I also decided that I want to play more hands in position, and not just against the blinds. If someone has opened before me, my strategy for a long time now has been either 3bet big hands, call pocket pairs, or fold. I guess this is fine (or normal even), but surely it means that when I open, the chances are I’ll be OOP unless it folds to the blinds? Sure my late position ranges are wider than my early position ranges, but while that means I do play more hands IP, they’re weaker hands too.

So I thought what kind of hands can I play if someone has opened before me (other than the PP’s and big Ax’s). I guess it has to be a less dominated range than the opener. So I figured if I call with the range of the position earlier than the opener, then I should be IP with a stronger range? Probably not the most intellectual of strategies, I suppose I should really be considering hand strengths in a different light, ie suited connectors and ranges that don’t overlap theirs (that has a name I expect – merged, balanced, aga range?).

As it happened the situation almost never came up – not enough seats at 6max really. If on the button and the MP opened I never had a hand in my UTG range, CO opening I didn’t have a hand from my MP range etc. I think it happened three or four times at most. And I think those hands went 50/50 anyway (mostly missing & folding to the cbet, or betting when unraised and getting a fold), so no great insights there anyway. I probably should put more thought into it and consider a better calling range that’s based on something more intelligent really.

On another plus note Carbon have sorted out my bonus code, so now I’ve 3 months to clear the 150% deposit bonus. I reckon that’s plenty of time as long as I move up before the end. We’ll see.

I feel pretty good as well – obviously nl5 is not the most challenging of levels, but I actually believe that I properly outplayed them and deserved every penny. The last 1k of that is nl10, and that’s going nicely too (a lot less passive, but they’re still moronic).

All I need to do now is not drift and put some volume in. Stick to the plan, keep a level head etc. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do since everyone else I know is splashing around nl25 – nl100 now, but it’s not a big deal. I’m still learning the game…

Didn’t go so well;

I did clear $5 of the bonus during that disaster though!

Everything I did seemed to meet some kind of resistance – flop cbet success only 45%, 3bets all over the place, and generally everything was awful.

I looked back over the hands, and of course there were some terrible ones – usually 3 barrel bluffs, but not too much that I should be ashamed of.

So I dropped down in stakes just to stop the bleed, and gave up on the bonus.

Instantly there was a difference – my cbets were working! They folded to my steals, they folded to my 3bet defending in the blinds, they even started paying off the odd hand or two;

Flop cbet success now at a reasonable 60%.

Small sample size (in both cases really), but I can’t believe nl5 should be so different to nl10. Surely they should be more or less the same?

Either there IS a difference, and everyone’s solid at nl10 (!?!), or I experienced a bad downswing – my opponents really did just ‘have it’ each and every time.

I also can’t believe I’m still writing about these nanostakes, but maybe understanding these swings is part of the learning process. I’ve never put in large amounts of volume, and over-reacting to swings in the BR like this has probably not been too healthy. Never mind, I’ll just enjoy the game for being a game for now…

I played a few husngs instead, which were admittedly really really easy – the only losses were from legitimate bad beats (high 2pair vs low 2pair ends with the villain somehow getting a backdoor flush of all things!). However the traffic was dismal, and the only reason why I got any action at all was because there was one other player who was determined to play.

I then switched to 6max for a bit. Just for fun, no real intentions of taking it too seriously. Amazingly it was actually enjoyable, and I turned a proft that felt well earned rather than luckboxed (srsly). It was also remarkable that the past year of concentrating solely on husngs had also taught me a few things that helped as well.

In particular were the moments that the table broke up leaving you heads up against the other remaining player. They were incredibly bad at heads up play – generally too tight more than anything. You could run over them by just continually betting, and I think in these spots I was winning at a massively faster rate than when the table was full.

I also was less of a calling station, although I’m not sure if heads-up had taught me that. Maybe it did, because things were definitely improved.

However Cake still remained unappealing. I have never before seen my winnings+rakeback line diverge from my winnings line so quickly. The amount of rake I was paying seemed to be horrendous – the Rakeback deal I have is pretty good, so perhaps not so painful, but it just didn’t seem right. On the other hand rakeback is a variance free payment, but that’s kind of stupid – it’s not as if it’s paying bills.

So the plan is to take the money back out of Cake and return to Full Tilt (well, maybe with a detour to BetRaiser and see if a rake-free (no rake!!!) game of microstakes 6max is doable when there’s only 20 people ever on the site). What I am changing though is opening my game up more – I’ll still play husngs, but not exclusively. I’m going to play 6max again, with some MTTs thrown in, and also dabble with some other games like Omahaha (Omalol?). Focussing on one game for the last year was good for my poker skills, but I think it’s not really benefitting me as much as it did. Time to take a sabbatical…

Still, glad to be back, if only because I can understand what everyone’s saying again (mostly – Cambridge is multicultural to say the least). I’m weighing up whether to start going to Italian lessons, and also continue the Spanish course I was doing last year (off to Barcelona in a week’s time).

Pokerwise, playing better than ever but unfortunately it’s at miserable $5 stakes. BR crushed again. The weekend so far;

Even though most of this weekend I’ve been breakeven, it felt like I was in a dominating position during the games. I’d then make one hero call too many and shift the game to them and then not recover – so the best I can say is I’m playing really well 90% of the time, but that other 10% is killing me. The graph also shows me over EV which is a pretty bad sign (actually $100 under ev for the year, but whatever). So definitely not bad beats to blame – it’s all me unfortunately.

Update forgot to mention – just had a straight flush

At these stakes no-one can lay down a flush (zeebo!), and his turn lead couldn’t have been anything else (Could I lay down a 7 flush? The turn PSB was a bit expensive to call, esp as there weren’t many clubs lower than mine out there & virtually no bluffs or non-flushes in his range. So in retrospect I was probably the idiot there, although maybe calling and hoping the river will be cheap isn’t so awful). Since it was obvious he had a club, I banked on the zeebo effect and went for the shove on the river rather than a less than pot value bet. That was for the final of a 4man too, so very nice

Just pokerstoved that turn – if we assume he’s got a flush then I’ve only 38% equity. So calling $120 to win $360, that means, uh, it’s a bad call? I hate these pot odds stuff. Must be bad, surely. With his actual hand I’ve only a 5% shot on the turn, so Meteoric luckbox strikes again

uh, think I figured out the pot equity/odds thing – after he bets, my 38% equity is $91, so that’s the most I should call. So having to call $120 is bad odds. Can implied odds be factored in? If I do hit my miracle card, then we’ll be playing for stacks (as we did), but how does that work mathmatically (or can’t it without having some magic number for his calling % or FE etc)?

So, a day of absolutely nothing! Obvious there was some pokerage, although getting a lie-in was a godsend too (didn’t manage to sleep at the w/e, and yesterday was a horrendous 5:45am start!).

Full Tilt had no SNGs this morning, something to do with an update I think. 2p2 said it would be over at 7am, but I’ve no idea what timezone that was, so just switched to Pokerstars.

As usual at PS (or at least so far today), I’ve run under EV. Also it’s been really slow going – there’s been a bunch of Russians who must be playing on dial-up since they take an age for each click, which with the slow blind structure of PS means you can actually feel yourself ageing during a match.

Most of that under EV stuff has been fairly bad beats too (not the usual 33 vs AQ type flip), such as AQ vs QT which hits JK9, AQ vs 92s running to a flush, and a few 2pair shoves where the villains TP finds a paired board (not the one that fills my boat obv). Actually it’s been a bit of a struggle, with at least one hand like this in each match, but I’m really proud of my non-tiltage, plus how I’ve stayed in the game to win most of them. I reckon I’m playing really strongly today

At least I’m not -ve $$$ yet, but there’s still the rest of the day to go. Just have to keep in mind this years resolution of VOLUME!

hands

ok, found it – here

Suppose I ought to make a little blog post while I’m here;

At the folk’s place, so got some internet at last. Pokerz is going well with $10s finally getting some traction. A few more days and I should be close to making some stabs at $20s, although not really rolled for it. However the games are playing solidly, so feeling confident for it. My big leak of bluffing too much & too heavily seems to be under control for a change. So today’s overheated results are;

Get internet installed on the 7th Jan. Better late than never I guess More blogging/poker when that’s done.

Merry Christmas & happy new year to y’all.