Booooooooo
Date: Sat, Aug 16, 2008
Been running well at $1/2 this month. My bankroll moved past the $12k mark so I've been taking some shots at $2/4 and $3/6 games when the lineups are soft. This has went pretty badly lol, month so far...
Since moving back over to iPoker I'm becoming really irritated by the lack of tables. Often I'll only have 2-3 decent $1/2 tables available which is a pain in the ass. Decided to move my FTP roll over to AP and play some on there. If anyone wants FTP$$$ for AP or Stars gimmi a shout, can do up to $6k.
Anyways, yea so the 2/4 and 3/6 has sucked ass and kind of put me in a bad fuckin mood because it feels like I've lost all my hard earned $1/2 winnings from this month! But that's really a stupid way to think about it. 1bi down at 600 and 3.5bi down at 400 is nothing. I guess I just forgot how the variance felt at the MSNL levels!
I feel like I'm kind of forcing my play at the moment. I've made a few bad calls and bad shoves without thinking about the plays too much at the time. The lack of time on the iPoker tables irritates me. So I'm gonna break for a wee bit, gonna go hang out watch a couple of movies tonight. Then gonna go snowboarding tomorrow, and just generally chill out and forget poker for a bit.
Went to see this comedian last night at the Edinburgh Festival... it's about the 6th/7th show I've been to in the past few weeks and he was by FAR the best! Was crying laughter tears for half the show! :) He's called Louis CK.
Know your math
Date: Wed, Aug 13, 2008
Cheers for the feedback on the last couple of hands. The 2nd one particularly fixed a leak in my deep game where I play strong draws with showdown value too aggressively.
Anyways, here's a link to an awesome quiz Bobbofitos made up around a year a go and recently re-posted on Leggo. It involves determining the most profitable plays with drawing hands. It's just 3 hands but teaches some pretty important stuff.
Quiz ... answers are halfway down.
FTP $1/2 review - Hand 2
Date: Fri, Aug 8, 2008
Have some BTimm certified Minus the Bear for this hand...
$1/$2 Deep at FTP
6 players
Stacks:
| UTG | ($397.00) | ||
| UTG+1 | ($661.15) | ||
| CO | ($764.20) | ||
| Hero | ($403.30) | ||
| SB | ($204.00) | ||
| BB | ($751.85) |
Pre-flop: ($3, 6 players) Hero is BTN
UTG raises to $8, 2 folds, Hero calls $8, 2 folds
Preflop call doesn't look great, but the BB is on monkey-tilt and is playing every hand hence the semi-loose BTN flat. Unfortunately he doesn't come along.
Flop:
($19, 2 players)UTG bets $15, Hero raises to $48, UTG raises to $162, $114 to Hero ($347.3)?
Flop he's gonna lead most of his range on that board. Raise here seems standard, but lets think about villain's range a little. He's playing 22/19 so is likely opening around the same as I do UTG. All pairs, AJ+, KQ and some pretty looking SCs like 98s, TJs. He's probably going to lead that flop with his whole range so not much info gained there.
Should I raise flop? Instant thought is yea, I have a pr and a FD, but this is 100BB thinking, because I'd be willing to go with the hand on the flop. Here if I end up with all of my 200BB in on the flop then I'm going to be behind.
One thing I'm not doing enough at the moment when playing is thinking "how would I react if villain raised me?", a lot of the time if the answer to this is "i'd have to fold a hand with strong value" then I shouldn't bet/raise. So maybe on this basis I shouldn't raise flop here, I'm not sure. I guess if he does raise it often won't price me out and force me to fold. I do get value from AJ/KQ/some lower FDs, so I think popping it up is ok, I make it 3x his raise and change, which I think is a pretty nice size, a little bigger would have been fine too I think.
He then comes over the top for $162 total. At this point 100bb deep I'm obviously just mashing the all-in button, but here we've got more to think about. His range is now REALLY polarised...
He now doesn't have a bare flush draw, as I have the Ah and he's not gonna make it $162 to go with any other FD. There's an outside chance he might have opened UTG pre with QhJh or JhTh, but it's not that big a factor so can pretty much be ignored I reckon.
So his range is now almost exclusively AK and sets. Does he ever do this with AQ? I doubt it, he's just gonna flat AQ there.
So now we know he's got a set or AK. We also know he's never ever ever folding now. So shoving my draw has no fold equity. Given that my hand is a 2/1 dog to his range shoving is not an option. So do I have odds to call?
At the time I miscalculated my outs, I put him on a looser range and thought the 2 As left were at least partial outs and the 4s maybe had some out value too. Turns out none of these are outs against his range. So all I have is a 9 out flush draw - 20% to hit my flush on the turn. None of my outs are counterfeitted by pairing the board (but it could runner-runner pair).
I have to assume he's shoving the turn regardless of the card. We're playing with an effective $227 behind. It's costing me $114 to call into a pot that will be $343. So I've only got an immediate 33% equity. But factoring in that i'll get the rest of his stack if I hit I actually have exactly 20% equity.
So it's a breakeven spot. Probably a slightly -EV spot due to the chance of being runner-runner counterfeitted or the very slim chance that he could muck AK on the turn if a flush card hits.
Obviously at the time I thought I had odds, called and fistpump stacked him with a beautiful 6h on the turn. FWIW he had KK.
Hud!
Date: Thu, Aug 7, 2008
I couldn't find any decent iPoker 6-max miniview huds for Holdem Manager so made one tonight. Took fucking ages, miniview is such a tight setup, there's hardly any space to put the stats! Colours setup on all variables, mucked cards in correct places, etc.
Stats go:
Hands Played.....VPIP%....Steal%
Name...............PFR%.....3bet%
......................Aggfctr...BetRiver%
A lot of the other stats I like to use while playing, like cbet, aggression by streets, fold to 3bet%, 4bet%, etc. Are all on the cool popup menus that HM has. Might get around to customised these at some stage but this will do for now.
Anyways, feel free to pillage.
Download link - extract these files to HoldemManager/Config/
FTP $1/2 review - Hand 1
Date: Thu, Aug 7, 2008
Finished playing at FTP now, reviewing some of the interesting hands. Over the next week or so I'll post them on here with my analysis. It'd be cool if you guys can give some input and hopefully can get some strategy talk 'goin.
$1/$2 at FTP
4 players
Stacks:
| Hero | ($238.00) | ||
| BTN | ($203.00) | ||
| SB | ($331.55) | ||
| BB | ($97.50) |
Pre-flop: ($3, 4 players) Hero is CO
Hero raises to $7, 1 fold, SB raises to $26, 1 fold, Hero calls $19
I flat his 3bet here because I don't think he'll ever 5betshove any hands I beat. I'll either be flipping or against AK. I'll play the hand with position postflop and try to figure out what he has.
I put his 3betting range on like TT+/AK kind of thing, maybe even JJ+. It's pretty tight.
Flop:
($54, 2 players)SB bets $34, Hero calls $34
Turn:
($122, 2 players)SB checks, Hero ($178)?
When he checks turn I take it as weakness and bet, which I now think was a big mistake. If he is indeed weak and has AK, he just mucks it here, there's not much value in betting and I don't really need to protect my hand all that much from a 6-out draw. If he has JJ (or sometimes TT) I'll probably get his stack in, but the times he has KK/AA and is smart enough to turn/checkraise me I'm going to lose my stack. It's a spot where there just isn't really any value in betting.
I think checking behind turn is the best play here. Pretty interesting how this hand figures out after analysing it taking his tight 3b range into account.
Recently discovered Flight of the Conchords. So. Awesome.
Evolution
Date: Sun, Aug 3, 2008
I recently discovered this Evolution of a Poker Player article by aejones. It's an awesome article, check it out. Over the past month Milestone #2 clicked with me, although I didn't notice it as a milestone at the time.
I think through my entire poker career I've always been trying to find more complex or 'smart' ways to play hands. I really just wanted to pwn people in lots of complicated ways. I'd watch instructional videos thinking, wow that's cool this guy plays 30/27, fires three streets and check-raises rivers... I should play like him. Over the last month it's been reinforced to me that you don't need to play like this to beat 3/6, 5/10, etc. It's absolutely fine to play more straight-forwards, but play straight-forwards REALLY WELL with a sound knowledge of more advanced key concepts.
This kind of hit me a lot of the time when chatting over hands with the guys in Vegas and getting advice from some people after I got back home. So cheers to IAmSnow, DTheater and Dodgyken who made this click for me, probably without noticing. I feel like this realisation is going to make a big difference to my game and I can concentrate on learning the key concepts that I've previously been ignoring, because they're not as fun as playing like a spewmonkey.
Been trying to get a lot of hands in, do a lot of study, did some sweating with Ian/Brian too which was pretty helpful. Put 1.8k hands in yesterday and unlocked the m'fkin robe from FTP, YESsssss. Still don't have Holdem Manager yet, which sucks, still waiting on my key from Leggo.