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)?

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…

Last week I played a couple of games against a good player – the first game was difficult, and he was clearly thinking much more than the average fool at the $10s. It went my way and I figured that while I had a small edge it might be good to rematch just for the experience. Apparently he was thinking exactly the same thing, except he thought he had the postflop edge. The second game was a complete disaster, so he was probably more right than I was

We agreed to swap HH, and had a small email exchange talking about some of the hands. I figured out how to edit the HH files so that HEM would load both hole cards up. I was quite surprised at how much thought this guy put into his play – more than me I suspect. Also, although this might be just because of the hands we talked about, he seemed to think a lot more about what my thought processes were, while I was thinking more about how I was being perceived – that sounds like I’m outlevelling him, but it wasn’t really. It was more the case that he was evaluating how much value he could get out of me, while I was looking at how effectively I could bluff him.

And that last point could be a leak for me. I’m always working on the bluffs, making them and catching them. It appeals to me because it’s all about the player, rather than pot odds and getting thin value. Very satisfying when it’s working, very expensive when you get it wrong. If on the other hand you’re working on getting value, then it’s rarely expensive when you get it wrong – you just get less value than you hoped, or maybe at worst accidentally value town yourself when something was just a bit too thin.

Anyway, it was really interesting to be able to talk about those games with him. I wish it happened more often. To quote the level we talked about; ‘the only reason I called was that I knew you knew I pretty much can’t have a strong hand’ – which is awesome that we could even have a game where that came into play.

It’s awesome because today I’ve played people who do this;

There’s no sense in that. You can’t play someone like this and say ‘if he’s calling there, then he’s thinking xxx’ etc. The easiest way to beat them seems to be to just chip away with small flop cbets, and get as much value as you can from strong hands. How exciting.

It wouldn’t be so bad if he hadn’t gone on to beat me as well (of course, lol).

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!

Bank holiday monday, nothing else to do and plenty of time, so figured I’d stick a bit of cash onto Pokerstars and play their HU knockout MTTs (where it’s $10 buy-in, then you win $5 for each player you knockout). I thought I’d keep signing up for them throughout the day while taking down a few regular husngs in the quiet spots.

Didn’t even get that far.

I registered for the first one and opened a regular husng while waiting. In the opening hands I tried a few cbets to see where I stood – he called all of them and we went to a cheap showdown where he had bottom pair each time.

I then tried a few delayed cbets and some check-raises. Every time I got called, and somehow he had a piece of the board. I figured I couldn’t put him down as a calling station as he had hit each time, even though he was calling really light.

I finally hit a flop, albeit OOP. I lead out each street with him calling me down. He paired his King on the river and took that pot.

I was starting to feel a bit incredulous, plus a bit short of chips. There were a ton of hands like this;

At least he couldn’t get value out of monsters, but I was running out of ideas. I had won a pot only twice out of 80 or so hands (I 3bet pre and missed on the dryest board ever – had to lead out and he folded. The other hand was a flopped straight!).

Finally I was desperate with 500 chips – my KQ hit top pair on 7KTr, I raised and he shoved to show AQ. A Jack landed on the river and game over.

Amazing. But what can you do? The MTT started and I tried to shrug it off.

First game was a Russian maniac. Every pot had a stupid reraise somewhere (several 4bets at times). Finally it came down to my TT vs his AJ, and he hit. So that was that – next MTT in an hour.

So I went back to regular games while waiting. And again all the players were hitting any part of the board and calling down. Over and over again.

Tilted beyond comprehension, I withdrew the remaining cash from PS and gave up. It was only mid-day, ruined utterly

I don’t believe poker is rigged at all, but it’s so easy to see why so many people do. At the microstakes if anyone with the smallest amount of money can play, then why not be giant calling stations – it’s all about the gamble! When their J2 hits a KQ2 board for the win, then whoohoo!

Maybe if I called every street a bit more I could win too…

Well, maybe not totally true Looking back over the hands I was definitely running hot on the upswing, although did really well at keeping myself out of trouble. For the games I lost, the errors I made stood out a mile;

That guy was chasing draws all over the place and as soon as he raised the river I just knew it was QT (but I still called). I then looked back at the hand and realised how terribly I’d slowplayed it and let him draw out cheaply. FFS, such an idiot, yet at the time I thought I was being smart. Seems it takes quite a few smacks in the face before I can learn a lesson.

Shouldn’t complain though, as still plenty of that heater left in the account.