I’ve good news and bad news. Good news is that I made a real effort to be less of a lagtard and managed to get my W$SD to where LeakBuster thinks it should be!
Bad news is that it cost my the last half of my bankroll and I had to redeposit. What’s even more stupid is that it was still my showdown hands that cost me most of the money!
It seems to me I’m minimising my wins while maximising my losses. Playing the TAG style seems to be exacerbating that too, probably because my non-showdown hands are no longer contributing to my winrate.
Back to LAG? I don’t know, and TBH right now I don’t care. I was having an extremely stable session this morning, and had carved out 2 buy-ins in small-moderate pots, and then got kicked back to square one against a set magnet.
Small wins, big losses – I’m pretty sure this is the key though, I need to flip this around somehow. 7k hands on Carbon now at -18bb/100. Still within the realms of variance though I suppose.
Update:
It was raining today, so played quite a lot of poker. It was frustrating, very swingy stuff, but after a while it seemed to look like it was forming a general upwards line. Roughly it was climbing at 10bb/100, so that’s good.
However it didn’t end well;

Villain on that last hand is a 27/12 who frequently shoves the river, although I’m not sure whether it’s a bluff or not – by the frequency alone I’m assuming it can’t be fat value very often. Somehow he’s built up this massive 500bb stack, and I wasn’t far behind with 300bb (at least 100bb of that was his). I was wondering if we’d end up in a pot where he did his shove the river trick and not realise the consequences of being so deep;
$0.02/$0.04 No Limit Holdem
Merge
5 Players
Stacks:
UTG ($9.78)
CO ($3.98)
Meteoric (BTN) ($11.49)
SB ($3.91)
BB ($21.58)
Pre-Flop: ($0.06, 5 players) Meteoric is BTN 8
8
1 fold, CO raises to $0.14, Meteoric raises to $0.48, 1 fold, BB calls $0.44, CO folds
Flop: 4
Q
6
($1.12, 2 players)
BB checks, Meteoric bets $0.84, BB calls $0.84
Turn: 3
($2.80, 2 players)
BB checks, Meteoric checks
River: 8
($2.80, 2 players)
BB checks, Meteoric bets $2.10, BB raises to $6, Meteoric goes all-in $8.07, BB calls $4.17
Final Pot: $23.14
BB shows
J
Q
Meteoric shows
8
8
BB wins $21.99 (net +$10.46)
CO lost $0.14
Meteoric lost $9.39
So it was me that got stung. I’m not sure what I expected, AA,KK or AQ maybe (he never 3bets either – ever! Not preflop or postflop – got caught out by a flatted AK a little earlier before noticing that).
Sorry to hear you’re thinking of giving up
It seems to me that you are very knowledgeable, and have many of the attributes necessary to be a winning player. From the hand histories that you kindly sent over I can’t really understand how things have gone so poorly for you. There were a few mistakes I’m sure, but isn’t that the point? The winners just make fewer than the losers…
If you choose the coaching option, I would def be interested in hearing how it went because it’s something I’ve been thinking of doing myself because I’ve been break even for 200k hands or more now. If you do choose to give up, then best of luck with the future and it was nice talking poker with you!
Simon
I think if I was less knowledgeable I’d carry on
The thing that causes me pause are the variance graphs where a 5bb/100 winner can be anywhere from a massive $$$ winner to a huge loser, and the rake.
I’ve calculated my rates of rake for the stakes with the most hands – nl5 rush was -13bb/100 (36k hands – $246), 6max cash was -15bb/100 (30k hands – $229), nl2 was -14bb/100 (30k hands, $80).
So according to that I’m actually a 10bb/100 winner, but I’m paying all my winnings to the poker sites. We argue that poker is a game of skill, but the house is still winning.
According to HEM I paid $942 in 93k hands at $25FR for -4bb/100. According to PT3 at $10FR I paid $1462 in 188k hands for -8bb/100. This doesn’t seem right to me, the HEM number looks way too low but the PT3 figure looks more reasonable given my ‘style’. How easy would poker be if rake didn’t exist?! It would be lovely if someone could create a simple poker client that offered rake free games. Oops, looks like some players are attempting just that: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28/internet-poker/rake-free-open-poker-room-run-poker-community-938389/
One of the reasons I picked full ring is because of the lower long term variance, my standard deviation is around 35BB/100 whereas I believe 6-max to typically be over 60BB/100. I’m not encouraging you to change games, but you’re right variance could certainly be a factor over that sort of sample size.
[ ] op is braziliand
I might have a go on BetRaiser. Two reasons it might prolong the time before redepositing – a) no rake, b) no players…
yeah, I’ve seen these non-corporate poker ideas. For a while I was quite taken by the p2p style where you don’t have a central server – all quite possible.
However it all falls apart once you think about it enough. The first reason is the money – bitcoin is crap (and from the recent devaluation it’s unreliable too), and the second is traffic. Without a company putting the effort into marketing (because they expect a ROI on that & make loads), then traffic will never grow. No matter how much the true believers evangalise about it.
I did see that one of the payment processors had come up with a possible solution for the money thing – they’re looking at being a micro-escrow service that can cater for betting. Still too early to say if it would work for poker though.
I just read that Party poker are removing all multi table tourney rake for a limited time… Might have to dust off my old account
ah, cool! Not exactly rake free cash games though, but still good to try
Apologies for the endless commenting… Now that I don’t have Rush I’ve obv been shopping around for alternatives. The Stars micro full ring games seem soft but I’m wondering if there’s better games out there that include rake back.
The Betraiser system looks amazing, I’m pretty shocked that they’ve not got higher traffic. Have you given them a go yet? Rake free plus 7% yearly interest on deposits?! It really does seem too good to be true tbh.
You and everyone else
iPoker seems the best to me at the moment in terms of rb and traffic, although I’ve not deposited anything yet.
Betraiser would be awesome, but the traffic is non-existent. I’ve had an account for a while but just not played there since there’s never enough going on. The other day I checked in and there was one nl10 table and that was it! Tournies get a bit more traffic, but only just. Real shame…
wait, 7% interest on deposits? Wow, that’s better than most saving schemes (since our base interest rate is so low). That’s dangerous – I could be sticking all my savings on there and then one night decide to go for a gamble…
haha yeah, dangerous indeed
You’re right it’s a real shame, with decent traffic it would be like printing money. I think I’ll create an account for the tournaments and to keep an eye on the site’s progress.
Thanks for the info about iPoker, I’ll have a look there next.
tl;dr
Sup Meteroic, good to your blog still going strong. Shame you’re on such a bad run
Anyways just thought I’d drop by. hit me up at my usual email if you wanna chat.
hi yegor! poker still playing you?