Thursday, September 30, 2010

September Results- Pokerstars owes me $650

I ran $650 under all in ev this month which mostly came on that one super doomswitch day when I had moved up to 50NL. One of these days I will move up and actually get a heater and be allowed to stay.

Monthly Review- September 2010
Cash winnings: $655.15
SNG/MTT winnings: $0
Rakeback: $567.69 FPP value (14,192.21VPPs * 2.5 FPPs/VPP * 1.6c/FPP)
Stellar Rewards- $200
Current Bankroll- $1,531.55+9,978.89 FPPs x1.6c= $159.66= $1,691.21
Hours played|$/hr: 96.89| $14.69/hr
-------------------------------------------------------

$1,422.84 profit



As you can see it was actually a good month except for a couple of days. I made over $1,600 after rakeback at 25NL which is my best earn ever at that stake for a month by far.

I am going to try and put in some sick volume at in October.



Friday, September 24, 2010

Where's all the fish?

So I did some 12-tabling of 50NL, and while the regulars are pretty darn awful, there was a noticeable lack of pure fish on the tables. I seriously saw 3 genuine fishy type players in the 1.5 hrs I just played. I table selected and closed out the "bad" tables every 30 minutes.. before I knew it, I had 2 tables running. ???? !!!!

So anyways.. it was rather disheartening. I know its not the optimum time of day to play, but come on.

I ended up a little less than a buy-in up even though I got coolered once when I flopped top two vs bottom set. Also, everything I raised the button with Qx, the blinds called me with a dominating Q. Luckily I pot controlled all 3 hands and lost the minimum.. but it was still pretty comical.. here I am thinking I got some bluff money out of them on the river and they flip up QK vs my QJ etc.

So with that I closed out my tables and am now writing on this blog.

One thing I did notice is although it is decent practice to play the 50NL regs, they are so God awful I really do get bored quickly. I really want to play at 100NL and above and am now thinking about the quickest way to get rolled for it. It may require 20 tabling 25NL or something for a higher hourly rate than the obvious 5 tabling of 50NL because of the lack of decent tables. I may pick up on the operation I came up with yesterday once I get rolled for 100NL.

Very frustrated right now and if I wasn't like 80% to supernova, I'd seriously consider changing sites.

Monday, September 20, 2010

Last 100k hands at 25NL



I was just checking on my progress through my past couple hundred thousand hands and noticed my winrate has gone from about 1.7BB/100 for my first 500kish hands to 3.4BB/100 in my last 100k hands. I do not think this is a 100k heater as I know I have come a long way in my understanding of the game. Notice the gentling out of the red line to where I am pretty much break even now. I am understanding board textures and which flops to play back and barrel on etc. My 3-betting game has also significantly improved.

So what to do with this knowledge? Well, it allows me to stop being results oriented and have piece of mind during my sessions that I am a winning player. Now I can focus on each hand as I go with confidence that the money will eventually come. That those cooler sessions are just a blip on the long term graph. And with that said, here is my lifetime 25NL graph so far.


I have no regrets on how things have progressed so far. I do wish I could successfully move up, but it is very difficult for me because my poker earnings go towards making a living. My r/l job has lately been contributing a lot less to my total income. Every time I am rolled for the next level, I either move up and immediately hit a huge -AIEV downswing (its happened twice) and have to move back down, or I don't move up at all because I have to cash out to pay bills.

Luckily for me I am able to make a solid $25/hr at 25NL and if I put enough hours in, can just about support my family completely. I constantly wonder though if I would be a winner at 50NL/100NL if I got the chance to permanently make the move up.

All I can do is plow ahead and hopefully put enough aside to keep taking shots.


Best week so far


Last week was my best week ever in terms of money taken off the tables, just over $800 after rake back. I did run 9 buy-ins under all-in ev so its not a heater, which is a good sign. I also put in about 26 hours, probably my highest volume week ever. However, it is just short of my scheduled 30 hours. I really need to start putting in the volume I have targeted for myself.

In the last couple of days I have been working on good spots to 4-bet bluff, and surprisingly, according to stoxev, you can just about 4-bet your entire range profitably against most players if they are 3-betting 5%+ as long as they don't adjust.

This assumes they are only continuing with QQ+, AK.. and a lot of players have a 5-bet range like this. I know I do unless I have a read.

So what does this mean? It means against people 3-betting 5%+ I should be throwing in a few 4-bet bluffs occasionally.. but not enough so they adjust.

Implications? It lowers my fold to 3-bet stat a bit so that I don't get 3-bet as much against people using a HUD, and it has the added benefit of making people "back off" of their light 3-betting if they realize I am capable of 4-betting them light.

It is all part of my trying to build a more well rounded game. I want to be as unexploitable as possible once I move up to higher stakes.

Other than that I am trying to find more spots to squeeze as it is hugely +ev with ATC is a ton of situations I know I am overlooking right now.

Goals for this week are to put in all of the hours I have set and to continue working on the nuances of the 3-bet/4-bet game.

Friday, September 17, 2010

Highest volume day ever

I played over 16k hands today which took around 10 hours. It really wasn't that difficult and even though I ran pretty badly (one outered once set over set was the worst) I still added $300 to the bankroll after rakeback. I believe this is my single best day ever in cash games. Reverse those 5 or 6 coolers and it could have been special. Oh well, that's poker.

I am going to continue to try and put in a ton of volume. Frankly, I need the money. I will need to cash out $2,500 or so soon and want to leave at least 50 buy-ins or so for 25NL. Actually there is $3800 or so in my account so I guess I could cash out now. Maybe tomorrow after I sleep on it.

I got into a few interesting spots today but its too late to post them. Maybe tomorrow.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Interesting hand

During my session today this hand came up. When he flats the flop I put the majority of his range as draws, air, a 9x hand, and sometimes 22-1010. A jack or overpair should always raise here. Once he called the turn I eliminated everything but draws, underpairs, and air. Some of the combos of Ax are missing due to AK 3-betting, AQ because I have a queen, AJ raises the flop, A9 obv raises turn. Betting the river makes no sense because Ax might even find a hero call here but like I said, is unlikely. The nut ace draw plays fast on the flop a ton anyways.. its doubtful he calls two streets with ace high on this board. Therefore I beat almost every holding he could possibly have making a check/call very easy on the river. Sometimes he'll show up with something crazy like quads or a poorly played FH, but not enough to make my call incorrect. It just goes to show you that if we just stop and think about ranges, we are missing a ton of free money out there. And while this is an extreme example, what about all of those tiny pots we don't stab at or protect our 2nd pair type hands on? It all counts towards the bottom line.

No-Limit Hold'em, $0.25 BB (7 handed) - Hold'em Manager Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com



UTG ($19.75)

Hero (MP1) ($25.35)

MP2 ($29.73)

CO ($25)

Button ($25)

SB ($25.45)

BB ($26.59)



Preflop: Hero is MP1 with K♠, Q♠

1 fold, Hero bets $0.75, MP2 calls $0.75, 4 folds



Flop: ($1.85) J♦, 4♦, 9♠ (2 players)

Hero bets $1.21, MP2 calls $1.21



Turn: ($4.27) 9♣ (2 players)

Hero bets $2.56, MP2 calls $2.56



River: ($9.39) J♠ (2 players)

Hero checks, MP2 bets $5.25, Hero calls $5.25



Total pot: $19.89



Results:

Hero had K♠, Q♠ (two pair, Jacks and nines).

MP2 had 8♦, 10♦ (two pair, Jacks and nines).

Outcome: Hero won $18.92

On another note, part of my transformation lately as a player ties in with something that I heard on a video series called the eightfold path to poker enlightenment. (you can find it on deucescracked.com) The author of the series talks about his favorite hand. I can't remember what it is exactly, its something like J9o. He makes the statement that he makes more money with that hand then he does with pocket aces.

This sounds ludicrous at face value because we all know that AA is always the biggest moneymaker when we look at HEM or PT. What he is talking about is that all people make a ton of money with AA. In fact, unless it is horribly misplayed.. its very difficult not to make a killing with AA. I could give my 3 year old AA on every hand in her first poker game ever and she would dominate everyone else at the table.

What he is saying is, the way we REALLY make money is by making slightly more than everyone else on those middling non-premium type hands. For example, if the average winrate out there with J9o is -2.33BB/100 but I am -1.33BB/100, I have picked up a ton of money over my poker career that is very difficult to spot.

This is similar to Shania which says playing some weaker hands in unexpected spots will increase the profit of our value end by disguising our overall range. In other words, people who only play the nuts seldom get paid, but a perceived maniac will always get paid because no one ever thinks he "has it."

The difference is that we are not trying to simply play a few more hands to get paid off, we are trying to increase the profit (or lessen the losses) of ALL of our hands.

Check out the top winners on table ratings. Sometimes they are winning money with 100% of hands. How is this possible? Its not by playing our cards at face value, that's for sure.

Of course, accomplishing this is the hard part. Maybe when I figure it out one day I'll write it down. (After I retire of course :) )

Progress since the "switch"

After the fiasco on the 4th of this month, I did a lot of thinking, reviewing, reading, and some more thinking. I dropped tables for awhile to 16 and focused more on picking up dead money and playing the player rather than just nitting it up and making hands. I broke down my playing style into pure nuts and bolts and figured out I have been focusing too much on showdown dollars and not enough on playing poker and maximizing my earn both when I do AND don't hit a hand.

The results so far have been startling. I almost immediately ran hot and was like 9BB/100 for a few days. Of course then variance struck and I got coolered a few times as well as the usual suckout mayhem. But surprisingly, my "bad" sessions where I overall lost showdown dollars due to running bad were suddenly not so bad anymore. I was either breaking even or making a small profit in non-showdown earnings and it really buffered me against the big downswing. I still have had 3 moderate sized swings, but they would have been much worse if I had my "normal" non-showdown results.

I have now gradually moved back to playing 24 tables (fast btw) and I am still able to rather easily make the correct decisions (as correct as they are playing half the tables.) I am averaging 1650-1750 hands per hour now.. which gives a nice boost to my rakeback and hourly rate. And will get me to supernova faster. (cha ching)

What specific changes did I make? Its hard to say but it really was kind of an epiphany. It results in a major overhaul of my HUD which let's me focus more on the newly discovered important parts of playing winning poker. I can now exploit the exploitable, avoid the good players when necessary, and in the process create the type of image that gets me paid on my big hands. I know that the regulars all have HUDs and are for the most part using the stats I used to use. Their read on me based on stats will now be way off and it will make them play (hopefully) very poorly against me.

Besides the above, another huge change for me was finding what I feel is the optimum range in all positions for both opening, calling, and 3-betting. I won't go into details for obvious reasons. Anyways, here is my graph for the month. Its pretty easy to spot where the "epiphany" was.


My only goal for the rest of the month is to play all of my scheduled hours and to not slack any.

Monday, September 6, 2010

Donkeytest

Dear Outlaw,

Thank you for taking the DonkeyTest.

Your Poker IQ score is: 146

I found this online test that supposedly gives you your poker IQ. According to the test I am a poker genius and should be a high stakes winner. Yeah right. The test was very easy and I'm sure anyone who has played any amount of poker would be "genius."

If you want to check it out, its www.donkeytest.com


Saturday, September 4, 2010

Doomswitch


I think the graph above speaks for itself. What it doesn't show is the enumerable times people are hitting sets against my big pairs getting 7-1 (at best) preflop on the 50bb tables. The only other time I ran this bad was back in February and I believe this time tops it. I dropped my all time most amount ever on the tables yesterday, $582, running 18 buy-ins under AIEV. I knew I was running bad while playing, but since I don't check the cashier until at the end of each day, I was stunned to see I had dropped 32% of my bankroll. I now have to move down to 25NL again and I guess I need to review some hands (and puke a lot while doing it) to make sure I am not leaking somewhere majorly.

I guess in a nutshell.. TAG sucks ass. I can remember why I switched to LAG. TAG relies way too much on showdown winnings and because of it, days like this can happen. I guess that's the price a TAG pays for wasting less brainwaves during their play.

So should I go back to LAG? Should I let one bad session make me change my game again? I don't know. I am going to think about it today and decide if the loss of VPPs/hr is worth it. Maybe I should start focusing on pure winrate and forget the fpp crap.

On a positive note. I can 100% say with full confidence that I did not tilt any money off today. I had one of those sessions where someone could easily blow their entire bankroll. But here I am, still intact with 50 buy-ins for 25NL ready to grind it back up.

So screw you poker Gods, you can take your 34 buy-in downswing that you decided to give me, and stick it.