Maximizing your Green line

Date: Mon, Oct 8, 2007 Internet

I was just thinking of a line from the Theory of Poker, and think it applies well to getting your 'green line' up:

"Every time you make a bet that maximizes expectation versus your opponent’s actual hand, you win, every time your opponent fails to maximize his expectation given your actual hand, you win."

Imagine you call a pf opening raise in LP, or a limper or two, when holding .
The flop comes down

Villain bets pot. You know he won't pay you off if you hit your flush, and aren't sure about ace outs, so you fold.

Your share of the sklansky bucks here means that even if villain has an extreme tight range your share of the chips is still about 35% of the chips in the pot. If you fold here you are losing all that equity. Even while it may be the correct play.

An example like this shows why it is a mistake to simply call behind two limpers with a hand like AJs or to just call a relatively loose MP raiser while you are on the button.

Simply because if you play too rigid opponents can deny you your Sklansky bucks.

If what I just typed makes no sense to you, you are not positional aware enough. Making sense?

PokerEV, great analysis software

Date: Mon, Oct 8, 2007 Internet

Someone from the 2+2 forums has created this nice piece of software. What it does is show you how well you are running, and has great filter options to help you analyze your leaks.

It can be downloaded from www.pokerevsoftware.com .

To explain, here's my graph from the last two weeks:



What do the lines mean? The red and the blue lines are about showdowns. The red line shows your Sklansky bucks in the hand, which pretty much means the same as your equity in the hand.

For instance, you hold AA on the flop, someone reraises you all-in on a rainbow flop, and the total pot is 200BB while 100BB are your own if you call. You read his hand strength correctly and call. Villain shows 22 while there's no 2 on the board nor backdoor draws. So your Sklansky bucks in the hand equal around (.92x200bb)-100bb = 84BB-rake.

If your aces hold up vs his 2 outs, you actually sucked out, since you win 100BB-rake instead of 84.

That is what the blue line shows. The example is a bit extreme, but the blue line shows your actual winnings in showdown situations. If you get paid off more than your equity in the hands the blue line is above the red one, and is lower if you do not get paid off enough or miss your draws or get outdrawn. It also answers the question about how 'rigged' online poker is: Even while I got some suckouts during these 11823 hands, the difference between my expected showdown winnings and real showdown winnings is only $24 while at one time I were running $50 over equity, and running $100 below equity 500 hands later. It seems the odds hold up on average.

The green line shows your hands that did not go to showdown compared to your actual winnings. How to interpret it depends on your play style and other factors. Like if you are playing with a bunch of donks and play quite tight fit-or-fold poker your green line will be below the blue line on average. This also applies to calling IP with good draws and folding if you miss. If you bluff in bad spots too often your green line will also be much lower.
If it's above the blue line it can also mean different things. It can either mean you play your draws aggressive, pick good spots to bluff, but can also mean you fail at getting your good hands to showdown enough.

What does my first graph show? Well, first of all, do not play after going out. Notice the 11 buyin downswing in 500 hands? Even while I was supposed to lose 'only' 7 buyins in 500 hands, I should not have played at all that night.

How to work on your leaks is by using the filters well. For instance, the previous graph is clouded by hands I folded in the blinds. This is my graph from hands where I voluntarily put money in the pot (filter: action preflop call or raise).




This graph is supposed to run extreme good for any break-even or better player, but it shows better contrast since it filters out the hands you folded in the blinds.

After applying this let's see how well I play my draws:

OESD:



So I run negative in these spot, so it may be interesting for me to look all those hands up and see how I can improve here.

Flushdraw (I filtered on any flushdraw)



Since the blue line is above the red line I ran lucky at flushdraws, but because the green is higher, I took enough pots down without hitting.

The luck bar shows how well you ran in all-in situations. Again the red line is your expected winnings, the blue your actual winnings. Here I ran about $43 over expectation in 113 all-in situations.



The analysis tab shows how your average betting is on each street compared to your equity in the hand. What you should look for here is that your bets on average are less than your equity in the hand on each street. For me, it seems on average I do fine here but maybe miss some value on the river I need to work on:




Pokerev seems to be in beta phase still, so it's free to use atm. I do not know if the designer has plans to go charge a fee for using it, but it seems to become even more useful than pokerstove for fixing your leaks.

If you want to know if this software is trustworthy, you could search the 2+2 forums for it, but so many users there are using it that it seems fine. Here's the thread that introduced the program:


2+2 Thread

Maximizing your Green line

Date: Mon, Oct 8, 2007 Internet

I was just thinking of a line from the Theory of Poker, and think it applies well to getting your 'green line' up:

"Every time you make a bet that maximizes expectation versus your opponent’s actual hand, you win, every time your opponent fails to maximize his expectation given your actual hand, you win."

Imagine you call a pf opening raise in LP, or a limper or two, when holding .
The flop comes down

Villain bets pot. You know he won't pay you off if you hit your flush, and aren't sure about ace outs, so you fold.

Your share of the sklansky bucks here means that even if villain has an extreme tight range your share of the chips is still about 35% of the chips in the pot. If you fold here you are losing all that equity. Even while it may be the correct play.

An example like this shows why it is a mistake to simply call behind two limpers with a hand like AJs or to just call a relatively loose MP raiser while you are on the button.

Simply because if you play too rigid opponents can deny you your Sklansky bucks.

If what I just typed makes no sense to you, you are not positional aware enough. Making sense?

Maximizing your Green line

Date: Mon, Oct 8, 2007 Internet

I was just thinking of a line from the Theory of Poker, and think it applies well to getting your 'green line' up:

"Every time you make a bet that maximizes expectation versus your opponent’s actual hand, you win, every time your opponent fails to maximize his expectation given your actual hand, you win."

Imagine you call a pf opening raise in LP, or a limper or two, when holding .
The flop comes down

Villain bets pot. You know he won't pay you off if you hit your flush, and aren't sure about ace outs, so you fold.

Your share of the sklansky bucks here means that even if villain has an extreme tight range your share of the chips is still about 35% of the chips in the pot. If you fold here you are losing all that equity. Even while it may be the correct play.

An example like this shows why it is a mistake to simply call behind two limpers with a hand like AJs or to just call a relatively loose MP raiser while you are on the button.

Simply because if you play too rigid opponents can deny you your Sklansky bucks.

If what I just typed makes no sense to you, you are not positional aware enough. Making sense?

How to Stop Tilting Against Calling Stations

Date: Tue, Aug 7, 2007 Internet

Disclaimer: Every instance of fish in this post refers to the loose-passive calling stations kind of fish, not the nitty weak-tight ATM’s or other kinds of fish. Further, even while I may be using ‘he’ as personal pronoun when talking about fish, this does not mean I imply all fish are males. My sincere apologies to female fish out there.

Nothing can be more annoying to sharks than sitting in a pool of fish and missing all the flops after raising preflop for a long streak. So much dead money out there, but it seems the only one actually contributing dead money isn’t the fish calling your PF raise from the SB with J6s because it’s SOoTED, but it seems to be you. Every time you raise your AK/KQs etc either OOP or IP you get at least two callers, but to no avail. And your c-bets get no respect, yet you keep doing so because it’s ‘correct’ and because you could still have the best hand.

This can lead to many things, like ending up calling huge raises when you actually do manage to hit the flop, or worse, playing too timid like limping OOP just because of fear you’ll miss the flop again.

Why shouldn’t this affect sharks? Quite simple. Getting called by 2 fish and missing the flop is no bad result at all! Check/fold, next hand…

It’s quite simple, let’s say you hold AKo, raise preflop UTG to 4xBB, and get two callers who can be classified as calling stations. AK will hit top pair about 35% of the time, and you put less than 33% of the money in. That means you earned sklansky bucks even when missing the flop. The pot is now 12.5 to 13.5BB. Now you could c-bet like 8-10BB with your 6 outs, but if you expect to get called by at least one player like 80% of the time, that’s money you could have spent better.

So instead you check/fold, and use that saved money for the next times you hold AK. And when you actually do manage to hit one bloody flop get paid off decently by some fool who called you PF with A3o or K9.

Another trait of fish seems to be a quite particular one. It’s one advanced players make to induce a river bluff to get more value, but fish do so for other reasons.

Let’s say you end up in a multiway pot from LP. You hold a decent draw on a J high flop, and decide to take a look at the turn. On the turn the EP fish bets out again, and you call because you think he holds a weak hand. On the river an ace or king arrives, completely missing you, but fish bets out like $7 in a $20 pot.

Even while you KNOW exactly what this bet means when done by a fish (fish thinks he’s beat so he bets small to keep himself from losing much money ), I found out that raising in this spot is futile. I can raise to $20/25/30/37, and still the fish calls way too often with exactly the kind of hand he was representing: J with a lousy kicker.

There Is No Correct Play Style

Date: Sun, Jul 22, 2007 Internet

UTG+1 limped.
You are sitting on the CO with .
What do you do?

Answer: It depends…

In NL Holdem there are many different play styles to choose from, all with their own strengths and weaknesses.

A solid TAG will be making money because of having the best hand quite often. In a large % of the times where they are continuing postflop with a top pair hand, they will have the better kicker. Further a TAG will be trying to take a fair share of pots where they miss with continuation bets.

A smart LAG will be trying to take more than his share of the pots pre and postflop by trying to gauge the strength of their opponents hands and taking down pots when they have good folding equity. The second strength comes from getting paid off very well when they actually have a strong hand and someone with a hand like TPTK just doesn’t believe them anymore paying off for up to multiple buyins.

Tight-passives, also known as rocks, generally have a strong preflop hand when they play, and silly enough, a large part they lose compared to other play styles, which is taking down pots when they missed, they make up for by getting bluffed at too often. Even with an unimproved AK or AQ, they don’t seem to mind check-calling the flop, turn and sometimes even river.

These are the most common play styles, though there are many more like ultra-aggressive, loose-passive calling stations, ultra-nits and others.

I estimate most novice and intermediate poker players will try to figure out which play style works out the best for them, and stick to it as default play style.

But I think sticking to a default play style is a mistake. Even if one works out very well for you, it has certain disadvantages. Observant players can adjust accordingly after figuring you out, which is pretty easy for them if they use a HUD. Further, using a single play style can make you play hands in a sub-optimal way.

In my eyes someone who wants to become an advanced player should look at each situation individually and try to estimate the most EV way to play it. Think outside the box, and don’t even use logic such as “I am going to establish a TAG/LAG image and then change gears in a bit.” That logic may work for live tournaments/cash games, but has its flaws for online cash games. Image building doesn’t work on every player, since some people do not use HUD’s, and some people only look at their own cards and their TV.

Starting out with a default play style may have its merits when joining a new table without any info on the players yet, or if you multitable without a HUD. But if you want to be more flexible, you can avoid even this with some preparation, at least if you use a HUD and play on a PT-enabled site.

Before starting to play, open up a bunch of tables from your favorite site and let it datamine for about 30 minutes. In the meanwhile just browse some forums, check some hand histories from last session, watch some porn or at the very least do something other than sitting down at a table.

Even while you won’t have many hands on the players when you do sit down at a table, every bit of information is better than nothing, so use it properly.

Now take a look at the hand at the beginning of the article. You hold JTs in the CO, UTG+1 limped, what do you do?

Let’s say your HUD shows UTG+1 is relatively loose preflop, passive postflop, and folds to over 50% of all c-bets. The people to your left are not overly loose, and the BB doesn’t seem to be someone defending his blinds to steals all the time. The most EV move here would probably be to make a raise that would get called by UTG+1 most of the time and hopefully not by the blinds, so to something like 4xBB total, and c-bet any flop. Size of c-bet depends on flop texture.

If UTG+1 folds to c-bets less than 40% of the time or if the blinds seem loose, the correct move would probably be to just call and hope for a multiway pot with that holding.

Some people to your left with exceptional high PFR ratings? Fold unless you are effectively deep stacked.

Good table selection may be a way to maximize winnings when sticking to a certain play style, with basics such as people who like playing LAG looking for tight people to their right, TAG’s looking for loose people to their right.

But with a more flexible approach you will be dominating more tables by adjusting correctly. You will try to play every situation for maximum EV. A nice side effect is that your own stats don’t give dataminers at your table enough info to exploit you. At some tables you may look like a complete maniac, at another the biggest nit ever, but hopefully on both tables sitting behind a nice big stack.

More important, playing like this should increase your pre-, postflop and hand reading skills at a faster rate than sticking to any standard play.

Yours truly,
Soultwister

"Keep your friends close, and your enemies to your right."

Poker is a Game of Chance

Date: Mon, Jul 16, 2007 Internet

Bean-counters from the tax department state this. It has to be correct, since the Law says so (the Dutch Supreme Court ruled it in 1998.) Many other people also agree with this, like for instance the group of people that buy state lottery tickets and have an estimated IQ of over 120. Those with a lower IQ would probably call it a game of luck instead.

“Poker is a game of incomplete information.”

Interesting statement, or at least, it must be, since it’s been written in every article on poker which is over one page long.

Let’s see if any of both of these statements are true, by taking this single hand as example.

Return Of The Blog

Date: Mon, Jul 16, 2007 Internet

It has been nearly a year since my last update. Where has Soultwister been?

Busting the tables still, or busting his bankroll?

A bit of both, but in my favor.

Around the time of my last update I switched from playing limit to No Limit. Why the switch?
As the saying goes, the key to limit poker is about trying to put your opponent to a decision for some of his chips. That was not good enough for me, I want them to make bad decisions for a large part of their chips.

Further, skill matters even more in NL than in limit, and it is a hundred times more fun. Correct bet sizing, position play, player reads, trying to make equity calculations on the fly, inducing bluffs for value and more factors like those make No Limit Hold'em the best game for me.

What limits did I play in NL?

I started out playing on $.10/.25 NL 10-max, working my bankroll up towards $.5/1 and a bit of $1/2. , though the later limits were all played shorthanded on 6-max tables.

6-max is where the real money in poker cash games is. First you will be playing a lot more hands per hour, secondly the average winning rate in BB/100 hands seems to be better. The combination of those makes it much more profitable then playing full-ring.

So how did I do?

From august up till march I withdrew a total profit of about €6000, so around $8200. I made a big mistake though, which is withdrawing too much money constantly spending it on RL things and leaving an online bankroll too small to adapt to big swings.

During april I noticed the error of my ways. At the end of april I had $2900 less online compared to the 10th of that month, even while the total loss of that month was only around $300, and actually still slightly profitable because of rakeback.

In the beginning of June I lost my last bankroll on Full Tilt Poker and PKR.com leaving myself with an online bankroll of only $1200.

But was this because of variance, bad play or bad bankroll management?

It's a combination of all three factors, and this is also the reason why I returned to Blogging.

The last few months I've spent most my poker time analyzing my play and was shocked at the conclusions I could draw from it. I was terrible at making correct value bets, did not give other players enough room to make mistakes, did not look good enough at the pot odds I were offering my opponents and picked some of the worst spots for bluffing.

When analyzing a hand history the best way for me seemed to be to put it on paper, look at all factors involved in the hand and try to extract every bit of useful information you can find in it. Results of the played hand do not matter, even the most basic hand can be pretty interesting and give useful information to use at later times.

I also returned to the poker forum I used to post in when I played limit before, http://www.internettexasholdem.com . It's a great place to post your thoughts, ask for other people's thoughts about played hands, or comment on their played hands yourself. Take a look at the forum if you haven't been there before, it is a great forum for beginners, novices and advanced players.

I will use a different approach here with my new posts than I used to. I'm no longer going to worry about the results of hands/situations posted here, or just worry about the optimal play, but rather am going to use these hands as a means to work out or explain concepts which can be used as a means to improve my game. And hopefully this will also help readers to improve parts of their game.

There will also be a lot more math involved in these posts. Even while the different calculations used to calculate the equity of a hand, required fold equity and other factors of the game will be very hard to calculate on the fly while in a hand, but after making many calculations like these, it becomes easier to estimate the expected value of different options or situations better.

Yours truly,
Soultwister

"Keep your friends close, and your enemies to your right."

August 20 Live T&I Poker Tourney

Date: Thu, Aug 24, 2006 Internet

I started on a very fun table, some solid players around the table, and generally relatively tight players to my left and loose aggressive players a few seats to my right. Loose aggressive to the extremes I may add, early on some of them raised and called to the river with nothing but ace high, and then I'm not talking about hands like ace 10 suited. No, ace 4 offsuit seemed good enough for some of 'em. I think someone even raised king 9 before the flop. Sorry, but king 9 offsuit?

It's not as if a hand like K9o is completely useless. Other then that it can draw to the second best flush and second best straight, it's actually a great holding for bluffing. If you can't hit a bloody flop with it, that hand will be perfect for it. Why waste decent cards on it?

I generally tried to see cheap flops with alot of suited and offsuit connectors, even with one or two gaps inbetween, and small pairs trying to hit sets. Didn't bother playing cards like A10 offsuit since I'd have no clue where I am in the hand with the loose players to my right. If the flop would come A36 I'd probably be against two pair already. Also didn't bother with bluffing on this table, since I assumed that if I'd hit anything with the loose aggressives in the hand, they'd pay me off anyways.

I think I hardly hit a flop for the first hour or so, which is the disadvantage of playing cards like those, but the blinds were still low so it didn't matter. Then after a while, in a raised pot, I held pocket 7's and the flop was something like 975. Almost perfect situation for my hand, middle set, only a straight possibility there.
After some bet, raise and reraise it became clear that someone to my right, who seemed like a pretty solid player to me, had a very strong hand himself. Well, the worst case scenario was that he would have the set of 9's. If he had the straight, which would be unlikely, I'd still have outs to the fullhouse. Best case scenario would be a lower set or overpair.

If you lose a set, and didn't lose alot, you played it bad I think, so I put the rest of my chips in against the player who had me covered with his stack. He actually had the set of 5's which didn't improve, so I doubled up nicely there.

Later when he was still shortstacked and made a raise preflop, , I looked down on a nice low pocket pair, 3's I think. There was already some money in the pot from limpers, so I made a raise to isolate myself against him, hoping he'd just have overcards. He had something like 78 suited and I won the race, though the board did give him 21 outs on the turn to give him some false hope.

Getting in the mood for busting people I made a raise when someone who had less then 4k chips left had limped in preflop. This time with a slightly higher pocket pair, aces to be precise, only he called the raise with another monster hand, 93 of spades. Offcourse he hit a flush on the flop and my party was spoiled.

After that I got moved to another table. Before other people joined that table I was the chipleader there, and it was a great table to sit at. Nearly all players other then 2 or 3 played very tight and homely, as if they were playing against their family, politely limping before the flop and not really giving the impression they were trying to bust eachother. I didn't play too many hands myself, but from those I played I took more then my fair share of the pots regardless of my cards, mostly because of my relatively big stack compared to the rest of the table. Twice I got caught, once when someone had a set and I gave up bluffing on the turn, another time when I made the mistake of betting too much, which the other player correctly saw as a bluff.
Executed the same move here which I did against a shortstack player on the first table, which was to raise him all-in for isolation, this time with a pocket pair of 6's, and won the race again. Also did some reverse blind stealing. Twice the button raised my big blind, and since it was an obvious button steal I tossed an orange 5k chip in.
Only I didn't sit here for long, I got moved to another table within an hour or so.

Which was pretty bad for me. My position at the table was terrible, on the opposite side of me was a very aggressive chipleader, and most other players to my left were also pretty aggressive. And worse, the deck was running cold for me. I had no semi-playable cards for a long time, and my only options were to make stone cold bluffs or wait till playable cards. I don't like stone cold bluffs with such players to my left, so I was waiting to anything playable. Even a 64 suited would seem nice to me in late position, but I wasn't getting those cards either. Only junk like K5, A6o (when in early position), J4 etc.
Eventually I got AKo which ran into...AKo, for a nice split pot. And got pocket kings with which I wanted to double up, but managed to run into a flopped two pair, costing me like 60% of my stack.

I only had about 7k left with the blinds at 800/1400, so my only move was to wait till there were no limpers to my right and go all-in with any two cards. It actually was a pair of 3's, though I would have done it with 72o at that point aswell. The chipleader called me with ace jack suited, hit his flush, and I ended in the 17th place.

While I didn't manage to end in the prizes, this was a great tournament, and think I learned enough here about different table structures to adjust my play in future tournaments.



Results: - $76
Bankroll: $1204

Interesting Hand from High Stakes Poker on GSN

Date: Wed, Aug 16, 2006 Internet

Suffering a bad beat can be pretty annoying, but if I suffered one involving as much cash as at these stakes, I would probably have a hard time coming up with the proper thing to say. A simple "Damn!" or naming some guy from a famous old book just doesn't seem to cut it anymore.




Daniel Negreanu's river call perhaps is questionable, then again, it is Gus Hansen he's playing against.

August 6 Live Tournament

Date: Wed, Aug 9, 2006 Internet

I almost missed out on sunday's live tourney organized by T&I Poker. Some real life issues came in the way and I almost decided not to go. But then I made a good excuse to myself that since I left with a profit both times I went there before, not going over would be a mistake, right? The real reason offcourse was simply that I felt like playing some cards.

I think I were about 4 or 5 hands into the game where I found a nice opportunity to properly introduce myself to the other players. A nice pair of kings, and I think I was in early position. I limped in, got raised for something like 300, and a put in a very significant reraise. I'm not sure about the exact amount I reraised with, but it was a raise that he should have interpreted as "Bugger off, you're beat, just fold, hand over those chips and you can wait till you get nice cards again". But it seemed he wasn't listening at that moment so he called.

The flop was all rags, and thinking he could only have had a very high pocket pair, but definitely no aces, I wasn't going to show him the turncard. I believe I tossed in an orange chip then as continuation bet, which is exactly half our starting stack, or I simply went all-in, but atleast he folded. Though the move was just to let the table know I wasn't afraid of pushing my chips in early in the game.

The table I played at was pretty active, lots of aggressive players, most tight, some quite loose, and limping was something almost unheard of at our table. If you wanted to limp from early position, you could better already raise to atleast 4 times the big blind so you didn't have to bother reaching for your chips a second time. Tried to get a tight image myself so my steals would succeed better later on when the pots would be larger (which worked well since I never got moved to another table. Later on I managed to make some nice steals after completely missing the flop or reraising someone all-in preflop with J9 and stuff like that).

For the rest of the game I also didn't bother with slowplaying much. Slowplaying that day involved nothing more then waiting slightly longer then usual before tossing a bunch of chips in the pot. I definitely wasn't going to let the next card be cheap. Only once did I try a checkraise when I flopped the nut straight with 75o, on a board with two clubs, but since everyone checked it failed. Bet out strongly on the turn when the third club came to represent a made flush and luckily nobody actually had the flush so the pot was mine anyways.

There has only been one non all-in hand I've been involved in that went to the showdown before the final table, which was when a player reraised me to test if I were bluffing while he held nothing (only the turn gave him a great draw and he hit his runner-runner flush on the river. I knew I was most likely beat here but wasn't going to give the table the impression I could be bluffed of any made hand for such a small reraise, and was curious what he had, so I paid him off).

One nice hand was the hand that would be the last before the dinner break. I had 99 in the small blind, there was a standard raise from early position and about 5 or 6 people called. Flop came down 678. With so many callers I assumed I would atleast be against an overpair and possibly a set, and tons of draws. The pot was already quite big, and I didn't think a significant bet would make everyone fold, and since nobody wants to get busted in the last hand before dinner break I just tossed the whole package in there and got no customers.

When I had slightly over 2ok chips a new guy came sitting over at our table. Seems he had personally busted his old table or something and came looking for new victims, since he had a tray with about 100k chips. From the start he made it perfectly clear to the table who the chipleader was, and showed he didn't like to get bet into, playing and defending pretty aggressively (he eventually ended up 2nd in the tourney).

When he was sitting in the big blind and it was my turn I looked down at my hole cards and saw a nice pocket pair of jacks. Hoping he had a playable hand, I raised all-in right away, trying to double up here. The other people folded and he was considering to call me. Which was good since it meant he atleast had a decent hand, like a small pocket pair or two face cards. I also tried to talk him into calling by saying something along the lines off "Stop with that silly Sam Farha impression, everyone at this table knows that you are just acting like you actually got a hand, will count your chips for a minute, and then end up folding anyways". I don't think saying that actually mattered, he was probably just wondering if he had two live cards and if I would have an overpair, so he called with JQ. Jacks held up, and I doubled up there. Me and him got involved in a few other hands that ended up in my favor, so I got a nice portion of his chips.

Eventually I reached the final table with a good stack of chips (well, I was already there, I just had to move seats). This was going to be a long stretch for a final table, about two hours, because the play generally was very tight. Two players very early on pushed the table around by going all-in very often, taking down the pots most of the time, but after a while both of them got called by players who had enough of it. I think both times the callers had worse hands but managed to outdraw them. Then again, there's no luck or bad luck involved in poker. There are only good and bad outs.

One guy who had reached the final table (I think he ended 5th or 6th) had been quite good at hitting those outs at the right moment. A few hours before the final table he was down to about 1500 chips and still managed to make it into the prizes, quite an impressive comeback. Earlier on he was sitting directly to my left, and twice or thrice I didn't even try to steal his blinds, but he almost caught me in a bluff when he was seriously considering calling me with his middle pair (I had 63s, bottom pair on that board).

Played too passive myself myself on the final table, did some pushes with ace-rag or small pocket pairs to steal the blinds, and went all-in with K5o when the person in the big blind didn't have enough chips left to justify a fold, but other then that I didn't get involved in enough pots to allow my stack to grow enough to compete for the first place.

I still managed to finish third place myself, actually losing to one of my favourite late-position hands in no-limit, 7-5, and received a nice envelope with 540 euros.

Selfshine didn't make it to the final table today, but he won a sidegame at the tourney, a 20 euro sit-and-go, giving him 80 euro profit to cover the buyin. And since we always partly split the profit he received 200 euros from the profit, so this sunday earned me 280 euros to add to my bankroll.

Results: + $360
Bankroll: $1280

Sunday's Live Tourney

Date: Tue, Jul 25, 2006 Internet

Sunday it was the second time me and Selfshine headed to a live tournament organized by T&I Poker. The same tourney we headed to earlier where I ended 7th.

We went inside after Selfshine paid our buyins thanks to saturday's winnings. First thing that became obvious is how popular poker has become in Holland lately. It was about 30 degrees Celcius outside and still 92 people had showed up for the tournament (for you Americans who wonder how many degrees Fahrenheit that is, it's hot). But atleast there was a good working airco.

Offcourse many of the conversations by the players inside were about the subject most poker players don't want to hear about, yet talk about anyways: bad beats. Then again, since most poker players, myself included, know more bad beat stories then comedians know good jokes, I mentioned a few aswell.

On the other hand, some subtlety is needed here aswell. When someone tells you that they lost a flopped quad 8's to a runner-runner straight flush, it's probably very rude to mention to them that it happened to you aswell after flopping quad 9's. It would show no respect.

Or when they flopped quad K's and lost to quad A's? Been there, done that...but it's rude to mention.

Then again, I still haven't played poker long enough to have lost a straight flush to a royal flush. Seen it happen, but still looking forward for it to happen to me. And if it happens on the bubble of a tournament, which means just outside of the price money, I got a bad beat story that will be hard to match. Since the law of probability makes it very unlikely that it won't happen to me if I just play enough hands, I can only hope that it won't be during the World Series of Poker in X years.

The tourney didn't go well for me, and that is only thanks to my own play. First I didn't mind paying quite a bit for my good draws, I also tried to steal many pots when just having middle pair or overcards. With the blinds going up at a nice slow pace, there's no need to be in a hurry at all.

So about two hours after the tourney started I had a stack of about 5000 chips left (I believe we started out with 10k chips) and I limped in with what I thought was 56 suited. On the flop I was against two players, the chip leader with over 20k chips, and someone else. I missed the flop other then a low pair, backdoor straight and flush draw. I bet about 1k chips hoping to take the pot right there, ready to give it up if I didn't.

Chipleader just called, other person folded, and the turn gave me an outside straight draw. I bet again since I was sure that the chipleader atleast had a weak ace, and if I hit I would double up here since my chipstack would not threaten him anymore.

After the turn showed up an 8, which also completed a possible flush of which I were sure that the chipleader wouldn't have it, I bet out again, and the chipleader put me all-in as expected. I called and he turned over a 23. A smaller straight then I thought I had. So I turned over my hand just to see a 4 and a 5 lying infront of me. I had two pair instead of the nut straight I thought I had.

Atleast I didn't go out because of a bad beat, but because of my own stupidity. Next time someone puts me all-in and I think I hold the nuts, I may actually bother to double-check my cards.

All the weight of giving this post a happy ending was resting on the shoulders of Selfshine, who was still in the tourney, and doing well. After the dinner break the cash game had changed into a sit-and-go tourney, which I'm not that familiar with, so I went over to watch him play.

He generally had a very large stack in front of him, only had the nasty habit of losing about half his stack everytime I went to get a drink.

He played great, but there was a time where he suffered some losses and became a relatively small stack at the table where his luck held up. The board came A23, someone bet, a shortstack called, and he went all-in. Both people called, the first one to bet turning over 22 for a set, and the shortstack 56 for a gutshot straight draw. With only 4 outs left, it seemed it was all over, but the river showed a 3 giving Selfshine the bigger fullhouse.

After that his stack only kept growing fast, and he used it well to intimidate the players with less chips (which were all other players at his table after a while).

He reached the final table, and as opposed to last time I were there, the blinds weren't that high yet, so there was plenty of time left to play serious poker. He was slightly in lead with chips compared to the other big stacks, but chose to get involved with many of the smaller stacks succesfully, leading to him getting a huge chiplead over the rest of the table.

After the other players lost their stack, it became a heads-up between him and another player who had a slight chip disadvantage. The other player suggested if Selfshine wanted to make a deal, meaning splitting 50/50. But after getting this far, being the chipleader, and the second prize still being being 950 euros, he only had to think a nano-second before making the logical choice and declining the offer. I would have done the same in this situation.

The other player was very good at playing heads-up. He won most the pots where none of them had good cards, but there was a hand where it almost went wrong for him. He made his standard raise from the small blind, got reraised, and then went all-in. He got called by Selfshine's AK while holding 86s, only to win by a hitting a straight or something.

The final hand was an all-in preflop from both where Selfshine held AQ against AK. Only because this would probably be the deciding hand, the dealer was kind enough to put a queen on the flop but completing a straight for AK aswell.

The final hand


This actually was a profitable day for me aswell. Since me and Selfshine decided we'd partly split the profits from these tourneys (I gave him 100 euros when I won 245 last time) I received 300 euros (which is about 377 dollars).

Results: + $377
Bankroll: $920

Saturday Night Poker

Date: Tue, Jul 25, 2006 Internet

Saturday I headed over to a friend to play the finals together of the 1 million dollar freeroll he qualified for earlier. It's the same friend who went along with me to the last T&I-Poker live tourney from the earlier post and the same friend who actually got me into trying out poker. I'll just refer to him from now on forth using one of his nicks, Selfshine, first to keep it simple, and second because even while I trust the employees of the national tax department are fish when it comes to their googling skills, there's no need to provide them with a first name.

Playing together worked very well. Generally we discussed in each situation what the best move would be, and eventually settled with a choice both of us could agree on.

The first few hours went well, but when there were about 2k players left it went downwards though, we didn't manage to win many pots and kept running into situations where we had the second best hand. Eventually it ended when we got QQ and decided to make a move to double up, only we ran into KK to end the tourney in about 1200th place.

A few six-packs of beer and some liquor since the start of the evening it was still pretty early (well, 1am or so) and we decided to join a 5 dollar turbo rebuy-tourney (Translation into something slightly resembling English: A tourney in which people can rebuy a new starting stack after losing their whole stack up till the first break. And for the really big fishes, that means they can re-buy like 10 times if they want, which increases the prize pot pretty fast. Turbo just means that the blinds increase so fast that if you wait until you actually get great cards your stack will be gone).

The tourney went smooth, we started out playing tight, kept a good stack and the other tight players didn't seem too willing to put their chips in against us. So we just played more aggressively and managed to rake in many pots.

Eventually we got to the final table with a big stack compared to most players there, and proceeded to take more then our fair share from the pots, while the low stacks got smaller from the blinds. Selfshine then announced that if we'd end in first spot he'd pay my buyin for the live tournament we were heading to the next day.

When we were only against one other player that almost failed, since even while we had a bigger stack, having him doubling up would give us lots of trouble to play back at him. And that's when we reraised him all-in when holding AJs against his AK.

But what's poker without a bit of luck? The board ended showing two pairs, 7s and 4s, giving both of us two pair with ace kicker, splitting the pot.

A few hands later, with our opponent probably on tilt, we managed to take his stack as our own and finished first in the tourney, winning 750 dollars.

Very nice profit for Selfshine, and my buyin for sunday's tourney would be free for me. Not bad at all for one night of playing cards.

Continueing the grind, but what is the goal?

Date: Thu, Jul 13, 2006 Internet

I was talking to a friend yesterday who has read my blog and pointed out to me that it's not clear what my main focus and goals for the short term are.

The long term goals are probably pretty obvious. After turning the 25 dollars into 10k I'll continue till I'm a millionaire, get a big house with a nice white fence, buy a private island and then spend most of my days watching Blackadder re-runs from my jacuzzi.

Other then that, my short term goals are perhaps less obvious. Right now the end goal of playing at this limit is to work my balance on pokerstars up till I have over 600 dollars there. Which means I'll have a bankroll of 300 big bets ready for the 1/2 dollar games. But it's not my focus to get there as fast as I can.

I think I could earn more if I played 'fit and fold' poker. Which is a playstyle many good tight-aggressive players use in the lower limits. It simply means you won't get involved in pots where you missed the flop, but play those where you think you have the best hand with the proper aggression. Those players make good money since there are so many bad players at the lower limits and they take little risk, but they are very easy to read.
I regard that playstyle in much the same way as acrophobics regard skydiving: technically feasible, but strictly for other people.

My focus is to get better at identifying what the right situations are to take down pots without having a good hand, extract as much money out of people as possible when I am quite sure I have the better hand, and to get out of more pots where I have a good hand but someone has a better one. To do that, I need to become much better at reading opponents, pay more attention to what they do in certain situations.

What does the player two seats to my right do when he gets reraised on the flop while he just holds two overcards or middle pair? And when he has top pair with a decent kicker, does he play it different then when he's on a draw? Can he release a hand like top pair when an overcard comes and he suddenly gets reraised?

Here's an example from today to show what I mean:

Poker Stars
Limit Holdem Ring game
Limit: $0.50/$1
10 players
Converter

Pre-flop: (10 players) Soultwister is CO with
4 folds, MP2 calls, MP3 folds, Soultwister calls, Button folds, SB calls, BB checks.

Flop: (4SB, 4 players)
SB checks, BB checks, MP2 checks, Soultwister bets, SB raises, BB folds, MP2 calls, Soultwister calls.

Turn: (5BB, 3 players)
SB bets, MP2 folds, Soultwister calls.

River: (7BB, 2 players)
SB bets, Soultwister calls.

Results:
Final pot: 9BB
Soultwister showed Js Kc
SB showed 7s 9s


The player in the small blind here is a slightly loose aggressive but tricky player. But he plays his big hands slow, his weak hands strong. Against most other players at this table, I would definitely have folded to this flop checkraise while having middle pair and a weak straightdraw. But I was pretty sure that if this player had an ace, two pair or a straight he would have waited for the turn to checkraise, even while the board looked so scary.

I could have done two things here. Reraise to find out if my read is correct, which would probably lead to him folding, or play in such a way I get the most money out of it. So trusting my read, I decided to just call him down giving him more chances to bluff into me, making him put two more dollars into the pot. Further, other people on the table observing this hand may take note of my 'bad' calls and that could lead to them paying me off better on my good hands.

The reason for working on this is that my edge against my opponents will get smaller as I go up in limits, and I'm thinking of switching to shorthanded tables in a while (no tables with 10 players where you can wait for hands, but tables where there are 4-6 players maximum forcing you to get involved in many more hands). Shorthanded the win rates are higher, but so are the losses and the variance, so I'll need every edge I can get then. Just playing the cards would be a losing strategy there.