S1ndr0me has got the go ahead for some private tournaments on PokerStars. We figured that if we invite all the people who read our blogs regularly into a private game, we’ll get some nice social poker going on.
Wednesday evening (GMT) seems like a good time, and the game will be a $5+0.50 regular tournament (ie 1500 starting chips and 15 minute rounds).
If you’re interested post a comment here or over on S1ndr0me’s site, and hopefully we’ll get something good going…
Very frustrating session. The ‘Unexpected Value’ series of Stox videos has been talking about how most people (beginners) think the way to win at poker is with big hands, hitting flushes & coolering your opponent etc. while the real way is to consider your opponents hand more than your own (2nd level thinking I guess).
I know what that means, but I still find it difficult to suppress that frustration when nothing ever hits the flop. I think it’s mainly down to impatience – taking pots with cbets, check raises etc is obviously great, but it’s very annoying when after doing that for a bunch of hands, winning say, 50-80BB, and then losing it plus a whole load more because a ‘big hand’ goes wrong 
So my session today was swingy, and overall not very good. The only thing that saved it was the last half hour or so when the poker gods completely turned around and gave me hand after hand. No subtleties needed, just get the money in good!
I ended up on three tables holding a stack of about 200-300bb on each. On one table two donors had already stormed off after being stacked a bit too much. So at least it was fun towards the end.
More HUD stuff – I know S1ndr0me was having trouble with keeping his screen clean with multiple tables and a hud, so I thought I’d show a screen shot with the new advanced hud I’ve got. Only four tables, but that’s all I ever play, plus I couldn’t get more than that on my laptop screen (so any more and they’re going to have to be stacked). Anyway, looks pretty tidy to me (the Pokerstars skin is a homemade one, but wasn’t that hard to do);
Update: Played a bit more, and pushed the win up to $24. Happy with that – it’s making the last bad session not so horrible 
I’ve added a table, so I’m now trying four tables. Ages ago I tried this, and got into such a mess that I lost a ton – it was like that wacka-lemming game where I was just clicking any button in sight and just couldn’t cope.
Today it went better – it was busier than I expected, but I could cope. I don’t know if I was remembering many details about players I could exploit, but some of the players were on several tables and that helped.
Still, I didn’t mess up, I hit some big hands, and it came out nicely;
Got into a mess on this hand – villain had low fold to flop bet, but high fold to turn bet, so I checked the flop to scare him on the turn, but it didn’t work (although perhaps it did make him check back the river);
Stacks:
UTG ($3.14)
UTG+1 ($1.63)
CO ($1.55)
BTN ($4.97)
Hero (SB) ($2.87)
BB ($2.00)
Pre-flop: ($0.03, 6 players) Hero is SB A
Q
1 fold, UTG+1 calls $0.02, 1 fold, BTN raises to $0.09, Hero raises to $0.31, 1 fold, UTG+1 calls $0.29, BTN folds
Flop: 4
4
T ($0.74, 2 players)
Hero checks, UTG+1 checks
Turn: 7 ($0.74, 2 players)
Hero bets $0.73, UTG+1 calls $0.73
River: 7 ($2.20, 2 players)
Hero checks, UTG+1 checks
Final Pot: $2.09
UTG+1 shows: Q Q
Hero shows: A Q
UTG+1 wins $2.09 ( won +$1.05 )
BTN lost -$0.09
Hero lost -$1.04
otherwise all other losses were small, or where the villain didn’t cave to a flop cbet and I had nothing like;
Stacks:
UTG ($2.79)
UTG+1 ($4.96)
Hero (CO) ($2.17)
BTN ($2.81)
SB ($2.98)
BB ($3.35)
Pre-flop: ($0.03, 6 players) Hero is CO K Q
UTG raises to $0.06, 1 fold, Hero raises to $0.21, 3 folds, UTG calls $0.15
Flop: 9 4 5 ($0.45, 2 players)
UTG checks, Hero bets $0.28, UTG calls $0.28
Turn: 8 ($1.01, 2 players)
UTG checks, Hero checks
River: T ($1.01, 2 players)
UTG bets $0.75, Hero folds
Final Pot: $1.71
UTG wins $1.71 ( won +$0.47 )
Hero lost -$0.49
So, good day all round. The sort of day where you don’t look back at your losing mistakes, but your mistakes where you didn’t extract enough value – that’s got to be good. In fact, did I get enough on this hand;
Villain is 24/22, and plays well, although it’s very ABC so you should be able to figure his range easily enough. I’m assuming he’s AK, JJ+, and basically I got cold feet on the turn and shoved in case it was all spades or KQ. Maybe I should have held my nerve more and tried half or 3/4 pot…
Stacks:
UTG ($1.00)
UTG+1 ($6.38)
CO ($1.12)
BTN ($1.12)
Hero (SB) ($3.41)
BB ($8.87)
Pre-flop: ($0.03, 6 players) Hero is SB A A
1 fold, UTG+1 raises to $0.08, 2 folds, Hero raises to $0.26, 1 fold, UTG+1 calls $0.18
Flop: 7 9 T ($0.55, 2 players)
Hero bets $0.54, UTG+1 calls $0.54
Turn: 2 ($1.63, 2 players)
Hero bets $2.61, UTG+1 folds
Final Pot: $4.15
Hero wins $4.15 ( won +$0.74 )
UTG+1 lost -$0.80
I’ve been posting daily results so far, which is a bit results orientated of me. Really I should be considering my overall play, and even then it shouldn’t be dwelling on $$$. Of course I’d be lying to say I can do that, but it’s something to aim for.
Anyway, I decided my (potential) loyal readership should have someway of seeing just how well (badly) I’m playing, and so I’ve created an All Time Results page (there’s a link in the menu to the right), and I’ll keep updating the content on that page.
At the moment it’s just a graph (that seems to be upside down, surely?), but I’ll also add my stats there. I think that while I’m a lowly microstakes player I don’t have too much to hide. It’s not as if I’m likely to bump into many of you at the tables when there’s 10′s of thousands of other microstakes players out there.
Once I’m a nosebleed stakes player I’ll remove the stats tables naturally 
Edit: Oh, I ought to mention that it’s not my entire history of poker playing – yes, i have lost a lot more money than that! I initially started out on Full Tilt, and over the period of a year lost two deposits of $50 each. I then moved to Titan poker to get the Stox deal and so far have lost one deposit of $100, and am currently halfway through a new deposit of $40. also my PokerTracker evaluation version ran out on my laptop, so what you see there is my results just from work. I’ll merge it all together when I buy a copy of PokerTracker.
What’s really worrying is that it took me a whole year to lost $100 on FTP, while on Titan I lost it in a couple of months Clearly learning to play poker is bad for your wealth…
Edit2: Oh yeah, FTP I was one tabling, Titan I’m 3 or 4 tabling. That figures…
Mini session today as our internet went down completely midsession.
Not particularly electrifying, but at least I scraped back that bad beat in the middle. Well, it wasn’t actually a bad beat, but just me not noticing a straight on the board;
Titan Poker 0.01/0.02
saw flop | saw showdown
Button Button ($1.14)
SB ($2.66)
BB BB ($1.84) – Meteoric
UTG UTG ($1.07)
UTG+1 ($0.97)
Preflop: Meteoric is in the BB with T J
UTG calls 0.02, 1 fold, Button calls 0.02, 1 fold, BB raises to 0.09, UTG calls 0.07, Button calls 0.07.
Flop (0.30) 2 J 4
BB bets 0.14, 1 fold, Button calls 0.14.
Turn (0.58) 5
BB bets 0.56, Button moves all-in for 0.91, BB calls 0.35.
River (2.40) 9
BTN shows 3 A
BTN wins 2.27 with straight, 5 high.
Basically I was hoping for the flush and figured TPGK would also be enough (duh – didn’t I read my last post?). I’m not very good at noticing when there’s a possible straight on the board, and this time I was particularly blind to it as I’ve started playing with four tables. A dumb move to overload myself while still making mistakes? Maybe, but it’s not proving too disastrous at the moment.
I had a few moments where I’d let a table time-out, and once or twice felt rushed and just folded rather than thinking it through properly. I am generally handling it though, and one thing that’s made the difference is realising I do have time to think.
When you’re on one or two tables you tend to fly between them, making decisions easily and rarely letting that little timer appear (unless you’re really stuck, but on the whole…). It’s easy to think that you need to respond to each decision with the same speed when you have more tables open. You don’t want to make all the other players wait for you all the time.
Truth is though you do have enough time. Who cares if that little timer appears, that’s what it’s there for. Just don’t have a little ‘diddly, diddly, dum dum ta-da’ countdown tune running in your head when you see it
So when it’s my turn I make myself think before doing anything, even if that timer is running out. At the very worst it runs out and you fold. If you rush it and bet when you shouldn’t it could be way worse.
Consequently playing four tables is proving ok – something that seemed impossible a short while ago. Going to five is probably not going to happen for a while though. I’m making enough decisions now to keep me occupied, and when I’m playing on my laptop it can only fit four tables anyway…
Here’s today’s results (just during my lunchbreak);
Three tabling at 2NL
That just shows how wild my game seems to play! Usually there’s a steady overall climb to it, and then a few catastrophic crashes as you can see here. Fortunately today I managed to scrape it back with a couple of hands – the first was a great monster where I flopped a full house;
Titan Poker 0.01/0.02
saw flop | saw showdown
Button ($2.35)
SB SB ($10.59)
BB BB ($0.90)
UTG ($8.74)
UTG+1 UTG+1 ($3.03) – Meteoric
Preflop: UTG+1 is UTG+1 with K 8
1 fold, UTG+1 calls 0.02, 1 fold, SB calls 0.01, BB checks.
Flop (0.06) K 8 8
SB checks, BB bets 0.06, UTG+1 raises to 0.12, SB calls 0.12, BB raises to 0.18, UTG+1 calls 0.06, SB calls 0.06.
Turn (0.66) 3
SB checks, BB bets 0.60, UTG+1 calls 0.60, 1 fold.
River (1.86) 5
BB moves all-in for 0.10, UTG+1 calls 0.10
UTG+1 shows K 8
BB show K A
UTG+1 wins 2.06 with A full house, Eights and Kings
I wish the BB hadn’t been so small stacked, but you can’t have everything. At least the SB stuck around for the turn.
I actually limped in with that hand, why? I haven’t a good excuse. The whole session I was 24/17 (maybe tighter on that table), and every now and again I’d limp with marginal hands. I don’t think anyone at the table was particularly noticing my bet sizing, so for the sake of a few BB I was happy doing this. If I didn’t hit the big draw on the flop then I’d give up – way too dangerous to fight over TPTK/2 pair type stuff when you’ve let everyone limp in. Equally if someone raised then I was more than happy to let it go.
Also today I had another go at trying three tables rather than my usual two. I figured at 2NL it’s not going to hurt like it did last time when it all goes wrong. By the end of the hour I was feeling fairly comfortable, but still didn’t think I was able to give things much thought. If my goal is to get my confidence back to return to 10NL and build a bankroll for 25NL, then I think I’ll keep trying to get the hang of more than two tables. Ideally it’d be nice to be in control of four tables by the time I ready to return to 10NL.
Just to add a little context to the last post, I’m playing 10NL, and play two tables at a time. I normally play during my lunch break, then during the weekend when I’m not doing anything else.
So the last post’s chart was fairly exceptional really, while at the same time I didn’t feel it was a heater. Throughout the week I had been up and down, and the final week’s total was 10 hours of poker, winning at 25BB/100 hands, and a total of $40 (a whopping $4/hour – Not giving up my day job yet!). I felt that I was in control of my poker, and the overall win rate was due to good decisions rather than lucky breaks.
But, as the title of this post suggests, things didn’t go so well on Sunday.
The main problem lay with that I tried two new things at once. Firstly I added another table to see if I could multitable three (and then hopefully 4) tables. Secondly I watched Ed Miller’s ‘Art of Folding’ video on StoxPoker.
The multitabling didn’t work at all. I couldn’t give myself enough time to make a decision, and being rushed unfortunately I tended to rashness rather than caution.
Then while Ed’s video is excellent and I’d recommend it to anyone, he played a few hands quite aggressively and went for the all-in on OOP players who he felt was weak. So I tried it too.
Unfortunately they called me every time. A couple of times it was reasonable, ie my JJ lost to their AA, and then my AK lost to their JJ, but a couple of other times it was just plain dumb (on my part).
Ultimately I lost $40 in an hour and a half! All the way back to square one. So I turned off the computer and gave up for the day. Hopefully this week I’ll regain the more cautious (but winning) approach I had previously…
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