So I had a look at the tourneys to see what was happening, and a $3 180man rebuy was about to fill so I jumped in. Figured it’d be good for something to do while the Grand Prix was on.

While waiting for it to start I filtered my HEM onto MTTs that were 180 entrants or more, and was amazed to see that out of the dozen or so I’d played I’d cashed in 30%! They were almost all $2 games, usually all for the same reason I’d entered this $3 game (killing time basically). None of them had cashed that high, but it was almost $100 profit, which is pretty sweet for $2 games (ok, not that sweet considering they were MTTs, but it’s still a nice ROI of 180%).

Since this $3 game was a rebuy obviously the first 30 minutes was a ridiculous shovefest. I kinda stayed out of it until the last minute and put a few of my own shoves in before getting the add-on (didn’t go my way of course, so started after the break with what the minimum – or should be the minimum, it’s surprising how many people didn’t rebuy or add-on though, so really I wasn’t in bad shape). It occured to me that rebuys make for a low rake game – I’d always steered clear of them, but it makes sense to me now.

I had a reasonable run and moved up to roughly top third of stacks, then did this;

Insane, or genius read? Figured there were far more bluffs in his range than actually hitting that king (um, didn’t really consider the possibility of PPs though, which was a mistake really). Really I should have played it as a stop and go, and donk-shoved the flop (I’m not that brave though).

Anyway, that put me as chipleader. I maintained it more or less until we were ITM. It then faded a bit and I finally go to the final table as the middle stack – even though many of us were still reasonably deep (kinda, M’s > 8 at least) the play was very aggressive and I hadn’t anything that stood up in even a small way.

I tried one raise from the CO which got shoved on and I folded. I was then down to an M of 3 and this happened;

so I went out as 9th with a little win of $29. So frustrating when the big prize of $500 was only 8 seats away and I’d just beat 171 other people to get there. I then kicked myself even harder when I realised the SB would be totally fucked after paying the BB and if I’d only waited another orbit I’d have doubled my prize (in my dreams maybe, much more likely is that the little shit would have doubled up).

Nevertheless, I seem to be doing ok despite what this chart looks like;

The dive downwards was the spewy aggrotard mood that I mentioned in the last post. Autostealing every blind and easily knocking everyone off their hand had made me a bit slaphappy, plus I really saw the $10 stacks as more or less worthless and so stacked off too light too many times.

So yesterday I returned to taking things a bit more seriously and thought that I needed to force myself to just ignore the 4 buy-in spew since it was going to take quite a few hands to climb back up. Somehow though I hit hand after hand and everyone seemed happy to throw their stacks at me. So I managed to win it back in less hands than I lost it, an incredible swing really.

Single tabling is still enjoyable (well obv when stacks are flying like this), being able to chat while playing is fun and action hasn’t been so slow as get boring. No desire to add a second table yet, and even if I did I think even one more table would negate the whole reason I decided to single table. I just imagine myself playing live and it all seems reasonable.

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/

I had to show the EV line as well otherwise you might think that massive drop was because I’m an idiot

To those mass multitablers those 680 hands still took 4 hours – with husngs I’d never really been concerned with how many hands I get in and hadn’t realised how slow it is.

The other thing is the crazy rake – 600 something hands at a sustainable (ahem) rate of 66bb/100, and the rakeback is 30% of my winnings! I’m going to have to keep an eye on that – even with the nice rakeback % I get at this site, a more regular winrate of 3-6bb/100 is going to have a hard time beating the rake. Hopefully the rake goes down as I go up in stakes (and down in winrate)…

Yesterday for instance I bought in short ($10) into a NL20 game, and after an hour my opponent finally gave up – my stack was $32. That was an hour of chipping away without any huge shoves. Is that how it should be? Normally my game has far more variance than that, with a few more shoves causing some big stack sized swings along the way. Seems like a very slow way of winning (an hour of $20 husngs could easily be $100 on a good day), although I should remember that long term my crazy swingy style has generally lost, despite the epic 4-5 buy-in session wins!

I also realised that traffic numbers on these sites is very misleading. For instance I said the other day how EverLeaf was showing only a few thousand players while Pokerstars had a massive 200 thousand. It turns out that PokerStars’ numbers are vastly inflated – the real number is more like 80,000 (according to pokerscout). Still a lot, but not quite the same wow factor. The difference in numbers is that the 200,000 included play chip tables, plus players signed in but not actively playing

120,000 inactive/play chip players sounds a lot. Maybe I’m still not seeing the real numbers here…

Update: Just noticed the latest HEM release supports EverLeaf. I’ll upgrade when I get home. I noticed the that HH text doesn’t include rake taken from the pot, so hopefully HEM is figuring it out somehow…

42o? Well, every fish has his day

ffs

finally!

Anyway, the point of that partial brag is that I’m deluding myself with low volume. So today’s intention is to keep hammering away and see how it goes, even if it’s a losing streak (unless I get really tilted obv).

I also didn’t intend to blog this early in the morning either, but the first match was interesting. Here’s the match for anyone who has nothing better to do;

My opponent played 2p2 ABC poker all the way – 3bb raises, roughly 70% hands on button, 30% OOP, 3bet reasonably, folded to most 3bets but not all etc. He didn’t seem to tilt, just kept going. In other words he didn’t seem to do anything wrong at all, apart from perhaps being unimaginative.

The game however went my way. In fact I was on the winning side throughout – a couple of times we went back to equal stacks but I never had to come back from behind. Was that because I had an edge? No idea, it’s doubtful…

I sharkscoped him and it turned out he’d been grinding mostly $5s and $10 with some stabs at $20+. After some success initially ($450+) he’s now a losing player (-$150).

I don’t get it – playing a solid game doesn’t mean you’ll win? Have I just been lucky and could easily become this guy (my game count is still less than his initial success stage)?

btw, in before NMIHU,ES… (that means you Yegor )

Update: Hammering away seems to work

ok, still only 14 games but that’s better than 4! Plus my BR is over $1k at last! Guess I have to try some $50s now and go back to scared money