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Unregistered Plus Heads Up SNG Hand Chart

Sunday, March 14th, 2010

Pokerwise I’ve had a crappy weekend, and the way I was playing I decided to unregister from the miniftops heads up tourney

I did manage to sort out some problems with my game though (around tournament 15), but as you can see from the red ‘luck adjusted’ line I ran into enough ‘bad luck’ to not make any difference (tbh I don’t put any credence into these EV adjusted values at all, but like any good statistics; when they prove your point they must be right). It was pretty bad though, and one game I was up $2550 vs $450 when I disconnected – by the time I rebooted my shitty modem and reconnected I was the one with $300 left

Nevertheless, the problem I sorted out was my starting range. When I started out on husngs I was playing by instinct, taking my 6max range and widening it out to what felt right, and all was good with big rocketing graphs every day. I then found a starting range on husng.com and started implementing that.

Since that day I’ve broken even. Small sample, but it wasn’t right at all – I was getting into too many marginal spots, ending up overcommitting and spending most of my time fighting to come back from behind. So today I took a step back and thought what a heads-up range for SNGs ought to be. Basically since in a husng we’re playing shortstack poker most of the time, it makes sense that the Nash table is giving us the right distribution- after all, it’s calculated from the all-in preflop equity you have in a hand based on two players under shortstacked conditions.

So I twiddled around with the ratios until it presented 70% and 30% of the hands (so 70% is my opening range on the button and 30% is my calling range on BB). In this table the 70% is everything except the light grey, and the 30% is in bold;

AKs

AQs

AJs

ATs

A9s

A8s

A7s

A6s

A5s

A4s

A3s

A2s

KQs

KJs

KTs

K9s

K8s

K7s

K6s

K5s

K4s

K3s

K2s

QJs

QTs

Q9s

Q8s

Q7s

Q6s

Q5s

Q4s

Q3s

Q2s

JTs

J9s

J8s

J7s

J6s

J5s

J4s

J3s

J2s

T9s

T8s

T7s

T6s

T5s

T4s

T3s

T2s

98s

97s

96s

95s

94s

93s

92s

87s

86s

85s

84s

83s

82s

76s

75s

74s

73s

72s

65s

64s

63s

62s

54s

53s

52s

43s

42s

32s

The husng.com table varied in that it had the entire suited side for opening under the button with the junk as mainly the bottom section of the unsuited corner. TBH the husng.com table was for a cash player, and so that’s a very different dynamic, so I’m not saying it was wrong. But for husngs, it was totally unsuitable. My games instantly improved, with the number of awkward decisions vastly reduced. Shame the number of idiot calls that sucked out on the river didn’t.

Also I don’t care what anyone says about not needing hand charts. They’ll tell you that heads up is fluid and your range depends entirely on what’s best to beat your opponent. That’s true, but without having a solid and appropriate foundation from which to add or remove hands you’re just building castles in the air…

Posted in Analysis, Bad Days, HUSNG, Leaks | 4 Comments »

Nash Equilibrium & Heads Up SNGs

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

I decided that I need to be a bit less ‘gut feel’ about the last stages of my husngs – the bit where you have your opponent on the ropes and he’s got 4bb left and is shoving every hand (um, or where you’re in that unfortunate position). I get a bit tight in this situation and tend to only call when I have an ace, and that’s really bad since theoretically I can call (or push) a much wider range of hands and be just fine. My problem is that I hate flipping, and when you’ve spent a lot of effort getting the bozo into this position only for him to bounce back on a flip pisses me off. However you just can’t play poker at that point really – he can’t raise pre to see a flop, so there’s no choice. Truth is you just gotta see those flips through, and if you’re good enough then even if he pulls off a couple of flips in a row then each time you’ll be able to bash him back down and eventually one of those flips will do the right thing.

So, getting rid of the ‘gut feeling’ stuff means getting to grips with Nash equilibrium theory, and all the charts and guff that comes with it. Not that it’s complicated really – two charts in all;

1) if you’re the one going to push (or not):

	A	K	Q	J	T	9	8	7	6	5	4	3	2
A	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20
K	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	19.9	19.3
Q	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	16.3	13.5	12.7
J	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	18.6	14.7	13.5	10.6	8.5
T	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	11.9	10.5	7.7	6.5
9	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	14.4	6.9	4.9	3.7
8	20	18	13	13.3	17.5	20	20	20	20	18.8	10.1	2.7	2.5
7	20	16.1	10.3	8.5	9	10.8	14.7	20	20	20	13.9	2.5	2.1
6	20	15.1	9.6	6.5	5.7	5.2	7	10.7	20	20	16.3	*	2
5	20	14.2	8.9	6	4.1	3.5	3	2.6	2.4	20	20	**	2
4	20	13.1	7.9	5.4	3.8	2.7	2.3	2.1	2	2.1	20	***	1.8
3	20	12.2	7.5	5	3.4	2.5	1.9	1.8	1.7	1.8	1.6	20	1.7
2	20	11.6	7	4.6	2.9	2.2	1.8	1.6	1.5	1.5	1.4	1.4	20

2) They’ve pushed – do you call?

	A	K	Q	J	T	9	8	7	6	5	4	3	2
A	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20
K	20	20	20	20	20	20	17.6	15.2	14.3	13.2	12.1	11.4	10.7
Q	20	20	20	20	20	16.1	13.0	10.5	9.9	8.9	8.4	7.8	7.2
J	20	20	19.5	20	18.0	13.4	10.6	8.8	7.0	6.9	6.1	5.8	5.6
T	20	20	15.3	12.7	20	11.5	9.3	7.4	6.3	5.2	5.2	4.8	4.5
9	20	17.1	11.7	9.5	8.4	20	8.2	7.0	5.8	5.0	4.3	4.1	3.9
8	20	13.8	9.7	7.6	6.6	6.0	20	6.5	5.6	4.8	4.1	3.6	3.5
7	20	12.4	8.0	6.4	5.5	5.0	4.7	20	5.4	4.8	4.1	3.6	3.3
6	20	11.0	7.3	5.4	4.6	4.2	4.1	4.0	20	4.9	4.3	3.8	3.3
5	20	10.2	6.8	5.1	4.0	3.7	3.6	3.6	3.7	20	4.6	4.0	3.6
4	18.3	9.1	6.2	4.7	3.8	3.3	3.2	3.2	3.3	3.5	20	3.8	3.4
3	16.6	8.7	5.9	4.5	3.6	3.1	2.9	2.9	2.9	3.1	3.0	20	3.3
2	15.8	8.1	5.6	4.2	3.5	3.0	2.8	2.6	2.7	2.8	2.7	2.6	15.0

(shaded squares = suited hands)

Divide the smallest stack by the big blind and compare it to the value for your hand. If it’s less then shove (or call a shove). If it’s more then either play postflop poker or fold to their shove. You’re supposed to adjust this depending on whether opponent is a nit or an aggrotard, but for now I’ll just take it as it comes – should make me a bit braver for the kill hopefully.

There’s also an excellent spreadsheet a 2p2er created that does this as well as some other theories. Worth a look at (go to last post for his final version).

Update: I knocked up a javascript version here; http://www.meteoricpoker.com/nash.php – enter the values and press return (or tab – basically anything to let it know you’ve changed the value).

Posted in Analysis, HUSNG, Heads Up NLHE, Leaks | 1 Comment »

Stretching the Legs of Hold’em Manager

Saturday, January 9th, 2010

So after throwing away a bunch of money I decided to leave the tables and do a bit of thinking. The reason was simple enough really – I’d got involved in hands where I’d air or weak holdings and painted myself into a corner. Inevitably either my river bluff would fail or my opponent would put in a raise that I felt pot committed enough to call, and then I’d watch my sweet sweet money disappear into their stack.

Ultimately the thing I’m doing wrong is making my FPS moves too expensive. They might work a lot of the time (honestly!), but I need to recognise when it’s going tits up and give up on that hand earlier while not bloating the pot further.

It didn’t take a genius to figure that one out. In fact I’m too ashamed to post those hands here – they might make you laugh, but I’m not happy about it. However it did get me into the mood of delving into the analysis side of Hold’em Manager and see what it can give me.

I took two periods of my poker ‘career’. Both are NL10, and the first was from April to July last year where I could do no wrong and won $300 over 13,000 hands (21BB/100). The second was my latest 13,000 hands where I’ve won $90 at just under 7BB/100. Nothing wrong with 7BB/100 of course, and the first period looks like a big heater, but it’s still worth a comparison to see if there’s a significant difference somewhere.

I pasted the comparison into a single big image – 21BB/100 on left, latest hands on right;

The first set of boxes is my opening range UTG, MP and CO. I’m kinda pleased with this – I knew that my game has both loosened up and become more aggressive and I was worried that my range had actually become completely wild. It looks fairly well controlled though, and both periods show that I stick to my ranges very solidly (I have no concerns about the lack of balance – what’s the point at NL10 when I rarely play anyone for more than a few hundred hands! That’s also why I’m not worried about publishing it here either, it’s not as if my screen name is meteoric either). As expected my range has widened a bit, mainly at the top end although I’ve also included more suited connectors. The one funny extra is 72o – this is because Ultimate Bet has 72 side bet tables, and it’s worth a quick 3bet or flop cbet with 72o just for this side bet. (Edit – at least, it doesn’t look like it’s gone wild to me, but then I’ve little to compare against. Maybe I shouldn’t loosen up my early position as much as that?)

The rest of the tables compare various situations such as flopped hands, showdown hands and positional stats. Since 13k hands isn’t a huge sample I’ve tried to pinpoint only those areas where the numbers are extremely different. So, from bottom upwards (sorry, that’s just the way they were pasted);

Positional stats at the bottom aren’t much different, and that doesn’t surprise me. It’s been a while since I really came to understand the power of position, and I don’t think I’m spewing too much by playing OOP in the wrong situations.

The flopped hands shows one big anomaly. When I hit a top pair with weak kicker (and no draw), last year I lost about $100 (it’s not too surprising that this is a losing hand, it could easily be out paired on later streets and obviously out-kicked) – the later session though I’ve lost $343 though! It’s the biggest difference in that table, so I need to see what I’m doing differently. I’m probably just playing them too aggressively and not controlling the pot enough. There are probably two situations – ace with weak kicker, and a low top pair (for instance, 9′s on a 923 board). I need to see which is the one I’m messing up. It’s probably more likely to be the aces I think.

Edit – I’ve just realised this is TPWK or worse, so this is including high card hands. I need to dig a bit deeper. It wouldn’t surprise me that I’m now floating overcards too much…

The river made hands seems to suggest that the first session did owe a lot to being a heater – I seem to make a lot more big hands then than lately. Not much I can do about that, unless of course I’m folding too early too often now. Kindof doubt that though.

Groupings suggest big aces have suffered the most lately. I’m putting this one down to variance too – there are a lot of AK pots which become flips, and so a slight shift in luck can result in a large monetary swing.

So final conclusion – top pair weak kicker = my achilles heel. Need to look into this some more…

Posted in Analysis, Hold'em Manager, Leaks, NL10, No Limit Hold'em, Poker, Poker Software | Comments Off

Pulling Back, Again

Sunday, December 27th, 2009

This seems to happen on a regular basis – I play well, then things seem to deteriorate, and finally I’m forced to take a good long look at how I’m playing.

The problem is that I know the basics, and when thinking straight can apply them well (including postflop). Once I start winning I start feeling bulletproof and play back at hands which I should just be folding. A few fancy plays go my way and I’m trying to win every pot going. Of course it doesn’t end well…

This month started with a few huge hands that went my way and gave me a 7 buy-in headstart. It took losing every penny of that plus a bit more before I realised I had to take a step back and see that I was being an idiot.

So today I folded when I was obviously beat, and didn’t float all those missed flops. It was a bit swingy, but came out up in the end;

Even nicer, this was on Ultimate Bet where my account had been seriously depleted. This put it back to a reasonable amount where I could multitable without worrying about the dreaded ‘you have insufficient funds’ popup when trying to reload. If my next post has a similar graph then it looks like I’m back on track.

As an aside, Yegor suggested playing limit hold’em. Such a weird game! While the blinds were $0.05/$0.10 the swings were tiny and similar to NL2 – no wonder bankroll management is much lower for limit compared to no limit. It was also a struggle against draws – getting AA preflop was always a minefield as you try to build a pot while watching each street conspire to give your opponent that straight with his 67o.

Compared to NLHE, limit hold’em is allegedly much lower in variance while the contribution from the player’s skill is less (pot odds become a bigger factor than bluffs). Possibly that might be a plus point at microstakes though. Also it may have less of the internet generation of players (ie more players coming from live games and less from 2p2), which might be useful too. I’m not sure how much effort I want to put into it though, but possibly more than PLO – I’m coming to hate variance…

Posted in Good Days, Leaks, Limit Hold'em, Multitabling, NL10, No Limit Hold'em, Poker, Pot Limit Omaha, TwoPlusTwo, Ultimate Bet | Comments Off

Don’t Need a HUD (apparently)

Friday, December 11th, 2009

Just found a set of 2p2 posts that are interesting reading;

Destroyed 3/6, time to move up (graph)
100k hands w. aHUD

Boywonder has an amazing record and his graphs are currently showing $500k profits, which must be nice. In his earliest post he says that the key to his success is emotional stability, ie no tilt of any form. to quote him;

‘I still maintain that whilst the technical aspects of the game have their place, emotional control will destroy talent any day.‘

He also is happy to play against regs rather than fight to play only against fish, believing that too many regs become technically competent but then stagnate in their abilities due to relying on HUDs and failing to recognise their own tilt;

‘Q: What do you think changed your game the most in terms of becoming such a winning player?

BW: Realizing that most regulars actually were not that solid and didn´t have their own game (most just basically have picked up somebody else’s preflop game that they´ve seen on a training video and have no clue why they are doing what they are doing – postflop they are usually spewy as xxxx). When you start zoning in how to scalp the regs, that´s when you start improving and that´s when you start beating the game for more than 1 ptbb / hour. And the basis for all of this was realizing how much of my game was dependant on playing when in the right emotional state, and learning how to maintain that mindframe.‘

If you don’t want to read the three huge threads, then this single post from boywonder would do (this one too).

Anyway, fairly inspiring stuff (although I don’t think I’ve even got the technical side down pat yet, let alone sorting out my tilt!). I might even throw away my HUD, or at least the stats part of it (and just leave the player notes box).

(mini update: Immediately after posting this I went to see if he had gone on to produce a video (he mentioned it in a post somewhere). I searched with boywonder poker video and on the third page found my blog with this post. Fast work Google! (I guess that link probably won’t show me in the results by the time anyone else clicks on it – results move around quickly!).

Posted in Analysis, Leaks, Poker, PokerTracker, TwoPlusTwo | Comments Off

Making Notes

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Recently had a sweat session with a guy called Johnathan on a microstakes chat group I frequent. I didn’t play live, but instead zipped through a previously played session using the PokerTracker replayer. I think this worked quite well – I wanted to do it for several reasons;

My play would have been natural, not effected because someone was watching
We could concentrate on one table at a time
We could skip hands where I folded preflop

The final reason is only partly a good idea – obviously you miss what the other players have done at the table. Fortunately I hadn’t filtered the session on ‘put money in’ so we did at least see hands up to the point where I folded, and it was these hands that my sweat partner bought up a good point.

In several instances there had been a couple of limpers and I folded on the button (with complete trash like 83o etc). He pointed out that since I was on the button it was still worth raising while I was building up a picture of who my opponents were. Whether they fold or call (and then what they called with) was golden information when I had no other history on these players. He pointed out that I should be really taking notes on players and try to classify them (even at NL5). As the session went on, he made me classify various players at the table – then in later hands this information made it vastly more clear why certain players were doing what they were doing. So I was convinced.

This morning I opened up a couple of tables and tried to put it into action. The note taking facility on PokerTracker isn’t that great (or at least, I haven’t got the hang of it) so I just opened up notepad and figured that would do while I only had two tables open. The first difficulty was getting time to write the notes – it was like being a multitabler newbie all over again. I need to develop some acronyms and make the notes more concise.

It worked fairly well. Players rapidly showed whether they were calling stations or loose passive way before my HUD kicked in. I adapted to what I was seeing and ended up with a flawless session. It was perhaps an easy session though – everyone seemed to be huge stereotypes of what I was looking for, and even without the note taking I would have noticed how passive some of the guys to my left were. However as a first go I’m still a believer. Furthermore, it was actually fun – I had wondered if going back down to 2 tables would be dull, but to be honest it reawakened the player in me – I suspect that multitabling has really dulled my poker senses.

What I need to do now is stick to a low number of tables and improve my speed at getting those notes down. I guess I’ve got to nail down PokerTracker’s note facility, and come up with a clear and sensible notation.

Update: So what does this mean;

tightness_scatter-0.02-0.05-nl-6-fulltilt
Meteoric’s Looseness vs. Win Rate

this one too;
aggression_scatter-0.02-0.05-nl-6-fulltilt
Meteoric’s Aggression vs. Win Rate

All the ABC poker guides say tight play is better than loose (at NL5), and agression is better than passivity. If that’s true, why don’t those scatter plots slope down from left to right? A few outliers in the top chart slightly give that impression, but really taking the image as a whole it’s generally fairly symmetric.

Posted in Analysis, Good Days, Leaks, Multitabling, NL5, Poker, PokerTracker | Comments Off

Playing Well, But Not Building Bankroll

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

Another low blog post week has gone by – I have been playing, but it’s been remarkably unexciting. The last three sessions have been particularly disappointing as I played well 99% of the time only to mess a couple of hands up in each making each come out -ve.

The last session’s big bad hand probably wasn’t played badly if you go by pot odds though;

$0.02/$0.05 No Limit Holdem
5 Players
Stacks:
Hero (UTG) ($9.46)
CO ($5.20)
BTN ($11.32)
SB ($2.19)
BB ($2)

Pre-Flop: ($0.07, 5 players) Hero is UTG 7 8
Hero raises to $0.14, 1 fold, BTN calls $0.14, SB calls $0.12, 1 fold

Flop: 10 J K ($0.47, 3 players)
SB goes all-in $2.05, Hero calls $2.05, BTN goes all-in $11.18, Hero goes all-in $7.27

Turn: 2 ($23.02, 3 players, 3 all-in)

River: 6 ($23.02, 3 players, 3 all-in)

Final Pot: $23.02
Hero shows
7 8
BTN shows
J K
SB shows
4 Q

BTN wins $21.61 ( won +$10.29 )

Hero lost -$9.46
SB lost -$2.19

However, it was a big pot to gambool on. All the worse since the gamble didn’t pay off. It was clear that I had to hit that flush to win, since it was unlikely both the other players were on a draw (and even if they were it’s really unlikely I’d have had the highest card!). Even hitting the flush was probably not a guaranteed win either (even though it turned out neither were on a flush draw). So, lost 2 buy-ins at a stroke there

There have been a couple of changes in my game lately, although more experimental than definite leak fixing. The first is donk betting. More often than not if in the situation where I could donk bet I do. Either I’ve missed the flop and the preflop raiser checked, in which case I bet as a bluff, or I’ve hit the flop and I bet for value. The betting as a bluff is working out I believe – at NL5 most checks from the villain is because they’ve missed the flop (I’m not expecting this to be the case >NL10 though – too many people understand the cbet). The donk betting for value though is starting to be uncertain – it seems common opinion is it’s better to check and wait for the turn, after all only better hands would call. On the other hand, a large percentage of players will call a flop bet (dismissing it as a cbet with air) and reevaluate on the turn. I’m still unsure what my line is with donk betting really – I wish it wasn’t called donk betting though, it seems overly disparaging for what could be a reasonable line (at what times though?).

Second change is more shoves with AK – if I open with AK and get 3bet I’ll shove, whereas before I’d call and wait to hit the flop before continuing. I checked PokerTracker and found that the fold equity in the shove outweighed the losses in the flip in coming up against a pair (ie let’s assume AK vs PP cancel out, leaving plenty of profit from AK vs AQ, AJ etc and 3betters who fold). However, last three sessions my flips have all gone the wrong way, so suffering a bit from variance there (btw, calling a shove with AK is a different kettle of fish, and generally I won’t unless I’ve 3bet leaving a small relative stack behind – too many shoves are KK+ and it doesn’t seem to be worth it).

So. Bankroll is at $220, with about $30 to come in rakeback. I’m annoyed that I haven’t got to $250 from the cards themselves, but $250 is $250, and I’ll be going to NL10 as soon as that rakeback arrives. Actually I’m also annoyed that $50 of that $220 was the Take 2 bonus, so it’s really not like I’ve played my way here although filtering on my NL5 results does show a $180 win so far, and it’s only the NL10 that’s destroyed my earnings so far. Mixed feelings, but certainly not feeling that I’m beating the nanostakes game really.

Posted in Analysis, Bad Days, Bonuses, Leaks, NL10, NL5, Poker, PokerTracker, RakeBack | 2 Comments »

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
How hard can it be! by Meteoric	20:27, Mar 15 2010
Re: Forum Upgrade by Meteoric	14:26, Mar 11 2010

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