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More Variance Please

Thursday, August 5th, 2010

This was an exciting thread on 2p2. PrimordialAA bet Skates that he could play 2000 super turbo HUSNGs at high stakes ($350, $500 and $1000) and come away with a ROI of over 3%.

The thread was initially filled with the bewilderment of the uninitiated who couldn’t understand why such a small % was so hard, and even after having the error of their ways pointed out, PrimordialAA went on a massive heater making 3% look like a ridiculous number. In the first 500 games he won $60,000. Then the true face of super turbos finally kicked in, and he remained break-even for the rest of the games, which actually gave a nail-bitingly close finish, finishing just over 3%.

I managed to rail him on the last handful of games, and it looked fun. So I started playing some myself (at $5 of course lol), and it was as fun as it looked. It was enjoyable because it was over in minutes and you already knew it was going to be high variance.

These two things make it so much easier to see the bigger picture. When I’m doing my regular HUSNGs I get pissed off at each game I lose (esp the suckouts obv), and a row of losses can stop me playing for the rest of the day. With these super turbos you just play game after game and you see your results after an hour’s play – much more like a regular cash session. So I guess playing $5 super turbos is like playing 2/5 cash with really really slow hands (lol, kinda).

Ok, fast forward to two weeks time and see me berating how crap super turbos are…

Update: also found a new blog to follow; Chipstar1. This was the guy who had that crazy million hands at NL2 showing a perfect climb. He’s now part of Pokerstars team online, representing the nanostakes players (despite having moved up to NL100). Seems a good guy & worth a read…

Posted in HUSNG, Heads Up NLHE, Prop Bets, TwoPlusTwo | Comments Off

Reboot

Saturday, July 17th, 2010

I’ve decided on yet another change on direction. HU was a lot of fun, especially when I hit the $1k BR mark, but having fallen back down to a few hundred $$$ it’d become hard to tell what was luck and what was me

Despite the rise and fall, there is a silver lining that I’ve learnt a lot of poker during the process. HU makes you really concentrate on the personality of your opponent. You’re constantly watching his lines looking for repeated habits and weaknesses. Then you’re thinking about how exploit those habits – how to change your range & how to change your betsizing.

Then the other way HU has improved my game is that you have to single table (multitabling HU is just one big headfuck). A lot less autopiloting, a lot more going over earlier streets & hands before taking your action.

So with that experience under my belt I’ve decided to return to 6max, and with a strategy that will sound incredibly unprofitable to many;

First, I’m actually going to aim at a low bb/100. Previously I embraced the No Limit element of NLHE a bit too much – playing for stacks was the only way to play. I think I was over-doing it way too much. I would build a big stack through redline play and lose it all + more with top pair medium kicker all-in donk plays. End result – losing player.
So by aiming for a low bb/100 what I mean is to play a lot more conservatively, being very very cautious about building big pots (esp all-ins), and build a stack 5bb at a time. Small ball I guess.

Secondly, I’m going to single table! I learnt nothing during the periods I multitabled 6max, I just autopiloted very basic moves (pfr, cbet) with very little consideration for my opponent’s character, and some days I did ok, most days I didn’t.

So single tabling & small ball sounds like it’s going to be a really low $/hour, but I don’t care – now it’s going to be all about the poker rather than the $$$. They’re not the same things, even though we keep score by the money we win.

———————-

A little extra; remember my post earlier where I said I was backing Newff a tiny % of his buy-in for the Calgary Open? He still needs more backers – the event usually has < 100 entries, with ITM being 18k (slightly over 3xbuy-in) & 1st place $100k. He has to beat 3 people to be ITM, and he’s a solid player at the $100 husngs.

So if any of you have a few $$$ to spare (my share was just $60), here’s the link again; http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/163/staking-selling-shares/2010-candian-poker-open-5k-heads-up-main-event-shares-823965/

Posted in Good Days, No Limit Hold'em, TwoPlusTwo | 5 Comments »

Poker on the Mind

Sunday, July 4th, 2010

Yesterday I played tennis against this guy who’s clueless about where he should stand on the court. After every serve he’ll charge at the net (obv trying for a serve & volley), but he did it regardless of how the serve went. A simple lob return then puts it in the vast space he’s left behind him. Or a drop shot return to the other side of the court makes him continue his charge all the way round in front of his partner, again leaving half the court unprotected.

While all this was going on I couldn’t help thinking about everything in a poker context. He was an overaggressive player who was mashing his pot button regardless of pot texture or my range. He didn’t adapt no matter how many times I exploited the same move, and towards the end of the game he was double faulting his serves out of tilt.

Kinda stupid, and probably a sign I’m thinking about poker too much. There was a thread on 2p2 about this with the best story about a guy who went to the optician and read an eye chart saying King, Queen, whenever there was a K or Q.

I’m thinking about moving to Cardiff, and a big factor in that decision was that there are three casinos for playing poker there (well, 2 and a poker room). It wasn’t the biggest reason (mainly I want to get back into rock climbing, plus take up something new like kitesurfing or sailing – Cambridge is too flat and nowhere near the sea), but it was definitely a factor. However online poker is going badly for me at the moment, and I’m starting to think that being able to play live is going to be a really bad thing for me – supposedly live play is easier, but at the same time the BR required is way bigger than what I’m used to. No big deal playing a game which is $0.10/$0.25, but the minimum for live games seems to be £1/£1 or £1/£2 – even if I shortstack with a £20 buyin, that’s more or less twice what I’m used do (and I don’t really want to shortstack). Tourney’s seem to be £16+£4, which perhaps isn’t so bad if I just play once a week maybe. Perhaps I’ll get lucky early on and win a decent starting live BR.

Anyway, if anyone’s played poker in Cardiff, let me know what it’s like…

Update: After Funkeefeesh’s advice of getting some volume in I’ve been plugging away today at the $10 husngs (more games played today than the whole of last month!). Not gaining much though;

The last guy I played kept doing this;

No Limit Holdem Tournament
2 Players

$10.00+$0.50

Stacks:
Hero (1,420)
BB (1,580)

Blinds: 10/20

Pre-Flop: (30, 2 players) Hero is SB 5 4
Hero raises to 60, BB raises to 900, Hero folds

Final Pot: 960

BB wins 960 (net +60)

Hero lost 60

How does that ever make sense?

Posted in TwoPlusTwo | 3 Comments »

Giving Up Gambling

Friday, May 14th, 2010

My downswing continued painfully, moving past the -$300 point. That’s a third of my bankroll in just under two weeks, so it was starting to look desperate.

I know what my problem is, and have really known it all along TBH. I run good, get confident, and then start to embrace the fun side of poker – the gambling!

So I chase draws, make big cock swinging hero calls, thin value bets when I have no value, and generally discard the fold button. All with the obvious consequences.

At the weekend I buckled down and started to squash these urges, and I managed to stall the downswing. It’s not turned round, but the latter half of this month has been breakeven which is better than before.

I’ve been reading 2p2 intensely, going over my HH, having other people go over my HHs, talking strat on AIM, and generally becoming an obsessive poker bore. It’s feeling good too.

After a long discussion last night with Yegor (ok, most of it was laughing about roseeker’s downfall) I decided to drop right down to $10 games and set a strong volume goal. I’ve currently 240 games at $10 with a ROI of 13%. I’m going to play another 260 to bring it to 500 games and see if I can nail my game down to a cold impassionate cyborg crushing of these $10 morons. No more hero calls

So far so good, although I’d forgotten how bizarre $10 games can be. For $20 and $30 games the players have become far more rational about their lines, and betsizing is at least in relation to the pot size. $10s it’s still kinda crazy. For example I had 72o in a limped pot. The flop had been checked back so it was a $40 pot on a TJQK board. Villain fires out a bet of $200. Somewhat obvious what to do.

I’m still squishing some gambool tendencies though – same villain 3bet me pre while I had KJo. Against him I felt a call would be ok, but something in me said that he was just going to jam the flop with his A rags if I did. So I 4bet, which KJo isn’t really good enough for, and he shoved. So I thought ‘whatever’ and called to see that he did indeed have A6o. Here was the difficulty of $10 – he had no idea that a 4bet looks really strong and he was supposed to fold A6o. But that’s what we all say in these positions – ‘how could he shove with that!’. Ultimately these are mistakes which make us money. Anyway, neither of us improved, I went down to $900 and then had to fight another 10 minutes in order to finally win.

Posted in Analysis, Bankroll Management, PokerStars, TwoPlusTwo | 6 Comments »

Software Bug on Cake

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

Worrying news about the Cake network! It awarded the pot to the wrong player!

Cake Poker $4.00 No Limit Hold’em – 6 players

Hero (UTG): $6.78
MP: $2.35
CO: $1.13
BTN: $2.71
SB: $1.81
BB: $3.94

Pre Flop: ($0.06) Hero is UTG with 2 T
2 folds, MP calls $0.04, BTN calls $0.04, 1 fold, BB raises to $0.28, MP calls $0.24, BTN raises to $2.71, BB raises to $3.92, 1 fold

Flop: ($5.72) 4 4 8

Turn: ($5.72) 6

River: ($5.72) 9

Final Pot: $5.72
BTN shows A Q
BB shows K K
BB wins $5.36 !!!
(Rake: $0.36)

Obviously not a common thing, but you’d expect this to never happen! Full 2p2 thread here. Hopefully it’s a hoax, but there’s no sign of that from the thread…

Posted in Hands, TwoPlusTwo | 4 Comments »

StoxPoker Rumble

Friday, January 29th, 2010

I’m a few days behind on this, but there’s an interesting thread in 2p2 going on (amongst others) – One of the coaches Jason Ho has been accused of scamming his clients, plus even worse, has been accused of being a losing player! He’s now been kicked out of the Stox stables…

A lot of threads have been removed from 2p2, but you can still get them through google cache. Accusations include that Ho has filed for bankruptcy in the UK, has run off to asia, never won the $1m he claimed he had etc.

fills a nice gap now that Isildur1 isn’t playing much…

Edit: I forgot to say – the funniest part of that thread above is when Jason decides to prove his innocence through a prop bet. Total degen

It gets funnier – see the man himself

Jason Ho

Posted in Poker Gossip, TwoPlusTwo | 3 Comments »

++ Full Tilt Introduces New Buy-in Limits, Plus Rush Poker ++

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

Newsbreak – FTPDoug has just announced the new Full Tilt changes here.

They’ve increased the minimum buy-in to 35bb, which I guess is enough to mess up the short stack strategy. They also introduced ‘shallow’ low buy-in games where the maximum buy-in is 40bb. No use to shortstackers at all, but will please the poorer newbie player who doesn’t want to risk a big stack or play capped.

The other big news was the introduction of Rush Poker. Basically when you fold you’re instantly taken to a new table which has a hand being dealt. The idea is you’re continually playing a hand. FTPDoug reckons you’ll play 2 or 3 times as many hands this way. You still get hand histories, but your HUD won’t be able to cope with it. Also sites like pokertableratings won’t be able to track them either. So, downside is you can’t build good reads on your opponents, upside is more exciting and higher rakeback gains. Sounds like fun though, but I can’t see it replacing the grinder’s game of choice (well, maybe? It’ll attract a lot more fish, plus with the rakeback it might change the game a lot?)

Posted in Full Tilt, Poker, RakeBack, Short Stack Strategy, TwoPlusTwo | 5 Comments »

Re: Forum is main site now by yegor_kgb	13:14, Aug 03 2010
Forum is main site now by Meteoric	21:27, Jul 30 2010
Re: StoxEV by Simon Debanks	09:25, May 07 2010
Re: StoxEV by Meteoric	20:05, Apr 29 2010
Re: StoxEV by yegor_kgb	08:30, Apr 28 2010
StoxEV by Simon Debanks	21:53, Apr 27 2010

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