Someone on 2p2 immediately set up a 2p2 husng club which got some reasonable interest, and yesterday we had a friendly tournament just to get things started. Only 8 people registered though which was a bit of a shame. Hopefully it’ll pick up some steam soon, although I know Palinca (regular poster on there) has also been trying to get some tournaments going for forum regulars, and he hasn’t succeeded much either.

Even for just the 8 of us it was a lot of fun. Plenty of chat between the players, and not too much hanging around. Reckon I’ll stick with it to see if it grows…

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…

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.

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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/

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;

How does that ever make sense?

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.

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…

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