. I'll recap:
This is 1/2 NLHE. A tight player has opened with an early pre-flop raise, but he's gotten a bunch of cold-callers, and we've called out of the big blind with 9s7s, getting better than 6 to 1 on our money and closing the action. We see a six-way flop of 976 with two hearts and a club, flopping top two on a dangerous board. We check, hoping to check-raise. (For the time being, let's ignore the dubiousness of that move.) Initially failing to notice that the tight PFR was short-stacked, this is now brought to our attention as he jams his remaining $60 into a pot of $70. It folds to one of many monster stacks at the table, who re-jams for about eight million. The similarly-sized monster stacks behind him fold, and it folds around to us. We've got about $240 behind.
Flop: 976, two hearts and a club
Our holding; 97 for top two.
UTG holding: probably a strong pre-flop holding, probably an overpair.
Monster stack holding: ???
Decision: Call all-in $240 for a pot of $370 or $60 for $250 plus $180 for an even-money side pot?
What would you do?
( Or what should you do? )
Until next time!
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05:24 am
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Something a little different
I have just learned, via the Internet, that somehow, somewhere, a starting hand of 75 offsuit is known as the "Filipino Big Slick."
I have absolutely no idea why.
I got to surfing through some other hole card nicknames. My favorite I came across this time around is "the Dick Cheney" (or just "the Cheney") for A2: A bullet and a duck. :) Runner-ups: "the Canadian Hammer" for either 73 or 62...depends on exchange rate.
Anyway. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.
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04:09 am
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Scared money is dead money
Okay, slight delay here between the end of this session and the blog post about it, but I jotted down a few notes when things were still fresh, so I'll do what I can. For the executive summary, I can say that this session basically paralleled the last one and it was another big loss. Not as big, but still big. This week's been bad for the old bankroll. But, as I have a bankroll at all, I'm not too bummed about it.
Much like last time, I don't think I was ever up this session. However, because the results of this session and the last one are so similar, I'm going to get more mileage out of contrasting them rather than seeing how they were alike. In this session, unlike the last, I actually got hands that held up, which was a nice change of pace. On the downside, I got zero (successful) bluffing done, but more on that later. I made a very concerted effort to tighten the hell up pre-flop this session. What's interesting to me is that keeping that in the front of my mind pointed something out to me: I was running cold. Like, super-cold. I was getting so few decent starters it was scary. Granted, my range for starters was extremely narrow this session, but even with that, my hole cards were just garbage hand after garbage hand. So it's nice in that my decisions were kept on the easy side, but it makes for a damn boring night. (At one point, I actually was clocking it, since I had so little going on. In my first five hours, I took down two pots. Yikes.)
Plus, just to up the coldness factor, I could not connect with a flop for shit. I decided that's probably where most of my losses come from. Unnecessary pre-flop looseness is one thing, but warranted pre-flop looseness with missed flops is something else. The former can be corrected with better play, while the latter just involves riding out a bad streak. So that accounted for a lot of bleed-off. Probably the second-biggest sinkhole from this session was my handling of mediocre holdings post-flop which I had to spend money on to figure out I was beat. It's basically probe bets and shit like that, and I'm not sad about it in the sense that I think it's anything that needs correcting. It's just...noteworthy as a way I can lose money besides losing at showdown.
( And the rest... )
What would you do?
The last hand I'll put up for review, I'll leave as an open question and I'll come back to it next time. The setup is 1/2 NLHE. The table is all loose pre-flop, considered unbluffable post-flop, and about half composed of monstrously giant stacks. You've got about $250.
You're in the big blind. The guy to your left, UTG, opens for a standard-ish raise of $12. A whole bunch of people cold-call, as is the norm at this table. There are five people in when it comes around to you in the BB. You're closing the action, so you elect to call after squeezing 9s7s and getting better than 6 to 1 on your money.
The flop comes 976 with two hearts and a club. You've flopped top two, but on a sick, coordinated board. The pre-flop raiser is pretty tight; he's only raised with (and shown down) strong holdings, and you're sure he'll bet the flop, so you decide to check, going for the check-raise. You check, and, as expected, UTG, the pre-flop raiser, bets.
Unexpectedly, he goes all-in. You failed to notice that he was short-stacked, and only had about $60 behind after he raised pre-flop. So he jams for his $60 into a pot of about $70. You're mentally expecting a lot of folds and cursing his lack of money when something else unexpected happens. It folds around to a guy in middle position who goes all-in for approximately eight million dollars. (That is, he has you covered. By a lot.) Predictably, everyone else folds, even the other guys behind this guy who also have eight-million dollar stacks. Action is to you. You go in the tank.
Flop: 976 with two hearts and a club.
UTG holding: Almost certainly a big pocket pair.
Monster stack holding: ???
You holding: 97 of spades for top two.
Decision: Call for the rest of your stack (about $240) to win $370 (assuming you beat the all-in UTG, else you're getting even money on the side pot)?
What would you do?
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04:11 am
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Going down!
Hello, again, readers. I know I never got back to that post I intended to make before which would have ended up being about playing defense, but it'll have to wait a little longer. Instead I bring you tales of my latest session from tonight, which was unfortunate and disastrous. In keeping with how I want to be doing things these days, I want to get the entry posted while things are still fresh in my mind. I want to keep it brief though.
In short, it sucked. I booked quite a loss this time around; my biggest in recent memory, for sure, and probably my biggest all year. Two memorable hands were getting aces cracked and getting kings cracked. Two memorable bad moves were a very poor and costly bluff and a questionable use of a trouble hand including a really questionable river call. Even all of those, though, can't explain all my losses, and I hit a couple pretty nice hands this evening, too, and executed some decent bluffs, so honestly I can't say what really went wrong. I don't think I was on my "A" game, I can say that much. I wasn't really super-focused on the game, but I also wasn't the worst player there, by far, so...I don't know. If I had to rate my play overall, I'd say maybe just a shade above mediocre. Maybe C+. But given the vast disconnect between my perception of how things went and the actual loss I booked, it's entirely likely that I was stinking things up tonight and didn't even know it.
Also, before moving on, I just want to note that, as before when I booked a big loss, I was never really up tonight. Maybe at the very beginning of the session...I might have scored a few bucks of profit. I mean that literally, too...like really two or three dollars. But for the rest of the time I was decidedly in the hole. I know that kind of thing may lead to dangerous behavior for me, but I feel I handled things all right. I took breaks when I needed to, and I don't think I did anything incredibly foolhardy. Like I said, though...something was going wrong, and the fact that I really can't put my finger on it says that it's just as likely my own mistakes as anything else. Anyway, though, I'll try and get what I can out of this. Oh, so, yeah, I was down the whole time, which was one thing. The other thing is: at the end, I actually got up before I was felted, which I give myself credit for. I did make a bonehead move right before that, though, unfortunately, but I did make the decision to get up and leave while stuck-but-not-broke, so that's kind of a step forward for me.
Anyway...( the specifics... )
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02:02 am
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One last hurrah
Well...that was a short break. :) I was surprised today to find that Momz decided to make a little trip to Atlantic City, so what's a son to do? Hang out with her at the casino and play poker, that's what. :) I went back to rock mode today for the most part, so there's not a lot that's interesting to take away from the session, except for one hand that really sticks out. I find it pretty interesting in and of itself, but it also has the added bonus of calling back to something I blogged about recently, so it came at a pretty opportune time. It goes a little something like this...
( Chop or lose? )
Also keep in mind, faithful readers, that I didn't run through any of this math while I was at the table. Really the only coherent thing running through my head at this point was, "Chop or lose...chop or lose...chop or lose..." So in that sense, I feel this blog is helping me out already, just by keeping topics like that in my head. :) The results may not support it, but I genuinely feel I (finally) made the right decision in that situation. And my half-baked card frequency example above shows that I netted the Sklansky Dollars to prove it.
But that's not what's exciting for you guys. What's exciting for you guys is the question I pose to you now: What, if anything, should I have done differently? I already have an idea in mind, and it will, more than likely, be the topic of the next post. But first I'd like to see what thoughts you guys have. Or even if anybody's reading any more. ;) In any case, really time for that break now. :) Peace!
[EDIT: I totally forgot to mention: I rocked this session and booked a nice win. My devastating loss from yesterday is all but forgotten. Between last night's mini-comeback and today's win, I walk away from the last two days with a negligible dip in the bankroll, as opposed to the wild swing it used to be. Variance is as variance does.]
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02:54 am
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I ain't never gettin' better
Well, because I'm a glutton for punishment, I went back to the tables tonight after shaking off my terrible session from this afternoon. Basically, after the afternoon session, I headed home, had a nice little dinner, wrote my blog post, and realized that all of that was quite enough to get myself back in order. I really didn't have anything else going on, so I figured: why waste a perfectly good block of free time? Play some more poker. I mean, that's exactly what a bankroll is for, you know? So you can weather a bad session and just get right back to it.
Upon sitting back down at the table, I resolved, as I often do in these situations, to play nothing but tight, boring, straightforward, ABC poker. Now...unlike as I often do in these situations, I actually stuck to it. :) No splashing around, no "lucky" hands, no loose pre-flop nonsense, even with nifty pot odds. Basically I switched back to low-variance style, just to remind myself what it felt like, and to try to get back in the habit of...well...good habits. I was tested early and often, too. Twice in rapid succession I made a tight-ass pre-flop laydown that I normally would have gone for, and in both cases not only would I have been the winner, but I would have won over the same hand both times! Normally when I switch into rock mode, that kind of shit just immediately switches me right back to wild mode. :) But not this time, brothers and sisters, not this time. I just kept right on doing my thing. I was so squeaky tight it hurt. The first hand I even played was well into my first hour at the table. I raised UTG with AhQh and bought the blinds. :) So, good...at least I was playing tight enough that people noticed. :)
Further adding to my temptation to go crazy was the fact that, despite my awesome tightness and awesomely tight image, I was still getting cracked! Once with queens and twice with kings! Unfortunate! Once (with kings) I even got to see the hand that cracked me: A8 off. Nice hand, sir, well played. But still I persevered.
And still I lost. Slowly, but I lost. It was super frustrating. Eventually I got worn down, and I made a loose call here and there, only to get my just desserts for playing so badly. Then that put me on tilt, and then I did something really stupid, and then, wouldn't you know, I got rewarded. I tell you...they really don't make it easy to keep on the straight and narrow.
( Why I will always suck )
Anyway, I'm hoping I can take something good away from all this. I'm still really up in the air about whether it was a good idea for me to go back to the tables after this afternoon's crushing. I'm really just about evenly split on my opinion about that. On the one hand, I really felt like I was over whatever emotional residue there was from this afternoon, and I felt pretty secure in my resolve to play tight, boring poker. In hindsight, I did do that, really...until I stopped. I shouldn't let the fact that I hit a big hand color the reality that I may not have been as emotionally prepared to come back to the tables as I led myself to believe. On the other hand, though, it is immensely gratifying to me that I could go back to the game and book a win after so much badness this afternoon. I didn't dig myself out of that hole, not by a long shot, but the profits from the night session definitely took a big chunk out of my losses from the day. Not only that, but I successfully got up and left the table when I felt myself starting to slip, and I give myself credit for that. Would I have been better off overall if I hadn't gone back tonight? Who knows. What I do know, though, is that it's time for a little break. Nothing like a few days off of poker to clear the head a little bit.
Until then, faithful readers. Ciao!
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07:54 pm
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Downswing
I've been sick the last few days, but not too sick to hit the poker tables when I had the chance, so I got a couple sessions under my belt this week.
Yesterday's was kind of a roller-coaster, although not a whole lot really stands out about it, really. I had a lot more success opening up my bluffing game, which was heartening, but I also ran into some pretty bad situations, which also cost me plenty. The star of the lowlights was probably when I had AK vs. villain's 44 on a flop of AK4. Thank God he didn't have too much on the table for that one. :) The one noteworthy feature of that session that sticks out in my mind is that I made good use of isolation plays to go up against short stacks. This is something I usually fail to capitalize on, so it felt good to know I was keeping track of people's stacks like I'm supposed to. What look to other people like gross overplays really worked out in my favor this session. Two examples come to mind.
( Isolating short stacks )
Anyway. So that session had a lot of ups and downs, and I ended up walking out with a small win, so all-in-all, nothing to complain about, but nothing to get excited about, either.
Today's session was an altogether different beast. I got pummeled. I started out all right, just buying a few small pots here and there. It was a brand new table, and everyone was still getting adjusted. I then took a minor thrashing at some point, though I can't remember the details of the hand now. Then I made my big score for the day.
( Good read, good result )
Anyway. It was all downhill after that. :)
( Bad results )
So. All in all I'm not walking away from this last session feeling too bad. Yes, clearly I got myself in all kinds of mischief with the damn suited ace-rag thing, but I still maintain it's got value in these kinds of games (basically along the lines of the dream flush-over-flush scenario). While both times it was the nightmare flop for me (ace-high without my flush draw, which means I have to navigate the tricky kicker waters), I also think both times I did all right. The second time I could have lived without the river call, I guess. That's a tough spot to be in, though. Can I really put him on the flush there? His insta-call to my donk bet on the turn was a big clue, but any ace does the same thing. The big question is whether 3 to 2 is enough pot odds to make that call for the chop-or-loss. I mean...that's pretty lame. I really can't think of how it would have gone so different. I mean...I could have check-raised the flop, I guess, and if he jams it, then I can get out and save some money. But if he just called a flop check-raise and called a turn bet, things would have been the same, I guess. Yeah...just a tough spot in general. It's generally nice that so many people limp-call pre-flop and then fold on the flop, leaving a bunch of dead money in the middle. Dead money is always good. But what it unfortunately does is give me really good pot odds with pretty crappy holdings, and on occasion that ends up costing me plenty. Just life with variance, I guess.
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12:41 am
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It ain't easy
Hello, again, readers. Bet you thought I'd disappear again for another few months, right? :) No such luck. Granted, I haven't been keeping up with my hopes of blogging after every session, but I think that's something I have to ease into. In any case, these two weeks (of which I am currently in the middle) have turned out to be pretty job-heavy for me, so I didn't think I was going to get a lot of poker in. I did manage to squeeze in a couple sessions, though: one on my day off on Monday, and one after a really short shift on Tuesday.
Monday I completely and utterly stunk. Metaphorically. But I dropped quite a lot of cash down a sinkhole called Piss-Poor Poker, and frankly I got what I deserved. I don't know what it was, really...I just wasn't in the right mindset or something. But I played like complete crap. At least at this point in my career I'm man enough to admit that. But I have to say, it stung like hell. I even knew what was going on halfway through the session. I actually thought to myself, "Wow, I'm playing like complete crap! I should get the hell outta here!" Which, of course, I didn't. One thing of note about that session is that I was never up. I started out losing, and it never got better. That triggers one of my big tiltesque weaknesses, which is that it's tough for me to get up and leave stuck. At the end of this particular session, I actually count it as in my favor that I didn't leave the table completely busted. It counts more against me that I was almost busted. :) But at least I got out before I just jammed with something retarded just so I could end the day felted. By this time, the memory of that session is mostly erased (probably as a defense mechanism), so I don't have a lot I can take away from that time at the tables. From what I recall, I think I was just mostly card-dead, and I tried to make up for it by ill-advised aggressiveness. It's a pretty common problem, actually, and I really should know better. But, c'est la vie. I'll try and do better next time.
Oh, look. Next time. :) So, as mentioned, I pulled a really short shift at the job Tuesday evening, so I basically just went home, changed clothes, and headed right back out to the poker room. Having just gotten soundly spanked the day before, I resolved to come in and play tight and right from the get-go. Turns out I did nothing of the kind, but my looseness paid off, frankly, and I'm happy about it. :) The first hand I played, I ended up spiking a gutshot and just about doubled up. A few hands later, and I opened for a steal-raise with ace-rag and ended up flopping trips with my rag. I even hooked a caller all the way down for value on that one, so in my first two orbits I was already a contender with the surprisingly large number of big stacks that were at my table. Things calmed down a lot after that, and nothing really spectacular went down. The table lineup was actually pretty good. I stole a lot. That means a good table, as far as I'm concerned. :) Anyway. I stayed a little longer than was good for me, I think, and right at the end of the session I ran into some monstrously bad situations and lost a ton of profit. I ended up booking a win for the session, but it was nowhere near what it could have been. I found myself a lot more bummed about this than I would have expected. Definitely more than I should have been. I mean...a win's a win, right? Part of it was coming off the high I felt in the beginning of the session. I mean...when things started off, in just two hands I had erased the hole I dug for myself the previous night. But by the end of this night's session, the last night's hole was still there, which was a bummer, but I should be glad with any win, considering some of the shit that went down (more about which later). In any case, I consoled myself with a trip to the late-night buffet and paid for it with comp dollars, so after that I felt better. :)
What happened at the end of the session was unnerving as well as costly. I ran up against two big hands: pocket aces and pocket kings. Both times they caught sets. Both times I caught enough of the board to keep me interested. And both times it was against the same guy! Quite a bummer. Good thing I was leaving anyway, frankly, because that's the kind of shit that can tilt me. Now, in the interests of fairness, I must point out that there was a lot more than bad luck going on here. I tragically overplayed my hand both times. I chalk it up mostly to that particular guy. He just had this look about him...this smug air like he thought he was the greatest player of all time, and for some reason I just always refused to believe that he was actually strong when he represented. I also gave him lots and lots of my chips, because he was actually strong when he represented. Bad times. But, whatever. I'll try and do better about that next time. :)
So anyway...a big loss and a small win, that's basically my tally this week. I was actually going to post a hand recap based on some thoughts I left off with last week, but I'm actually post-job right now and kinda beat, so I think I'll save that for later on. I think in the future I'm going to want to play shorter poker sessions. I'm hoping maybe this will mean more frequent ones, as well, but we'll see. I just feel like the last few times I've kinda been pushing it at the tables. Not that I get tired in the sense of falling asleep, but once I reach a certain point, I think I start getting a little punchy and goofy, and I think I make dumb plays that I ordinarily wouldn't. It would undoubtedly help my bottom line a bit if I stopped making dumb plays, so...anything to help me avoid doing that would probably be a good thing. :) In any case, we'll see how it goes. Onward!
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01:00 pm
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Tourney Recap - 40+10 NLHE
30+10 NLHE MTT (Bally's) - $50 - 10,000 chips - freezeout
Well, even though it's been quite a while since I've posted much of anything, it's been a very long while since I've posted a tourney recap, I feel. :) Much of this is, of course, due to not having played tourneys. But some friends came to town and wanted to hit a cheapo tournament, so...who am I to say no. :) There's some good points to this tourney: it's cheap, you get a decent starting stack, decent level intervals (20 minutes), and there are no rebuys or add-ons. The bad parts are: it's cheap (so the juice is more significant), and the structure is way more fast than I thought it was going to be, thus pretty much negating the decent starting stack point.
I didn't check out the blind levels before I started playing, so I actually didn't know the structure was as fast as it was until I was actually in the thick of it. They also fool me by not using antes. :) But anyway...because I was in a deep-stack kind of mindset, I really took my time in the beginning and didn't play many hands. So through the first few levels my stack size didn't change too much. I took a decent pot at some point when I had pocket jacks that ended up catching a straight on the river when Villain's AQ made a pair, but it wasn't anything to write home about. My biggest score was probably taking down a sizable pot on a pure bluff, but I made up for it a little bit later by betting strong right into pocket aces. Whoops. :) So by the time we hit the first break, I was basically back to starting stack size, but by this time the levels had jumped from 25/50 all the way up to a whopping 400/800 after the break. That's just ridiculous. I think I picked up a few rounds of blinds at some point, and checking the tournament stats told me that I was just about right at the average stack size. Average stack size, by the way, also meant an M of like 4. At that point, you just kind of know there's no point to this. :)
Anyway. I picked up a few little pots here and there, but in my mind I know that the rest of the tourney, however long I last, is just going to be a series of push-and-pray situations. This tourney structure just doesn't give you much wiggle room unless you chip up really early. I took my biggest hit jamming with JJ over a small pre-flop raise and ended up running into kings. I had Villain outchipped, but I was hurt bad. (My stack went to something like 6k and change with blinds of 1k/2k. So I jammed not too long after that with KcJc. BB woke up with AJ, and IGHN. I busted out something like 28th of 57. Unexciting, but at least a small learning experience. If I ever go back to that tourney (which is doubtful), I'll at least know more about the structure at that thing.
Okay, so...the structure. Like I said, a 10k starting stack with starting blinds of 25/50 and 20 minute levels sounded like a pretty nice deal. That's pretty much what the Borgata runs for its dailies, and it's not too bad. Borgata levels go like this:
25/50
50/100
100/200
100/200/25
200/400/50
300/600/75
400/800/100
600/1200/200
Bally's levels, or the ones I saw, anyway, run like this:
25/50
50/100
100/200
200/400
400/800
500/1000
1000/2000
2000/4000
At first glance, I felt like I could deal with higher blinds in the absence of antes. But levels doubling instead of incrementing slower is actually a pretty big deal, it turns out, even taking antes into account. Look at a comparison of the cost-per-round (CPR).
| Level |
Borgata CPR |
Bally's CPR |
| Level 1 |
75 |
75 |
| Level 2 |
150 |
150 |
| Level 3 |
300 |
300 |
| Level 4 |
550 |
600 |
| Level 5 |
1100 |
1200 |
| Level 6 |
1650 |
1500 |
| Level 7 |
2200 |
3000 |
| Level 8 |
3800 |
6000 |
So that's just crazy. The level 5/level 6 thing is weird because Bally's makes the small move from 400/800 to 500/1000 at that point...only to double the blinds the next round. (Huh?) But you can see after that how things really take off. I didn't stick around long enough to see if Level 9 was 3k/6k, or just doubles again to 4k/8k, but damn...either way it's still going to be crazy. Borgata blinds at that level would be 800/1600/300 for a CPR of 5400. Bally's at this point would be 9000 or 12000; either way a pain. So this tourney follows the path of the normal daily tournament, which is rocket things into a total shove-fest. Might be a fun (?) way to kill a few hours for cheap, but overall, I don't think this is going to be the place to hone one's tournament skillz. :)
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04:19 pm
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Easing back in
So here's how my life is different than your average guy. For one thing, my work week is offset from the usual, in that my days off are generally Monday and Tuesday, with Sunday frequently being in there. This gives me a weird conception of "weekend," as well as giving me strange blocks of free time for poker, so there's that. Also this unusual version of "weekend" gives me an unusual version of "week." The other thing that's weird is working nights, which, while better suited to my sleeping habits and, generally, overall lazy lifestyle, gives me a lot less useful time than one might think.
In any case, the reason I bring this up is because, now that I've settled back into something of a poker-playing rhythm, I'm now also trying to work out what to do about the poker-blogging rhythm. The way things usually go is that, on my days off, I get up, take my time puttering around at home and taking care of business before I head off to start goofing around at poker. Then, once I hit the games, I generally keep at that until I'm tired, and I head home. When I get home, my brain has turned to goo, and I'm too beat to think about blogging anything. I think to myself, "Eh...I'll get to that after some sleep." But by the time I'm waking up and getting some coffee in me the next "morning" (and by that I mean afternoon), the vividness of my session memories are faded and grainy, and I'm not even sure I remember everything I wanted to talk about. It's usually best to blog when things are fresh in your mind, and that doesn't mean after a night of sleep.
So I figure I have a couple ways to go on this. I could try and put in the extra effort of writing before I hit the sack, while things are still fresh in my mind. What that will most likely mean, though, is maybe cutting the session a bit short, so I still have the time and brainpower to get that done in some kind of coherent fashion before I pass out. I could also go back to trying to take notes actually during the session, just so I have something to go back to later. This often has the side-effect of taking frequent breaks at the table, which I'm not a big fan of, or else looking like a complete nerd and actually taking notes right there at the table, which I'm even less a fan of. We'll see. In any case, something's gotta give, because if today is any example, I'm not going to have a lot of blogging success by going to bed right after a session. :) I put in a pretty significant stay at the tables last night, and I know that when I got home, I was brimming with things to talk about. Now that it's the next day, though, and I'm sitting here at my computer actually typing, I can't think of too much. :)
( Let's see what we got )
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08:03 am
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Where I've been and what I've done
Hello... *taptap* Is this thing on?
So. Been a while. I feel a lot has changed since I was last blogging here regularly, which turns out to be quite a while ago. I'd like to try and get back to it, mostly because I'm back in a situation in life which allows me to pursue more poker, and so I'm...well...pursuing more poker. It's a bit hard to jump right back into the ol' poker blog, though, so I thought I'd kind of warm up to it. And the best warm-up on this particular occasion would appear to be an update. When last we left off, 2006 was coming to a close and my situation could probably best be summed up as unemployed, broke, running bad, and feeling crappy about it all. I'm happy to report that as of this writing, none of that is any longer the case. What follows is a (somewhat) brief summary of the road I've traveled from that time to this.
( Getting back on track )
And so here it is in a nutshell. I'm working, and I've got myself into at least some semblance of bankroll management, which is heaps better than I was doing before. I've started playing again regularly, and have been for the past couple months, and I'd like to start up blogging again, too. I've also switched primarily from limit to no-limit hold 'em, and so far the results have been pretty encouraging, though believe me, I'm approaching this good fortune quite cautiously. No-limit play has taught me nothing if not respect for the awesome power of variance. :) And that, I hope, brings us back up to speed. Hopefully there will be much more to follow. Onward!
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11:46 am
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WRGPT - done
Well, I busted out of WRGPT17. Was quite short-stacked, it folded around to me on the button, I jammed with ace-rag, and ran into pocket kings from the big blind. Oops. :) Just to twist the knife a little, I sucked out with an ace on the turn, but Villain caught his four-flush on the river. So it goes.
This years WRGPT was actually a pretty poor experience for me. Not because of anything about the tournament, I mean. It's just because it's a hard thing for me to schedule these days. Now that I'm working again, I find it's weird to have a job and yet not be sitting in front of a computer at said job. So I have work, and I have sleep, two blocks of time at which I can't reach the 'Net, and to make matters worse, the start and end times of those blocks vary from day to day thanks to my wacky schedule. So I found it hard to set up workable office hours for myself for the WRGPT, which unfortunately led to some rather uncomfortable (and -EV) timeouts. Ah, well. I always enjoy taking my shot, but if I'm still in a similar scheduling situation next year, I may well skip number 18, just to save myself the heartache.
Anyway...good luck to everyone still in there. Seeya at the rail.
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02:40 pm
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WBCOOP
I've apparently decided to post only titles consisting of poker tournament abbreviations. Anyway, the World Blogger Championship of Online Poker is once again upon us, courtesy of PokerStars. I'm of two minds about signing up, frankly. I'll probably have the time, since it's on a Sunday and I'll likely have the time off of work, but on the downside, my Internet connection is, frankly, completely crap, and I fear an online poker experience. Perhaps more relevant, though, is the fact that I've gone months without poker blogging, and even my playing has been light in that time. I dunno...I'll think about it a bit. But I figured I'd post the news anyway for the rest of you bloggers with decent Internet connections who might be interested in the tourney. It's a freeroll! ;)
Anyway, enjoy. Maybe seeya there.
[EDIT: Ah, the hell with it. I'm signing up. :) ]
Good luck, everybody!
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05:54 pm
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WRGPT
It's that time again; registration has now opened for this year's WRGPT, number 17. Sign 'er up!
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02:31 pm
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Pay no attention
So...this post is basically just here for me.
( Some whining )
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05:42 pm
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Life fish
So...nothing like not posting for a month and a half, then posting saying I'm not going to be posting...and then posting. Makes me feel like a right jackass. :) In any case, though, here comes an entry.
Mostly I'm posting just cuz I actually had the opportunity to play recently, so I wanted to at least record that. Sadly, it went quite poorly, so there's nothing worth recording, really. ( Some crappy cash games )
So anyway. That disastrous session behind me, I once again don't think I'll be playing again for realz any time soon. That said, I've got some other stuff going on. For one, I never posted about this, but I played a freeroll supersupersatellite at Stars a while back, and won myself a seat into the next round. I played Round 2 just today, and got blown away early, unfortunately. I've posted that writeup, though, here. Also, I have a freeroll NLHE tourney at the casino on Monday, so I'll see if anything comes out of that. Otherwise...well, you know. The usual.
Lucky days, everybody.
Tags: cash games
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02:00 pm
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Tourney Recap - Stars Moneymaker Freeroll Round 2
PokerStars $2.5 Million Moneymaker Millionaire Freeroll Round 2 (NLHE) (PokerStars) - Free - 1,500 chips - supersatellite
Okay, so...as of the time of this writing, I have not written up the Round 1 tournament that brought me to this tournament. But, as this is not a TV miniseries, what went on previously isn't that important to what went on here. To summarize Round 1: I played tight, I got hit by the deck, and I outlasted a ginormous field to win a seat in Round 2.
Round 2 barely needs summarizing, really, because I lasted so goddamn briefly. You don't start out with a whole lot of chips in these tournaments (T1,500), and the levels are pretty short, so I tried a bunch of small pot chipping-up in the early hands, which seemed to work out really well for me. In fact, on the second hand of the whole tourney, I Dropped the Hammer, which I took as a good omen for how the remainder of the tournament might go. :) Not so, it turns out.
( A short story )
Tags: tourney recap
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05:28 pm
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Hiatus
You know...I should have probably made this post, like, a long time ago, but I didn't. And, of course, at this point probably no one cares, but I at least want the entry here for historical purposes. But the long and short of it is: I've been made to abandon poker for a while, and thus this blog has been silent. My instinct is to launch into a whole diatribe or whatever, but the bottom line is that I'm unemployed, broke, and in debt, and poker is probably not one the best things to be included in my plans for resource allocation. So...there ya go.
I've managed to squeeze a couple freeroll tournaments in online at some point, so I might get around to writing them up (or not). Once in a very great while when I had the scratch and needed to kill some time, I've dinked around in some cash games in A.C., but nothing really noteworthy came out of that (save that I wasted money). I'm halfway trying to make decent use of this break by trying to learn more while being away from the tables, but it's tough and somehow...uninspiring to study poker while knowing I won't be able to practice. So...we'll see how that goes.
Anyway. Plans are in the works for employment, budgeting, new life, etc., and believe me, once the money part of things is stabilized, returning to poker will be one of my top priorities. For now, though, it looks like, as has become apparent, that this blog will remain fallow for a while longer. So...that was it. Seeya on the other side.
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