January has been good to me...

January has been quite nice. I'm up over $1k... don't know the exact amount, but it's probably around $1.2k. Got my roll up to the point where I was happy taking a shot at 100NL/PLO - and considering I have a bonus to clear, better sooner than later - and I've kept running well at that level.

I've played about 4.5k hands of NL and 2k hands of PLO so far, but I've shifted more to PLO lately. Since I started playing PLO I've definitely felt it's the more interesting game, and now I'm feeling comfortable that I "understand" PLO finally. I can't really say if I'm a better PLO player than NL, but PLO players are so much worse that I feel it's probably my most profitable game right now.

For anybody following, I'll be updating more often with interesting hands and such, probably exclusively PLO. I've been whoring out the virtues of PLO on the Cardplayer forums, and maybe this will help to get people interested! Here'a a taste:

Unfortunately I'm going to start out with a hand where I get stacked. My read on Villain was that he was a solid player, running 25/18 over a 540 hand sample size. He was much more aggressive in late position with an ATS of 46 so I assumed he was raising wide here.

I think the flop is a very marginal and interesting decision, and exemplifies why some (most?) of the time it is better to have top pair+kickers than an over pair. (Bare AA** would be a fold, IMO). I need 36.3% equity to get the money in, so what do we think about his range?

1. Against a bad player, 22** and 44** may be in his range, but I felt that if he was for some reason loose enough to open those hands (I didn't think he was) he would never call a 3bet with them OOP. I discounted these from his range.

2. Two pair. For the reasons stated in 1, I didn't figure he'd have Q4 or Q2. I felt the only way this was possible was if he had a very low rundown type like a 2345, 2346 or 2456. Still, against these hands I'm about 39-40%, more than enough.

3. Straight draw or pair+straight draw. Definitely in his range. He could definitely raise a low rundown and I figure he'd call with it too, and want to get many in on this flop. This would include hands like 3456, 3457, 2356, 3567, 4567 and 4568. (If those last two hands look wrong to you, keep in mind that on this board they are a combined is 45.6% against AA** on this board). Against that range, I'm 50/50.

4. Similar hands to mine. Mid-high connecting cards with a Q in them should like this board. He could easily be check-raising a hand like QJT9 here thinking that I might fold AA** (which I would), and that if I didn't it wouldn't be the end of the world (QJT9 specifically is 35% against AA** on this board). I crush these types of hands, roughly a 3:1 favourite.

5. QQ. Obviously the death hand, and the reason this isn't an insta-shove; I'm 10% against QQ**. I believe that good players would fold all but the best QQ** hands to a 3bet OOP (and mostly IP as well), but a lot of players with seemingly reasonable stats would do something spewy like flat AQQ7 pre-flop, so I do think a lot of QQ is in his range. However, I have a queen, so there are only two left, so I think this makes up only a small part of his range.

Against this range I think I'm well ahead of the equity I need, so I shoved. He actually had a much raggier hand than I expected, but I still had 46%. I couldn't draw out and he won... this time.

Full Tilt Poker $0.50/$1 Pot Limit Omaha Hi - 6 players - View hand 7433

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter



BTN: $131.30

SB: $193.25

BB: $185.25

UTG: $353.30

MP: $101.50

Hero (CO): $100.00



Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is CO with A T Q K

1 fold, MP raises to $3.50, Hero raises to $12, 3 folds, MP calls $8.50



Flop: ($25.50) 2 4 Q (2 players)

MP checks, Hero bets $15.90, MP raises to $73.20, Hero requests TIME, Hero raises to $88 all in, MP calls $14.80



Turn: ($201.50) 8 (2 players - 1 is all in)



River: ($201.50) 7 (2 players - 1 is all in)



Final Pot: $201.50
Seat 3: TheSlinger showed [4s Qd Kd Ks] and won ($238.30) with a straight, Ace high
Seat 4: Wallaceman (button) showed [Th 2h 8s 7c] and lost with two pair, Tens and Eights

MP shows 2 3 J 4 (two pair, Fours and Twos)

Hero shows A T Q K (a pair of Queens)

MP wins $198.50

(Rake: $3.00)

Update/Year in Review/2009 Outlook

Didn't post all of December, a lot to get to.

December wasn't much of an improvement over November. I think I was about break even. Stopped shortstacking. With only 20 BBs, it's very hard to beat the blinds... you're just not going to win enough big pots. Grinding out 10k hands/week breaking even to collect the rakeback cheque isn't something I'm interested in.

Got the HEM trial just to see how bad I've been running over the last couple of months. Combined between NL and PLO, I'm well over 5.5k below equity in the last couple of months. It's rough, completely destroyed my game. It's really sad that after what I've been through pokerwise since September, I've come out of it breakeven and a worse player... Dropped all the way down to 50NL.

The good news is that I'm starting to pinpoint a lot of the places I'm going wrong.

First of all, I'm realizing just how much work I have to put in to my PLO game. I've done a lot of equity simulations and such, and definitely picked out a lot of my leaks. Also have to work on playing more pots in position and avoiding playing out of position... my position stats are far too 'flat'.

Tons of stuff to work on in NL. Like PLO, my position stats are too flat. My red line in both games has just completely gone to hell, and there are some sub-categories on things I have to work on about that that I'll talk about below. Also, I really have to stop randomly spazzing out.

Goals:

2009:
1. Finish the year at least a 400NL/400PLO reg
2. First, I think I need to stop sucking at PLO
3. $15k
4. Fix tilt/focus issues
5. Become an awesome bonus *****

January:
1. Deposit and clear CD Poker bonus
2. Grind out a free month of CR
3. Are those two combined going to be a lot of hands?
4. Don't play more than 4 tables at a time, preferably less
5. No watching TV and stuff while playing
6. Work on the red line
7. $1k
8. Watch these PLO vids saved on my computer

Certainly doable IMO. I went from $44 on March 10th to $8k and taking 400NL shots in October. Had to run superhot to do it, but I have a lot of other advantages that I didn't have. First, I'll be starting with like $1500 and not $44. I'll have 12 months instead of 8 months. I'll have rakeback all year instead of just for the last 2.5 months. I've fixed problems I had depositing and now I'll be able to bonus whore all over the place... going to start with $200 bonuses on CD Poker and Titan, after that I'll evaluate my BR and probably go after the bigger ones on places like UB and FTP. Playing cash instead of SnGs and MTTs is hopefully going to be more profitable.

I'll also be a much better player. I have a ton of resources I didn't have to start out with... forums are a big help (although TBH they might be a hindrance to now). I'm obviously a CR member now, and that's very very +EV. I know how to think about NL right now. My game has a lot of holes in both NL and PLO, but at least now I have the means to fix them.

Will need to work on the 'other' side of the game. I certainly have some issues to work on. I do believe in aggressive BR management for the most part, but I took it too far. When I was playing 400NL with an $8k BR (which is fine) I would often be sitting 250BB deep against regs (which is not fine). I'm a complete tiltmonkey and I need to fix that, although I'm not sure how.

The biggest mental issue I need to work on is focus. I'll often be watching TV or surfing the internet or be distracted in some way while I'm playing, and that has to stop. (Music probably doesn't help, but I can't imagine playing without it). I also think that rakeback has hurt me a lot. In my upswing my MT ratio was about 2.5, then I got rakeback. (Seriously, getting rakeback is just about the point right between my upswing and downswing). Then, my MT ratio was about 4.5. I feel pressured to play more tables than I should, and I just tell myself that rakeback and volume will make up for the EV I'm giving up. It doesn't. I'm 18, have a high IQ and have played video games all my life, but mass-tabling isn't for me for whatever reason. It also completely fucks up my non-showdown winnings.

So, here's to 2009 being a much better year than 2008.

<-- Ratholer

Nitted up. Didn't help a whole lot, lost a couple of buy-ins.

Really, I've lost all confidence in my game right now, and for good reason. It's 100% true that I've run awfully in this downswing. Nobody would deny that if they saw it. However, even if I ran average, I don't know if I would be a break-even player, if that. Looking at some of the big hands I lost... well, there's a whole lot of "WTF were you thinking you fucking donk" moments.

There's just something about the online game that completely destroys my focus. I can't explain it. I get distracted very very easily... plus the lack of real time to make a decision makes things much much harder for me.

With the way I'm playing right now, the frame of mind I'm in and the distractions I have (ex. exam time) I have no confidence in my ability to be a winning online NL 6-max player. I no longer have the bankroll to feel comfortable playing PLO or HUNL. (I will always feel I have an edge in these games if I can afford it).

The solution is my latest experiment, shortstacking. In the last two days, after working out some rough math, I've played roughly 4750 hands mass-tabling, mostly 100NL. I broke even over that stretch despite continuing to run brutally (more on that below), but because I'm putting in way more volume than I ever have before, I've made $100 in rakeback over that time. Even if I run at 1 PtBB/100 and play only 10K hands a week at 100NL... with rakeback that's still ~$450 a week. I'll take it.

Even when I get my BR back to where I'm comfortable I may continue shortstacking just because it's so gosh darn fun. I always assumed that SSing would be a dull, boring style of poker, and maybe it will be eventually. However, right now playing flippaments on a dozen tables is pretty awesome.

Here's how I ran today.
In 1355 hands, I played 27 hands that finished +/- $18 or more. I won 12 and lost 15.
The 12 hands I won, I averaged +$25.7 (I played some 200NL). In these hands I was the dominant favourite 7 times, was flipping 3 times, was dominated 0 times, one was a 60/40 and 1 was a 3-bet bluff on the flop w/ an OESD against a maniac.

In the 15 hands I lost, I averaged - $36.46. In these hands I was a dominant favourite 3 times, was flipping 5 times, was dominated 4 times, was 60/40 favourite 1 time, 1 was where I bluffed off some money PoF after I had gotten deeper than normal, and 1 where I had to 3bet/fold (again, a lil deeper than normal).

I made a couple of mistakes that I can't afford to make when my strat is so marginally profitable anyways, but I feel pretty happy about how I'm playing my shortstack. (And how other people play shortstacks! Good lord!). We'll see how it goes.

Oh yeah, and I found myself playing some HULHE today, but got out losing only $35.

Good news: I got Chinese Democracy, the new GnR album, and I had pretty low expectations but it's fucking awesome. Listened to it 4 times since Friday. Put it right up there w/ Appetite for Destruction IMO.

It's time to nit up. I swear.

Bankroll's getting to the point where I'm not really comfortable testing the variance of my preferred games, 6-max PLO and HU NLH, so I've dipped back into 6-max 100NL. Kinda been running in place.

Besides running really bad, which is 100% true, I think my problem is that I've tried too hard to loosen up in both NL and PLO, pre-flop and post-flop (especially w/ my c-bets). When I was crushing 50NL, 100NL, 100PLO and at the beginning 200PLO it was with a tight, solid style.

Really, it took a lot to just say "hey... I'm still a beginner". A year ago I was playing play money SnGs. 7 months ago I was playing $1 SnGs. It took until late May or early June before I started playing cash - where I started out as a loser in FR 25NL. It's kinda mind-boggling to think about, but I've probably only played about 60k hands of 6-max cash.

So, time to go back to my old nitty 18/16 self until I get more experienced and more comfortable with this stuff.

I've been busy hating life

Yeah... In the midst of a $3k+ downswing... from my high point of like $8.2k I'm down a full $5.5k. Sweeeeeet.

I feel like I've been running absolutely terribly... definitely a few bad beats, ran kings into aces a couple of times, losing PrF flips like its nobody business... but apart from one massive, massive KK I'd rather not discuss further, it's mostly been a slow bleeding. You know the kind... never winning a pot, your monsters don't get action, your marginal hands get 3-bet, your c-bets keep getting raised, valuetowning yourself, etc. etc... maybe I've just been playing bad and spewing money, but I feel like I'm usually pretty aware about if I'm playing bad, and I think I've been playing fine.

Obviously I've had to move down and datamine the crap out of 100NL and 100PLO. I'm going to concentrate on PLO for a bunch of reasons:

1) Even though I've run terribly in PLO as well (something like $2k below expectation), I feel much more alienated towards HE than PLO.

2) PLO should be more profitable than HE.

3) 100PLO was where I first started boomswitching and shot up from like $2k to $5k in a couple of weeks. Good memories/good karma.

Currently playing my first PLO session of 'The Rebuilding' and it's going well, up about 2.5 buyins so far. Experiencing that good ol' awesome PLO variance, as I've been flipping pretty bad, but I did pull a massive suckout on a guy where he must've been something like 85% on the flop. (Don't want to run the #s or post the hand, because it was really spewy). Reminiscent of my first 100PLO run where I was something like $1k above expectation in my first 3kish hands I think.

Good luck me!

Busy couple of days

After that whole clusterfuck of posted below, I set myself strict, strict guidelines to follow:

1. No playing higher than .5/1
2. No fixed limit poker.
3. No playing drunk
4. No sessions longer than 5 hours
5. No playing poker past 1 am on most days; midnight on days before an 830 or 930 class
6. Stop-loss of 3 buyins

The bolded ones were broken within 24 hours, as I played a very drunken 400NL session that netted -$900. Even then, I STILL managed to run bad. So, I figured that with me ~$3500 bankroll it was a good time to seek out a HU opponent at 5/10. So I met Past. I took him for over $1600, including the hand below, and somehow finished my drunken session significantly up. Whoops.


Click here to view a larger version.
Interesting note: After this hand, he tried to get me on another table. I told him half my $5k BR was on the table ("that's plenty enough for another table"[!!]), I was a small-stakes player and I was wasted. He didn't really let up and told me I was hitting and running him. (I left about 5-10 mins after this hand).

Sooo I decided yesterday the time was ripe to enter the $216 FTOPS #1. I thought I played as well as I have in a long, long time, chipped up to ~$7k from the starting #5k, I was sitting well in the top 3rd of the field until I ran my 97s into KQ on a Q97 board, and... you can guess the rest. Self-excluded myself for the night after that hand, it would've vaulted me well into the top 100 (out of about 4k left).

Started watching Sixpeppers' new deepstacked video series in CR, and it inspired me to play some 1/2 deep today, after I swore I wouldn't play higher than .5/1. I decided to only play 2 tables, because I start to get in trouble when I play much more than that... this way I was really able to develop reads very quickly, who to c-bet, who I can abuse with 3-bets, etc. I think my good player really continued and I finished up about 2.5 buyins, so my bankroll sits at $5665 with a $376 rakeback deposit coming probably tomorrow.

Things are looking up.

Edit: I noticed a couple of typos at first, and planned to edit them out, but there were so many in the whole thing that it just made me tired to think about fixing them all.

More Awesome Bankroll Management

Iiiiiiiiiick.

After grinding out a decent frofit in HUNL and PLO the last couple of days to re-build up to $5900, I went on another sick PLO downswing. Semi-drunk, tilted and wanting to chase money, I opened 8 400PLO tables, at least a couple of them deepstacked. At one point my entire bankroll was on the tables (it stopped auto-topping up, which was what brought me to my senses). It could have been a lot worse than it was:



Bankroll stands at $4404 and it's official drop-down time.