Rants
This is not a blog, I don't post pictures of my lunch. Forgive my typos, I don't use a spell-checker.
The older rants are semi-regularly moved off this page. You can always read the old rants here if you're a masochist. If Google sent you here, it's wrong. You can see some of my photos at Yahoo .
One of the things that continues to put me horrifically on tilt is when people make ridiculous move and get lucky and then try to justify it. When I made the 5th place today, I had a decent stack. I pushed allin on the flop with top pair, my stack was roughly pot size. The big stack called with middle pair and hit a runner-runner flush to knock me out. Afterward he said "had to call, I had pot odds". Arrrg ! Charles smash !!
I've noted this before I think, but I think one of my problems with my bankroll is that when I'm winning, I tend to stop playing, because I get a high from a win and want to go run around and do stuff. When I'm losing, I keep playing because I want to get a win so I can quit on an up-note. That means I actually play a lot more on the days that I'm losing, which is the opposite of the ideal. Now obviously I don't believe in luck being sticky or anything, I don't believe you can have an "unlucky day", but it is true that when you're running bad and getting unlucky, you play worse, because you remember how you got sucked out on, you don't want to gamble, or you push too much, etc. plus it's true that if other people see you losing a lot, they'll attack you more and be more willing to play pots with you. All these factors do make it so that winning & losing really does come in streaks, and when you're losing sometimes you just need to quit for a while and try to come back later.
I think I've certainly had some bad luck, but I've also made some big mistakes. In a few of these, if I didn't make the one big mistake at the end I would have cashed, which on the whole would've made me +EV for the past few days instead of a big negative. I just keep acting without thinking the situation through carefully, and I can't seem to stop it.
I've been trying to channel the spirit of Chris Ferguson - for every decision, stop and rethink it through, take your time. It may seem like an obvious move, but just slow down, run through the whole thing again, think about the hand, the stacks, the timing, okay, now make your move. If I could just make myself do this, my game would improve dramatically.
I am still mostly playing really great. The problem is you can play great for hours and build a nice stack, then one horrible play and you blow the whole thing. I've played with Drew a few times lately, and no offense intended to Drew, but it's really shown me how my game has progressed. A year ago when Drew left, he and I were roughly on the same level in poker. He was more aggressive and clever with the bluffs, I had the edge in maths, but overall comparable. Now I can see just another level of play; Drew's still a really good player, but he's not thinking about all these other things - stack management, how much to gamble when, the blinds pressure, how to adjust for what type of opponent, etc. etc. Of course Drew's still much better than me at the cash NL game because of his intuitive knack for bluffing.
I know they want to set the schedule in advance and all, but too often the Monday night game is a piece of shit. They should set the schedule, but put all the games on Sunday. Then, each week, the game where the two teams with the best record meet Monday night, which an exception where one team can't appear within 4 weeks, or something like that. Too often the best game winds up being some random game on Sunday that isn't shown nationally.
The winner is Colm Mac Donnchadha, but he cheated by knowing of the band in advance.
A good thing about tournaments is that they're very technical and require awareness of M-theory, stack sizes, payouts, etc. which many people will get wrong. That's +EV for those who consider those things. The bad thing about tournaments is that you can't just play against fish. That is, the fish are usually weeded out early and give their stacks to the better players, so when you get down to the final few, it's usually the better players. Ideally for max profit in poker you always want to be playing against the absolute fishes.
Seat 2 is the button Blinds (100/200) Total number of players : 10 Seat 1: chukb ( $1443 ) Seat 2: FlipJames ( $2487 ) Seat 3: rustyhanson ( $6236 ) Seat 8: E_Normus ( $4879 ) Seat 4: havic333 ( $1400 ) Seat 5: CountyLiner ( $725 ) Seat 6: Lack2311 ( $1375 ) Seat 7: Desertbugsy ( $1280 ) Seat 9: Karuna ( $2980 ) Seat 10: Sweetness224 ( $7195 ) ** Dealing down cards ** CountyLiner is all-In [725] Lack2311 folds. Desertbugsy folds. E_Normus folds. Karuna is all-In [2980] Sweetness224 folds. Dealt to chukb [ Td Ts ] ?
I'll give you a hint - your real money EV before this hand started was $55.
It's just a critical error to make a mistake late. Say you buy in for $30 and make a huge mistake early - you lose $30. If you get to the final few and make a big mistake there, you're losing $100 or more in value. That's disastrous. It's wrong to think that it doesn't hurt because you already made some value, you need every bit of EV you can get to balance the variance over time.
Another funny thing happened today. There was a bot in one of the tournaments. His name is "JIMBO860". Oddly, he was in one of my $30 no limit tournaments, and he was obviously a *LIMIT* bot. He would always bet & raise the minimum, and made a lot of plays that were obvious limit plays. It looked like he might be playing by the Wilson TTH rules or something like that. Needless to say, he eventually got crushed, because he had no concept of call size and called off his whole stack with a pair of aces. I don't understand why the bot developer would play his limit bot in a no limit tournament. Perhaps it was a mistake in his automatic table seating algorithm.
I got called by some nutty shit today. One BB called my allin with 23o !? One called with 78. I guess I just have to play super tight at the end. This is quite the opposite of Harrington/etc. style play, and it goes against my instincts.
Take the Christ out of Christmas. Just celebrate "mas" (pronounced "muss"). No fuss, no "mas".
Seat 2: JPN42 ( $4988 ) Seat 4: chukb ( $4248 ) Seat 5: lalalaloser ( $20764 ) Blinds (750/1500) end of the game, JPN and I are both fucked, M around 2 ** Dealing down cards ** Dealt to chukb [ Jh Qs ] lalalaloser folds. JPN42 is all-In [4238] chukb is all-In [2748] I figure QJ is a pretty good hand, I may be ahead and if not, I'm not far behind. Almost half my stack is in the BB already, so I fold.
Before the hand started, my equity was $208, but now I post the BB. If I fold, my equity goes down to $198. If I call and lose, I get $180 (3rd place). If I call and win, my equity goes up to $234.46.
So, what chance of winning do I need for calling to be break even ?
198 = P * 234.5 + (1-P) * 180 = 180 + 54.5 * P P = 33%So, clearly I have to call, but also, I hate this situation - just by being in the big blind here I lost several dollars of value.
Unfortunately, this only came up because I made a disastrous error on an earlier hand. I pushed with KJ when I had the big stack, which was an unnecessary risk, since any ace-high is beating me.
Anyhoo, I wound up making 3rd place, which made up for all the bad beats today. I was only able to make it there with a few key suckouts. It just reminds me of the variance and randomness in poker. It's incredibly unlikely that you can make it through a tournament without any suckouts. You're either going to suck out on them (and hopefully) or get sucked out on (and probably lose). As I've pointed out many times before, if you only get into 80/20 confrontations, it's only 50/50 that the favorite hand wins 3 out of 3 races. I played three tournaments today, the first two I took rotten beats and didn't cash, in the 3rd I gave some rotten beats and cashed.
Seat 1: agreen2194 ( $2305 ) Seat 2: perry998 ( $1355 ) Seat 3: jshooter05 ( $5965 ) Seat 4: ankleband ( $2215 ) Seat 5: chukb ( $1780 ) Seat 6: jpk1928 ( $3460 ) Seat 7: Mikarriva ( $6450 ) Seat 8: ChrisAllen1 ( $1630 ) Seat 9: kustak ( $2880 ) Seat 10: platte77 ( $1960 ) Blinds (75/150) ** Dealing down cards ** Dealt to chukb [ Jh As ] perry998 folds. jshooter05 raises [600]. jshooter05 has been open raising a very wide range of hands, like TJ or Q9 ankleband folds. chukb is all-In [1780] I've been waiting for a decent hand, here AJ, to catch jshooter05, this is my first chance. I push. jpk1928 is all-In [3460] Fuck! Someone behind has a hand! Mikarriva folds. ChrisAllen1 folds. kustak folds. platte77 folds. agreen2194 folds. jshooter05 folds.
jpk had KK and I lost, out 10th. If I were just against jshooter, I'm sure this is +EV, the question is, how does the presence of the live people behind change it? Was this just bad luck, or should I be more aware of the danger of live people behind picking up a hand?
People behind will roughly play the top 5% of hands, that's 99 or AQ or better. Against those hands I'm roughly 25% to win. There are 6 others behind, so the chance all fold is 0.95^6 = 74% . I'll assume only one plays, and if they do, jshooter05 will fold.
If they do all fold, I'll assume jshooter05 folds 50% of the time. The 50% of the time he calls, he's a slight favorite on average (I know he calls here with hands like AT and KQ, which I'm beating, as well as hands like 88 which are 50/50), we'll say he's 55% to win over all.
So, let's compute EV. If I just fold I have 1780 chips, and my real money expectation is $62. Just in terms of chips first :
0.26 * ( 0.25 * (1780*2 + 825) ) + 0.74 * ( 0.50 * (1780 + 825) + 0.50 * 0.45 * (1780*2 + 825) ) = 1979
That's a nice +EV in chips even counting the live people behind. How about in real money ?
0.065 of the time I have 4385 chips (from jpk), for $126 0.37 of the time they all fold, and I have 2605 chips, for $85 0.165 of the time I have 4385 chips (from jshooter), for $123 0.40 of the time I get zero
The result is $60 real money expectation. Definitely negative! If there were no one behind, this would still be positive, but the combined factors of the risk of people behind, plus the risk of going out and losing the tournament equity of survival makes this a bad gamble.
This is also interesting because you can see how better players make their value in tournaments. It's little by little, hand by hand. At the start of each tournament everyone's real money expectation is the same - $30 in this case. Each hand you're faced with decisions that might take your value to $29 or $31.
Played two games in the heads up challenge against Dustin, and he won them both. Now I'm down 0-2 and need to win 4 out of the next 5. That's almost impossible even if I severely outplay him, which I haven't been. In the first two games he had the cards on me and played better. Every time I'd try a big bluff, he had something really good. In the second match I hit some big hands and got way the big stack, and he proceeded to double up twice and take the chip lead back, after which I got bled down and lost it. I think there were some hands I could have pushed harder and taken down with bluffs. It seems I won't catch the cards I need so I'm gonna have to win by out-bluffing him.
For some reason, the losses feel a lot worse in the live game than they do online. Online I can shrug it off pretty well, it's just bad luck, try again. In the live game I feel like I got robbed or raped.
Well, I made up for it by taking 2nd place in the next one. I got to the heads up outchipped roughly 2:1 and proceeded to get schooled by Duffy38. I do need to practice my heads up, fortuitously I have a heads up matched scheduled with Dustin.
Often in poker you run into the same type of problem you have in Risk and Diplomacy and other games - there are a bunch of players, and some move needs to be done, but you can't do it yourself, you need someone else to do it. Now, that move may be in their best interest, but for whatever reason they don't do it. The result is that someone else prospers. In Risk you have this where some bully is trying to take something, and someone else just lets him; you're not in that part of the world, so the bully gets a continent, and now you're fucked even though you weren't involved.
In the game today, Duffy38 was running over the table near the end. The two of us had the big stacks, and Duffy38 was open raising just about every single pot. I would re-pop once in a while, but since I was on the #2 stack, I can't afford to tangle with him, I need to pick on the other short stacks. The short stacks, however, should be taking advantage - they should push allin against his raise with any ace, or even KJ. His over-aggression is a really bad play if the short stacks would just do the right thing. Unfortunately, they did not, they laid down and let him run over the table, so he was able to gather that massive 2:1 chip lead on me. I could have tried to also run over the table and take my share, but that would have led to confrontations with Duffy38 which I was trying to avoid. Of course, just sitting back and letting Duffy crush them is great +EV for me in terms of real money value, so I can't complain.
Dealt to chukb [ Ks 8s ] spider2084 folds. grrry folds. Uldini raises [30]. Alien114 calls [30]. Lokijohn folds. eddievr folds. chukb calls [30]. I'll call a min raise K8s , the implied odds are very good couchguard calls [30]. whale1917 folds. mousy2 calls [15]. ** Dealing Flop ** [ 8c, 8d, 9d ] mousy2 checks. Uldini bets [15]. Alien114 folds. chukb raises [100]. I flopped trips. Uldini is a moron who min raises and min bets even his monsters, he could have any two. couchguard calls [100]. He must be on the flush draw or str8draw, TJ, QJ, diamonds. mousy2 folds. Uldini folds. ** Dealing Turn ** [ 9h ] chukb bets [250]. I have the house now. Either he has me tied or beat (with a 9), or he's drawing almost dead. couchguard folds. chukb does not show cards. chukb wins 625 chips
Clearly a dumb bet on the turn. No worse hand calls me there, and I don't want to force out draws. Perhaps I can make more money if he decides to bluff, or even better if he hits his flush and thinks it's a good hand even though there's two-pair on the board. Very dumb.
This reminds me of something I've thought about a lot recently. Classic poker doctrine says that hands like K8s or 22 or 67s really want to see a flop cheap, and multi-way for maximum implied odds. That's okay if you can get that situation, which you often can in limit, but in no-limit I find there's a nice value of calling raises in position with these hands. Say someone open raises 2x or 3x. It folds to you on the button, you call with hands like this. Now, in standard analysis you don't have very good odds here, but your implied odds can be very good if the stacks are deep. If he was on AK or AQ or something and you have 22 and the flop comes A72, you'll probably get his whole stack. In fact, I really *want* to be dominated in this case. I love it if he has KK and the flop is 972, then I'm sure to take his stack with 22. Many people play cute when they flop monsters, so if your 67 flops a draw, he'll often check to you, and you can just check behind if you have a draw. These kind of miracle flops only happen about 1/20 times, but if your stacks are around M=30, that means you're getting good implied odds to see a flop here. Also, in position you'll have good opportunities to steal the pot, if he open raised AQ and the flop is low, or if he opened raised 99 and the flop is high, in either case you can take the pot. When you play this, you need to remember that the vast majority of the time you are losing money on these hands, you shouldn't get too attached to them, you want to either hit a big flop or get out (and of course bluff if he tells you he doesn't want the pot). One of the stupid traps I sometimes fall into is calling with something like A7s, looking for the flush, then the flop comes 872, and I start thinking my 7 might be good. That's danger.
Before the hand starts, the stacks and expectations are :
stacks : Seat 1: pokrprofesr ( $3460 ) - Seat 2: HARLEYGUY814 ( $5535 ) Seat 3: Gatormancc ( $3090 ) Seat 4: baystar ( $2525 ) Seat 6: chukb ( $2250 ) Seat 7: euming ( $6400 ) Seat 9: bobsway ( $6740 ) dollar expectations : pokrprofesr : 117.846351 HARLEYGUY814 : 155.915487 Gatormancc : 108.856359 baystar : 93.473993 chukb : 85.243610 euming : 167.340767 bobsway : 171.323433
First, I'm surprised how high my dollar expectation here was. It's only slightly under the $90 for last place, so certainly I should not give up easily just because I'm short stack.
Now, here's the action :
Blinds (100/200) ** Dealing down cards ** Dealt to chukb [ 5h Ad ] bobsway calls [200]. pokrprofesr folds. HARLEYGUY814 calls [200]. Gatormancc folds. baystar folds. chukb is all-In [2150] I'm in the small blind, there are two limpers before me, and the big blind behind. I figure I need to take a shot and they probably have weak hands, so I'll push my A5. euming folds. bobsway calls [2050]. HARLEYGUY814 folds. bobsway shows [ Jc, Js ] a pair of jacks.As it turned out, bobsway limped jacks, and busts me. But what was my actual EV ? First of all, let me say I think this was a marginal move by me, just because my stack was actually big enough I could have just limped or folded here. My M was 7, which is not terrible. If my M was 4, I should have definitely pushed here, with M = 3 or 5, it's borderline. M = 2 is actually too low, you can't make anyone fold. M of 6 or 7 is high enough that this is not necessary.
So, let's look at the EV. First of all, I'm going to assume that the 3 guys in the hand will call with AT or better and 66 or better. We'll ignore AA and say that in all those cases I'm 30% to win. That's roughly the top 10% of hands they're calling with, and they limped maybe the top 50%, so they're calling with 20%. The chance that noone calls is 0.9*0.8*0.8 = about 60%. We'll ignore multiple calls. (actually I'm assuming here that they always limped their good hands, which is not true at all, so really the chance of them calling should be even lower).
So, in terms of EV, if I fold, I have 2150. When I push, 60% of the time, noone calls and I get 2150+700. 40% of the time when someone calls, I will win 30%, and wind up with 2250*2 + 400 = 4900, and lose 70% and wind up with 0. The overall EV in terms of chips for pushing in is : 0.6 * 2850 + 0.4 * 0.3 * 4900 = 2298. Slightly +EV.
What about in terms of actual money EV ? I'll assume that the caller is bobsway. If I just fold and bobsway wins what's in the pot, my EV goes to $82.33 . If I push and noone calls, I'd be up to $101. If I push and win, I'd be up to $142.83 . If I push and lose, obviously I'm down to $0. So my money EV overall is : 0.6 * 101 + 0.4 * 0.3 * 142.83 = 77.739 . Clearly minus EV !!
So, that's very interesting. This is one of those clear cases where tournament EV is different from just chip EV. In this case, if I fold the negative EV is not very bad, I still have a good shot at last place money. Also, the positive EV of the double up is not worth that much. You see when I more than double up in chips - from 2250 to 4900 - my money EV only goes from $85 to $143 , not nearly a double up.
So, clearly I should have folded and made a big mistake here. In bubble situations, it's not worth taking gambles, because the value of having any chips at all is so great, and the value of doubling up is not that great.
(btw the money EV's here were computed with GoldBullion using the correct tournament equity algorithm I described earlier).
Also note that this tournament payout structure is really exceptional for this type of hand. There's a big jump from $0 to $90 on the bubble, and then the payouts above that just increase linearly, not exponentially like they usually do. In more typical multi-table tournament payouts, you don't see nearly such a big affect, because the large prize for first place makes money EV much closer to chip EV. Also, the jump from bubble to cash is not usually so big, here it's 3x the buy in, more typically it's just 1x the buy in. If you ever need to play cautious on the bubble, it's in this type of payout structure which doesn't reward gambling late.
The basic key principle here is that larger stacks are worth less in terms of dollar EV. When you double your stack in chips, you much less than double your dollar EV. If everyone else's stack is the same, when my chips go from 2000 to 4000 to 8000, my dollar EV only goes from $83 to $128.50 to $176. You can see that getting allin, even as a 60/40 favorite, is a major disaster, and the bigger your stack the worse it is.
Seat 3: chukb ( $2650 ) Seat 5: Maug13 ( $2130 ) Blinds (25/50) ** Dealing down cards ** Dealt to chukb [ Ad 8d ] MrTonyB40 folds. HARLEYGUY814 folds. chukb raises [150]. Standard 3x raise with A8s in middle pos. I'd like to just win the blinds pegdlg31 folds. Maug13 calls [150]. Hmm.. I haven't seen this guy much, but he's a bit on the loose side. HawkMan555 folds. alka5 folds. Gatormancc folds. ** Dealing Flop ** [ 4h, 4d, 8s ] chukb bets [150]. Top pair, top kicker, very nice. I'm surely good here, maybe he has two overs. Maug13 calls [150]. Yup, must be two overs. ** Dealing Turn ** [ Jc ] chukb bets [250]. I'm a little worried by that jack, but he can still have a lot of losing hands. Maug13 calls [250]. ** Dealing River ** [ Ks ] chukb checks. Hmm.. He called the turn, a pretty solid bet. Could he have like 99 or TT ? Maybe 9T !? Or AK Maug13 bets [500]. That's a pretty big bet, about half pot. If he just had a mediocre hand like KQ or TJ or something wouldn't he just check it down? He must have a real big hand or nothing. I think AQ is possible, so is 55-77. chukb calls [500]. Maug13 shows [ As, 4s ] three of a kind, fours.
Ugh, I guess it was just a bad call. There's no way I can put him on A4, but I was worried about AK, AJ, KQ, QJ, etc. there are enough of those hands, it should be a pretty easy fold. Checking the river like I do sets him up to bluff at me, though, which means I have to call more often there to catch the bluffs. I could have bet more on the flop to drive out overcards, and then I could have bet a little less on the turn, I don't need to bet half pot, and then I could have just check-folded the river.
I had another rotten hand this game where I had 99 and was thinking about calling, and suddenly I was folded !? I guess my timer ran out and I had no time bank because it was used up while I was AFK pissing. That cost me a double up.
Today I played a 3-tabler and wound up making 2nd place. At the end there was a tough player named FLMAN1945 who was playing basically my style of poker, and it showed me how tough it is to play against. He had the big stack and was just dominating the table. He was stealing lots of blinds, and when other people tried steals he was frequently reraising them allin, stealing their steals. He had the ideal scenario, I was on the 2nd or 3rd stack, and there were some small stacks, so we medium stacks had to play it safe to make sure the small stacks got knocked out. By the time it got heads up he had me chipped 3:1 and I had little hope.
The power of the open-raise is at its best when the stacks are around M = 10. You can open raise a standard 3xBB. Now, the problem is anyone who calls know they're risking their whole stack. If they reraise, they're basically pot committed at that point. Just calling sucks because you don't hit your flop often enough for it to be worth fishing around. The great thing for the open-raiser is they're applying pressure without committing very many chips. If you reraise allin (any reraise is essentially allin), the opener can now decide whether to call or not. This is crucial - they get to decide when a hand is actually a big allin or not. That lets them call with their big hands and fold their weak ones. If they fold they don't lose too many chips, and they make up for it with the blind steals, and of course when they actually get a good hand and bust you.
chukb hands:9023 plays: 32%(K8o) raises: 45%(A8s) steal:447/599 bbf:136/224 cont:308/433 big:803= 8%
There are various little todos in Goldbullion to improve the stat tracking, but the big thing is to try to use the AI to watch the way people have played hands to build a better Bayes-based read on them. That is, given how they've played various situations in the past, what do we think they have based on their play so far in the current hand.
The basic way of doing this, as I've outlined in the GoldBullion AI notes, is to have a parameterized AI model for opponents. eg. the model has various parameters a,b,c,d, etc. which influence play. They start at some basic setting which will give "standard" play. Based on what you see of a person's play, you adjust the parameters so that the AI model will make actions that match their play in those situations. There are two primary ways to adjust the model. One is statistically - that is, if you see the % of hands someone calls, folds, raises, etc. you can tweak the model so that it will generate those same statistics over all. The other way is with specific hands. When you see someone's hole cards, you see how they played a specific hand, and then you can tweak the model so that it plays that hand in a similar way.
This is all very complicated by the fact thats that - 1) poker is a game of very sparse statistics, so you will only get very scattered data on their play, not enough to build your model without a lot of assumptions, and 2) there are lots of extra circumstances that affect people's play, eg. are they on tilt, what are the stacks and payouts, etc., and 3) people will occasionally make very strange plays that can throw off the model if you weight them too strongly.
Of course none of this is very exotic, this is just what I'm doing myself when I play.
Seat 1: bahbo112 ( $2647 ) Seat 2: TxHoosier ( $2649 ) Seat 3: hardg ( $1955 ) Seat 6: chukb ( $1232 ) Seat 7: natural0153 ( $570 ) Seat 8: perry998 ( $1300 ) Seat 9: Lacrs11 ( $790 ) Seat 10: joejamesjr ( $1067 ) Trny:17830262 Level:5 Blinds (50/100) ** Dealing down cards ** Dealt to chukb [ Jc 2h ] natural0153 calls [100]. natural0153 is on the short stack, with an M less than 4, and he limps utg !!?? From a good player this can only mean one thing - a monster, like AA or KK. Now, I know he's not that good, but I can't believe he's limp on such a short stack with a really bad hand, it must be a pair or ace high or something. perry998 folds. Lacrs11 folds. joejamesjr folds. bahbo112 folds. TxHoosier folds. hardg calls [50]. chukb checks. I check in the BB. ** Dealing Flop ** [ Ac, 6s, Jd ] hardg checks. chukb bets [150]. I flopped middle pair jacks, I want to see if I'm good. natural0153 calls [150]. natural0153 just calls !? Half his stack is now in the pot. He must have a weak ace, maybe something like QJ or KJ. Pairs lower than J are possible too. hardg folds. ** Dealing Turn ** [ 3d ] chukb checks. natural0153 is all-In [320] chukb folds. It's only a halfpot bet, but I don't think I can possibly be good. If he doesn't have an ace, my jack must be out-kicked. natural0153 shows [ Tc, Qc ] high card ace.
His plays were pretty reasonable if you ignore the fact that he was on a super short stack. I suppose on the turn I can still put him on pairs below Jack and maybe call for that, but there's no way I can put him on QT (I did think KQ was a possibility). This type of hand could be easily dismissed, saying he's a donkey, he's a bad player, but of course that's the point - I shouldn't be losing money to these guys. I've been losing a lot of important pots like this recently, where I have what's really a very weak hand, and someone playing very strangely pushes me off the best hand because I haven't got the right read on them. Simple bluffs are not that hard to pick off, the things that really trip me up are when people call in crazy situations.
sees flop 40% raises 60% steals 11/12 continuation 5/7
That 40% see flop is pretty loose. That's because I'm open raising a lot with hands like J9s, etc. You can see I'm almost always taking a steal chance, and almost always betting continuation. Obviously that only works when the table lets me, but they often do. (that raises percentage is how often the open preflop is a raise vs. a limp). When I see these stats it's obvious that anyone watching me must know I'm stealing and betting continuation.
Blinds (50/100) ** Dealing down cards ** Dealt to chukb [ 4d 5c ] IAM4USC folds. Cougat33 folds. Big__Nuts folds. TxHoosier folds. z_balata raises [300]. z_balata makes a 3x raise on the button. We both have decent stacks. He's been raising almost any two cards, especially in steal positions. We can rule out 72, but J5 is possible. Mattotto3 folds. chukb raises [700]. I have junk, but I figure he'll fold maybe 90% of the hands he open raised, so I'm gonna try a re-pop to take the pot. That 700 is on top of the 100 I have in, so it's 500 more to him. Maybe I should have raised a tiny bit more. z_balata calls [500]. ** Dealing Flop ** [ Jc, 8c, 2s ] chukb bets [700]. Of course I missed the flop, I have junk. I want to try a stab here in case he doesn't have anything. If I check he's sure to bet, and there's still a good chance he has nothing. z_balata is all-In [1890] chukb folds. I figure he must have hit the jack. It's possible he has the str8draw or flush draw, but I can't call in any case.
I think that overall, this move is +EV, but there are two big problems with it (aside from maybe not raising quite enough preflop). 1) I'd never seen anyone reraise this guy, so even though I knew he was open raising any two cards, I didn't know if he was capable of folding them to a raise. 2) The game was very soft and nutty, so I certainly could have gotten my chips in as a big favorite in some other scenario. If the game was very tough, this move coud be more called for, but not in a soft crazy game.
Which reminds me of all this talk that you have to push edges and gamble to win tournaments. That's a lot of horse shit, especially against bad players, and if you do it you're a moron.
I got Dan's computer (my old Oddworld computer) set up with WiFi. I got a DLink DWL-G510. Her computer is about 100 feet away from the router, through one wall, and the signal strength is around 30%. She gets about 20 MBps. Not bad at all, WiFi is the shit. I wish we could have everything wireless, but as we talked to about at Oddworld a few times there are some problems. Clearly keyboards and mice and such can easily be wireless, and that's possible with Bluetooth stuff now. Video is a big problem, the bandwidth is astronomical. To do even 1600x1200 at say 100 fps is 6 billion bits per second uncompressed. Fast wireless is now 100 Mbps, so we're still off by an order of magnitude or two. Power is another issue. Of course Tesla used to demonstrate wireless power and dreamed of a world-wide wireless power system , but there are a few major problems with it.
It's got a $10 mail-in rebate. I hate fucking mail in rebates so much, but it isn't much work for $10, so I have to do it. I missed the $30 mail-in rebate on my damn cellphone because I forgot about it and the time expired.
Seat 3 is the button Total number of players : 3 Seat 3: chukb ( $14756 ) Seat 4: hopper888 ( $8736 ) Seat 8: TRIPSET ( $6508 ) Trny:17800797 Level:11 Blinds (400/800) ** Dealing down cards ** Dealt to chukb [ Ac 4d ] chukb raises [1800]. Standard 2.5x button raise with an ace high. I'd be happy to get all in with the short stack in the big blind. hopper888 calls [1400]. TRIPSET folds. SB calls, BB folds. hopper888 must have some kind of decent hand, like KJ minimum. ** Dealing Flop ** [ 4c, 2h, Kc ] hopper888 bets [800]. chukb raises [2400]. He min bets, I have a pair of 4s. If he had a king, he would have check-raised me here. This min bet might be the club draw, or just AJ or AQ or something like that. I raise to charge the club draw. hopper888 calls [1600]. ** Dealing Turn ** [ 8d ] hopper888 checks. chukb checks. I check here because I'm almost certainly good, but I don't really want to bet. He won't fold a better hand. Maybe I should charge the club draw, but I figure let's see the river. ** Dealing River ** [ 7d ] hopper888 is all-In [4536] chukb calls [4536]. He leads allin. That sure looks like a bluff. I'm not scared of a big hand, the main thing I'm scared of is something like 55 which is basically a bluff but would still beat me. hopper888 shows [ As, Qh ] high card ace. chukb shows [ Ac, 4d ] a pair of fours.
Hooray for me! Checking the turn let him bluff at me on the river.
On the plus side, the field was incredibly weak, as expected. If I didn't play like a fucking donkey it would have been easy to go very deep, probably to cash without trouble. With the player count, it means if everyone is equal an entry is worth about $50, but with the weak field I'd say an entry should be worth about $150 or $200 on average, a pretty darn good value for a freeroll.
Seat 1: shescot43 (3380) Seat 2: Jodantc (2420) Seat 3: chukb (10930) Seat 4: Piscato (5875) Seat 5: cardiackid1 (3165) Seat 6: semaj78 (2525) Seat 10: terrpetz (1705) Piscato posts small blind (150) cardiackid1 posts big blind (300) ** Dealing down cards ** Dealt to chukb [ 8h, 8d ] semaj78 folds. terrpetz folds. shescot43 folds. Jodantc folds. chukb raises (900) to 900 Standard 3x button raise with the 88 Piscato calls (750) The #2 stack calls me. He's been reraising with very good hands, so I mostly rule those out. This is probably like KQ or Ax or a low pair or something like that. cardiackid1 folds. ** Dealing Flop ** : [ 5c, 9h, 2s ] Piscato bets (1200) chukb calls (1200) He leads out half pot. I think there's a very good chance I'm good. A set would probably check. I'm basically ruling out overpairs because he's been reraising them. ** Dealing Turn ** : [ 6d ] Piscato bets (3775) Piscato is all-In. I'm almost certainly ahead. His bet is less than pot size. I think AK is possible. A9 is the only hand I'm really worried about beating me. I think hands like 77 are possible, as is A5.
If he was a good player, he'd know not to tangle with me unless he had a monster. He wouldn't want to go out on the bubble because he fucked around with the big stack. Of course if he was a really tricky pro, he might attack me just because I know that he shouldn't play with me without a monster, but we can safely rule that out. I think he was actually a moron not considering the bubble and the stacks, so all those considerations just don't apply to reading him.
In any case, I folded to get in a better situation later, which I got. I put him allin when I had two pair and he had one pair, of course the board later paired and he won with the higher kicker.
Brad Kondracki open raises around 500k with a stack of only about 1M. Dannenman moves allin with AQ, he has about 4M. There are about 6 live players between them, some who have Dannenman covered.
What in the fuck is Dannenman hoping for here? Kondracki is pot committed and has to call. He must have AK or a pair, so in any case Dannenman is behind, and he's risking a ton of chips with live players behind who could bust him if they pick up a big hand. This is a major fish move. It seems like Dannenman was just just pushing any decent hole cards, not taking into account the situation and the chip stacks, etc. I think folding AQ here would be okay, also just calling would be okay.
There are several other hands where he pushes in with ace high after the flop, big overbets when it's very likely he'll get a call from a pocket pair.
Seat 1: DirtyBirds4 (1285) Seat 2: Soliton (3230) Seat 7: chukb (5245) Seat 8: Roscoe451 (5705) Seat 10: SNK21 (4535) Roscoe451 posts small blind (150) SNK21 posts big blind (300) ** Dealing down cards ** Dealt to chukb [ Ts, 4s ] DirtyBirds4 folds. Soliton folds. chukb raises (750) to 750 I'm on the button and both of these guys have been folding their blind much more than normal, so I'm going to raise with almost any two cards. Roscoe451 folds. SNK21 calls (450) He's been folding his BB a lot, so calling does mean he has a little something. It could be ace-low, or something like 67, but he's not calling with just any two. ** Dealing Flop ** : [ Ah, As, 6d ] SNK21 checks. chukb checks. I don't like to bet continuation on a flop like this because it's not believable. I felt like I might get reraised, so I just check and see what happens. ** Dealing Turn ** : [ 2s ] SNK21 bets (400) chukb calls (400) I have the flush draw now. He just min bet. It's possible he has the ace and is slowplaying it, but that's pretty unlikely. He would also have something like 67 that hit the 6 on the flop. I decide to just call and see if I can hit my flush or my ten, or see if he'll just check the river. ** Dealing River ** : [ Kd ] SNK21 bets (800) chukb folds. The hand is basically over for me, when I didn't raise the turn I had to catch.
The question is whether this is a good semibluff situation on the turn. Of course if he has the ace, then I really want to just call, it would be lovely to hit the flush and win a big pot. Probably he doesn't have the ace, but would he believe that I do? And will he fold whatever weak hand he does have? It's possible he just have something like KJ on the turn and might even call a raise with the king kicker. I don't think my check on the flop takes away from the believability of the semibluff. If I actually did have the ace, I might check the flop to try to get action.
Soliton posts small blind (200) chukb posts big blind (400) ** Dealing down cards ** Roscoe451 raises (900) to 900 SNK21 calls (900) Soliton folds. chukb calls (500) ** Dealing Flop ** : [ 2d, 6s, 6c ] chukb checks. Roscoe451 checks. SNK21 bets (1400) chukb folds. Roscoe451 folds.
He min raises, so I call with almost any two cards in the BB. (I had KT, but that's irrelevant). On the flop, SNK bets and I'm almost certain he has nothing, probably two overs. I thought about pushing, and wound up deciding to fold. Certainly it's possible he has a low pair, but it's more likely he has something like A7 or TJ. One of the things that worried me most was not that he had a pair, but that he might call a push with something like ace high, which would be beating me. Of course an argument could be made that they were playing so badly there's no need for me to risk my chips here, that if I fold I'll be able to get them in later in a much safer scenario (which I did).
I despise people who talk about bad beats when they slow-play their aces or something like that. That's not a bad beat, that's a donkey play, you moron. Today I took a "bad beat" that most people wouldn't recognize. UTG min raised KK like a moron. 3rd position just called with AA !! I limped with 77. The SB then went allin with KJ, a very tiny reraise that couldn't possibly force anyone out. Of course UTG reraised allin, and I had to fold. Flop had a 7. Thanks to the donkey play of the SB, I missed a chance to triple up my stack. That's a rotten beat! I was in a perfect spot to punish the horrible play of those guys playing their big hands so badly, and I got robbed.
Oh well. The $100k freeroll is tomorrow on Party and I'll be in it, I won a qualifier. Hopefully I can keep up the solid play like I did today and just get lucky when I need it, or at least not get ridiculously unlucky, pretty please.
Seat 8: ait66 (14138) Seat 10: chukb (9865) ucijavelin posts small blind (300) dantmann posts big blind (600) ** Dealing down cards ** Dealt to chukb [ Ad, Qh ] WordPlay folds. ait66 calls (600) cuzknd folds. chukb raises (1800) to 1800 AQo in middle position. I have to play this hand and I might get all-in. I figure I'll make a standard 3x raise and see what happens. Perhaps a slightly bigger raise would've been better to force out more worse hands. azzkckr999 folds. xsocceroosx folds. gusar99 folds. danandchar folds. ucijavelin folds. dantmann folds. ait66 calls (1200) The one limper calls. I'm guessing he has a weak ace, low pair, or some kind of connector. ** Dealing Flop ** : [ Js, 7d, Tc ] ait66 bets (600) chukb calls (600) He leads out with a min bet. What the fuck? I can't possibly fold. Some people will min bet with monsters, like JT. Some people will min bet with draws, like KQ maybe. Some people min bet very weak hands, like T9 maybe. If I had a junk hand, I'd raise here, but I have a lot of outs - an Ace, King, or Queen, so I just call. ** Dealing Turn ** : [ 3c ] ait66 bets (2600) chukb calls (2600) That card looks like a blank. This is the turning point of the hand. He min bet the flop now he bets big. I've seen this guy in the past make big bets as a bluff, so this looks like it could be a bluff. It could also be a bet with TJ or something like that. ** Dealing River ** : [ Jd ] ait66 bets (2400) chukb folds. He bets about the same size again. At this point I have no idea if he's continuing the bluff or value betting a jack. ** Summary ** Main Pot: 13300 Board: [ Js 7d Tc 3c Jd ]
Sick hand, worst of all I'm not even sure if I made a mistake. Certainly I played it weakly, which I hate, but I can't say that's wrong. The worst part of the hand for me is the call on the turn. I think I need to fold or move in there. Either I'm beat and don't have odds to draw, or he has nothing and I need to move in to stop him from drawing or bluffing me on the river.
Unbelievable rotten day of poker today. I made some mistakes, and when I had good hands I took unbelievable suckouts from unreal calls. One of my raises today was called by J2, and the guy made two pair with it. The hard thing is they're not consistent. If they would just always play with junk, it would be easy, but they don't. One hand I get AA and raise and they all fold. Another hand I get KQs and make the same raise and get five callers, with hands like A2, etc.
chukb posts small blind (10) squashball posts big blind (15) ** Dealing down cards ** Dealt to chukb [ Ac, Ts ] frostyjfk folds. samba31 folds. Snelliest folds. yockey21 calls (15) thejanitor7 calls (15) BigandHairy1 calls (15) marathon222 calls (15) up_and_down1 calls (15) chukb raises (90) to 100 (these guys are real loose limpers and very aggressive raisers with any decent hand; the AT is almost certainly best here and I'd like to just raise and take the hand down from the SB; the cautious play would have been to just call and wait to make my hand, if I hit an ace I'm most likely good and can try to just win a small pot). squashball calls (85) yockey21 folds. thejanitor7 calls (85) BigandHairy1 calls (85) marathon222 folds. up_and_down1 folds. ** Dealing Flop ** : [ 7c, 5c, Jc ] chukb bets (200) (I flop the nut flush draw. The jack scares me because the hands they call with likely include a jack - QJ, KJ, TJ, things like that. I was thinking I'll go ahead and bet and define my hand, if they don't have a jack, I might just take it, if they do have a jack, I'm still on the nut flush draw.) squashball folds. thejanitor7 raises (400) to 400 (min raise, I'm thinking he has the jack. In retrospect I suppose the jack might have moved in to defend against the draw. The min raise could also be the Kc or possibly a set like 55 or 77.) BigandHairy1 folds. chukb raises (985) to 1185 chukb is all-In. (I can't fold here, I'm thinking I have at least 9 outs and probably 12 outs, so I'd have to call 200 to win a pot that would be 1230, which means I only need to be 16% for a call to be right. If I just call I'd have 785 left. I decide to go ahead and push into a guy who can't fold a better hand.). thejanitor7 calls (510) thejanitor7 is all-In. ** Dealing Turn ** : [ 9h ] ** Dealing River ** : [ Th ] thejanitor7 show [ Tc Qc ] [ a flush, queen high -- Qc,Jc,Tc,7c,5c ]
So, he flopped the flush and I was drawing to 7 outs. Now, there's no way I could know he flopped the flush, and of course he made an absolute rotten call preflop with QTs. Still, I made some pretty huge mistakes in this hand. On the flop, there's no need for me to lead out. I should just check and see what happens. Then if there's action, there's no need to semibluff. Anyone betting has at least a jack and will probably not fold to an allin (these guys are loose, there's no way they fold like a QJ here). So, I have to just hope the bet is small and I should just call and take another card off if the odds are right. I was frustrated that I got called by a bunch of worse hands preflop and that made me get overly attached to the nut flush draw.
I played well in the live game wednesday night, so I'm happy to sort of be back on track. I never got great hands and even made a small suckout in a 60/40 where I had the 40. Best of all, I took the green light when people told me the pot was free for me to take. I'm trying to get back to elementary bluffing 101 - that is, don't go after pots that someone is telling you they really want, just look for pots where they're begging you to bet so they can fold, and just give them what they want. I got very unlucky to run into AA in the hand of a very loose allin raiser when I had QQ. He was literally going allin with any pair, so 2 hands dominate me, and I dominate 10 hands. I had a perfect read on the guy and got the situation I wanted and laid the trap and - he had aces. I made a bad play with 55 in the second game - hey doofus (me), low pairs suck, fold!!
There's no need to stock things like "light brown sugar" and "dark brown sugar", or "light corn syrup" and "dark corn syrup". Just buy some molasses, and you can make any shade of sugar.
Cooking For Engineers has a good review of chef's knives .
Cafe Ladro and Vita were much better of course. Cafe Vita is one of the best-tasting brews I've ever had. I used to live on the top of Queen Anne hill, and we'd walk over to Ladro in the cold, bundled up in scarves and hats, with a fine mist of rain often falling. We'd sit in Ladro and read in The Stranger about all the great music happening in town, and I'd look at the hipsters and wonder what exciting cool things they do. We'd walk over to the little bench at 5th and Lynn that overlooked Gas Works and Lake Union and sit a while before the cold and rain drove us home. Writing this I realize how much I miss Seattle and how badly I need to get out of this shit-hole of a little town.
The 1 PM 30+3 rebuy tournament on Party Poker is the craziest weakest tournament I've ever seen. You just have to try to play super tight and double up with the nuts. It's pretty high variance, because you're gonna have to show down hands. Certainly guys with flush draws & things like that will call allins on the flop. In most tournaments I'd guess my buyin has an EV of about 1.5 buyins, but in this event I think I'm more like 3 buyins.
Unfortunately, in my weak moments I struggle with the tight game. I think to myself, clearly this guy has a weak hand that he'll release if I just put one more bet in. No, he won't, and that was my bad play, I'm a donkey.
Seat 2: TARPONHUNTER (5955) Seat 7: jverson1984 (8965) Seat 8: chukb (5080) chukb posts small blind (150) TARPONHUNTER posts big blind (300) ** Dealing down cards ** Dealt to chukb [ Ac, Qh ] jverson1984 calls (300) chukb raises (750) to 900 TARPONHUNTER folds. jverson1984 calls (600) (pretty standard 3x raise with AQ, maybe I should have raised more because I'm out of position and there's a limper before me) ** Dealing Flop ** : [ 8h, 4c, Jh ] chukb bets (1100) jverson1984 raises (2200) to 2200 (normally I'd be thinking semi-bluff; he could have the hearts or the str8 draw, but I've never seen this guy semibluff before. Normally he's just calling his draws. Of course he still might be semibluffing). chukb calls (1100) (ugh. I hate my hand now, but it's beating a lot of things he might have here. Of course he may have the jack.) ** Dealing Turn ** : [ 5c ] chukb checks. jverson1984 bets (2200) chukb folds. (he bets enough to put me allin. 3/5 of my stack is now in the pot, so I can't fold, can I? I'm worried he has the jack, and if so I'm maybe on a 6 outer, and definitely not getting the odds for it). ** Summary ** Main Pot: 8700 Board: [ 8h 4c Jh 5c ] TARPONHUNTER balance 5655, lost 300 (folded) jverson1984 balance 12365, bet 5300, collected 8700, net +3400 chukb balance 1980, lost 3100 (folded)
I think the key moment was on the flop. I probably should have gone allin or folded right there. If he calls I might have some outs, and he may be on the draw. I suppose it's also possible he has a hand like 77, any pair below jacks, which is actually beating me but might fold to an allin on the flop.
I guess I also could have just checked into the flop, I didn't need to lead at him. Then I could have seen what he would do, maybe check-raised him or check-called or just folded and got out with a good stack still intact.
Suppose you see a flop 3-handed. You have a strong hand, like top pair, but there are many draws possible. For concreteness, let's say you have KJ on the button, the flop is 89J with two spades. The player in the blinds checks, and then the other guy bets, but it's only 1/4 of the pot. Now you have to act with a guy behind you. Certainly you're not going to fold, but if you just call, the guy in the blinds has great odds to call with any kind of draw. Furthermore the original better may just be betting his draw to get a cheap card. The trouble is if you raise, you've made the initial better live again to reraise, and your hand can't really stand a raise, you'd much rather just call.
This compendium of predicted lines is a pretty nice betting tool.
Fedor Emelianenko is by far the best all around fighter I've ever seen. He's trained in Sambo , which is the Russian offshoot of Japanese Judo and Jiu-jitsu. Sambo was developed for the Russian military and KGB, and is extremely practical and effective. Fedor is the most relaxed fighter I've ever seen. He doesn't fake laugh or put on a poker face like some, he's just really calm and in the moment, loose and able to respond and think clearly in the heat of the moment.
I'm in the BB with KJs. SB in the 2nd chip leader with nearly as many chips as me. I really don't want to get in confrontations with him, but KJs is an ok hand. Folds to the SB and he raises to 3x. I call. Flop is KT7. First thought is I'm in pretty good shape. He bets out about half pot. That could be a lot of hands, so I raise a solid big raise, about 3x more. He reraises, about 2x my raise. Now I'm thinking whoah, what's going on here. He opened raised and now reraises. He must have a king, or he could even have TT or 77, maybe he has KT or KQ or AK. I don't see a lot of hands that he can do this with that I can beat. I fold. (the main hand I can think of that would do this that I can beat is QJ, the straight draw, but I figure there are a lot more hands that beat me).
Later he admitted he had K8. I really don't have a good read on what he was doing; I guess he thought he was value-raising with K8, that it was actually a good hand. I have a lot of trouble against players who think that any top pair is a very good hand. They put a lot of pressure on you because they won't fold even to reraises when they have what are actually mediocre hands, so it's very hard to tell when you're ahead or not. After this hand I was just hoping to hit a good hand like top pair 2nd kicker so I could bust him, but I never got a hand that good. The best I got was Q8 with top pair Q, and that's a trouble hand. Again he reraised me, and I can easily be beat. I'm one of those players who likes to keep the pot small when I have a decent top pair, and I'm succesptible to being moved off the hand.
I think an allin rereraise by me would have been a good move on this KJ hand. Against a solid tough player, I'm surely beat. But, consider that there could be three types of guys I'm up against - a loose fish will have a worse hand and either fold or call with a worse hand, a super tight rock will fold even better hands, only a tough, tight, smart (or lucky) player will call here and beat me. On the odds, pushing is +EV.
Anyhoo, the whole thing made me feel sick. I played okay most hands, but in some key situations I played badly. Clearly in my climb up the poker ladder I've slipped a bit.
tennisprobry posts small blind (10) brasattack posts big blind (20) ** Dealing down cards ** Dealt to chukb [ 9h, Jh ] pjschav folds. Roscoe451 raises (40) to 40 eceed folds. Fold_Deuces calls (40) showell calls (40) TL1981 folds. chukb calls (40) (I call on the button with a nice flop-seeing hand. I actually like the fact that one guy min-raised, because it means he might have something good enough to pay me off if I hit my hand) tennisprobry folds. brasattack calls (20) ** Dealing Flop ** : [ Ah, 3h, 9d ] brasattack checks. Roscoe451 checks. Fold_Deuces folds. showell checks. chukb checks. (I've got a huge draw - the flush draw + a pair drawing to trips or two pair, I certainly want to play. I'm worried that if I bet here it will kill action. Furthermore, this table has been nutty with people reraising allin, so I'd like to go ahead and hit my hand before I have to get allin). ** Dealing Turn ** : [ 7h ] brasattack checks. Roscoe451 checks. showell bets (60) chukb raises (180) to 180 (I've hit the flush. Annoyingly showell has bet very very small, well less than even half pot size. I'm worried someone has a higher heart and will certainly call that tiny bet. I want to charge higher hearts, and hopefully someone has an ace and will fight for it). brasattack folds. Roscoe451 folds. showell folds.
Not very successful. Maybe I should have bet a little on the flop to start sweetening the pot. Also on the turn I could have just called, and maybe the others would have called behind. Then, most of the time I'm still winning on the river and can try to milk it more at that point. If showell would have bet bigger on the turn I would have just called and hoped he would bet again on the river.
The heads up with walla5 was a great challenge. At first I was playing more aggressive, stealing more pots, and I ran up to a 2:1 chip lead, which is a nice spot to be in because I can put him allin to try to knock him out and still be in a decent spot if I lose. He suddenly turned on the gas and started stealing and restealing a lot more and we got back to almost exactly even stacks. The blinds were very low - 200/400 with our stacks around 15,000 - that's an M of 25, which is unusually high and meant we had a lot of play. When I was raising preflop I'd usually make it 1400 to go, a pretty standard 3.5x raise. walla5 was usually making it 3000 to go. This is a major overbet, and a mistake I was hoping to capitalize on, but I could never get good cards any of the many times he made this raise. The interesting thing about this raise is that it's a powerful inflection point that puts the pressure on me. When I would raise to 1400, he could come over the top to resteal for about 3500. I would usually fold then unless I had a good hand, and if I reraised there, he could just fold, because 3500 is not too much of his 15,000. On the other hand, when he would come in for 3000, in order for me to put a decent raise on that, I have to make it 9000 to go, which is over half my stack, and now I'm pot committed. So by making that size raise, he's forcing me to fold or go allin. Then if I go allin, he can choose to call or fold, calling with his monsters to bust me and folding and just losing 3000 with his steals. This is a powerful play in general - forcing your opponent to make the decision about whether they go allin or not, without actually putting too many of your chips in. This is DoubleA's theory of "pressure points". Of course he was overbetting, so the correct response is just for me to fold and wait for good hands and try to bust him. Finally I did get a hand that I thought was good enough to play back - AQ. I moved in and he turned over AK and he won (he had the chip lead at that point, 15100 to 14900 !).
My two and three table play continues to be very strong. I tabulated my results for the last two months. I've cashed in two & three tables 140% more than random. That is, in two tables 4 out of 20 play, you would cash 20% of the time randomly, I'm cashing 20%*1.4 = 28% of the time. In two tables I also have a very strong record for first places when I cash. 70% of my cashes are for 1st place, as opposed to 25% if it was random. In the three tables, my first places are much closer to random, 33% instead of the 20% it would be if random (5 cash in the three tables). It's possible to make decent money at these sit & gos but you can't make great money because the highest buyin you get regularly is $30. At a 140% return my EV for a $33 buyin is $42, or +$9 per go, which is not much. You have to play at 110% just to match the rake. This stretch has included some streaks of bad play by me, so I think 150% is certainly possible, and maybe with perfect play something like 200% might be possible.
my03harley posts small blind (50) chukb posts big blind (100) ** Dealing down cards ** Dealt to chukb [ 7s, 3s ] zico10pele folds. winoid folds. cardrack007 folds. murfie82 calls (100) joedee39 folds. ashbauc folds. sponge3000 folds. KarmoE folds. my03harley calls (50) chukb checks. ** Dealing Flop ** : [ 5d, 3h, 9h ] my03harley checks. chukb bets (200) murfie82 calls (200) my03harley folds. ** Dealing Turn ** : [ Jd ] chukb checks. murfie82 bets (1103) chukb folds. ** Summary **
I have junk in the BB and flop bottom pair. I like to lead with these kinds of hands on the flop to see if I can just get a fold. When he just calls, that tell me I'm probably winning, he most likely has overs. The jack on the turn sucks for me, but I can't really be scared of that. Probably I should have gone ahead and led out o nthe turn as well. Checking the turn let him bluff at me. He bets enough to put me allin on the turn. I really think I'm ahead. He's been pretty loose, his preflop limp doesn't imply good cards. I eventually decided to save my chips for a better spot.
Over the past week I've lost a ton, and it could have been avoided with one simple control - when I'm losing and not playing well, I have to stop playing. Just walk away, take a small loss on the day, play again the next day. When I'm playing well, there's no need to put a limit on the play, I can keep going, but when I'm losing (because of bad play), I have to get out.
The correct way to do it is to first assume that each person's chance of winning 1st place is equal to their chip count divided by the total chip count. Then you look at the remainder assuming each of those did happen. eg. assume player 3 won first place, now assume that the chance of winning 2nd place if that happens is equal to each person's stack divided by the total remaining chips (with player 3 gone), and recurse.
So, I just coded this up and put in the GoldBullion poker suite. (but I haven't uploaded the new code yet).
For example, the correct payouts in the example they provide are :
Teddybear : 1556.918743 JellyFish : 1141.400077 Ace : 1041.893275 Commandor : 572.407355 Fantastic4: 517.167609 MrRomeo : 458.542746 TangoKing : 347.258367 Gladiator : 345.989316 Franklyn : 340.909027 Bluesky : 227.513486
The big difference there is a lot less for the chip leader and a lot more for the smaller but not smallest stacks.
Nacimiento-Ferguson Road. What an amazing road !? Who knew it was so beautiful ! Sycamores changing color with the fall. The road itself is wonderfully windy, great fun in a decent car. My Prelude SH is not fast, but it's a monster in the curves, and we whipped up and down the mountain road. Crossing back through the army base, there was a huge herd of these deer-like things right near the road. They look like Caribou, but that's not possible is it? Caribou are only up in the cold.
Big Sur Bakery , just north of Nepenthe, is fantastic. They have gas pumps outside, and some of the best scones I've had inside. Get there before noon while they're still bringing out all sorts of fresh-baked goodies.
One thing was drilled into my head again - solid straightforward play is rewarded, and trying to be clever almost always works out as being stupid. All of the really bad donkey plays at the final table occur when people play unorthodox and try to make weird moves. The guys who just wait for good hands and push them get paid off and do well. Dannenman is the perfect example of this. I think the guy's understanding of poker is very poor, but he plays solid straightforward value poker, doesn't make any stupid flame-out donkey moves, and does extremely well.
Note to self : stop pushing in with low pairs late in tourneys.
There's a key hand at the end of the 2nd show with Phil Ivey and Tony G. Our commentator has already commented on how Ivey played his 93o like such a genius. Umm, no, not really, he just bet it. It's pretty easy to just bet all the time, which Ivey does. The hard thing for a player like Ivey is to avoid getting trapped and to know when your mediocre hands are actually good. Anyway, the hand goes roughly like this :
UTG limps, and many limpers follow. Ivey limps 44. Tony G in the BB finds AKo. I don't know exactly what the stacks are, but it looks like the BB is about 300, and the stacks are around 30,000 , so the stacks are very deep. Tony G wisely raises from the BB, he raises to 2700, 9x the BB. All fold except Ivey who calls. I think this is a pretty questionable call. Tony G most likely has a higher pair, he could also have AK or maybe AQ, but most of the time Ivey is dominated, and he's calling 1/10 of his stack to try to hit a set.
The flop is a miracle flop with Ivey - A45. Tony has top pair top kicker and Ivey has a set of fours. The commentator is talking about what a genius Ivey is. No, he just got really lucky. Tony checks. I assume he was planning on check-raising all along. Ivey bets out 5000, about half the pot. I like Ivey's bet here, since he bluffs so often it's clearly correct to bet his good hands - in fact if he checked here that would be a real warning sign. Tony G raises to 15k. I love the check-raise here. Most of the time Ivey is beat, and will bet it, and you just got his coin. The commentator is saying how check-raises are wrong in No Limit because they don't provide information. People who play for information are morons. You play for chips, and check-raising against a hyper-aggressive player is exactly the right move. In fact, if you wanted to be really cute you could just smooth call and check-raise the turn, which Ivey would surely bet again.
Ivey calls on the flop. Now, that's a bit of a warning sign, he would usually give it up there if he had a weak hand, but even a hand like 67 is possible. I'm not sure why Ivey doesn't just reraise here. Maybe he puts Tony on a hand like TT, which would fold to a reraise fearing the ace, so he's hoping Tony will lead at the turn so Phil can call. At this point Tony G is basically pot committed. The pot is around 40k and Tony only has 15k left. The hard thing against Ivey is if you're beat in this spot you almost have to pay him off, because he messes around so much.
I can't believe how badly the "pros" play against Ivey. Hey douche-bags, read this : when you're playing with a super loose-aggressive player, this is what you do : tighten up, play premium hands, and come in for strong raises. If you hit much, bet it hard, try to get allin. Check-raises are good, and usually check-raise allin so that he can't rebluff. Yes, this increases your variance and you'll pay off his great hands, but that's gonna happen anyway.
Today I got back on track and played pretty darn well, but still lost a lot of money due to just unending horrific beats. I got a 2nd and 3rd place in small tournaments, but that doesn't pay much, you really need 1st places. Oh well, I still feel good that at least I got my game back on the rails, hopefully we'll see some profit tomorrow.
I get A3s and try to limp. I always want to limp suited aces in the early low-blind play. When Jak raises, often I'd fold here because I don't like playing low aces, but Jak has been raising so liberally I have to call, and if I hit my ace I may be stuck depending on the action. Again, when he leads at the flop, that might be a hand, but it could easily just be continuation. I now have the nut flush draw + probably an overcard, and I want to see where I'm at. When he reraises allin, I know he has something, but I have 12 outs and now I'm pot-stuck.
Blinds (10/15) ** Dealing down cards ** Dealt to chukb [ 3c Ac ] karodd3 folds. lanwin calls [15]. Decee3 folds. salsa95 folds. Scarrineau folds. chukb calls [15]. x_neow_x folds. nfin1 folds. tencars calls [5]. JakTheKipper raises [45]. lanwin calls [45]. chukb calls [45]. tencars folds. ** Dealing Flop ** [ Kc, 8h, 2c ] JakTheKipper bets [100]. lanwin folds. chukb raises [300]. JakTheKipper is all-In [1100] chukb: ugh chukb: I cant fold chukb is all-In [610] ** Dealing Turn ** [ 8s ] ** Dealing River ** [ 4s ] chukb shows [ 3c, Ac ] a pair of eights. JakTheKipper shows [ Ks, Qc ] two pairs, kings and eights.
The call at the end is certainly right, I'm 44% to win and getting 2:1 odds. Perhaps the most questionable play is the raise to 300. The funny thing about it is I'm pot-committing myself so that I have to call, even when he reraises and tells me he has it. Any smaller bet though and he won't fold junk. Of course bluffing here is rather suspect since he wont fold many better hands than mine, maybe he'd fold better ace-highs.
How would you play? Well, basically if someone open raises, you fold, except if they seem like they're stealing a lot and raising in a steal position, then every once in a while you come in for a nice reraise. You limp or call small in your blinds, and if the flop looks junky, you lead out. Once in a while if the flop is like Q42, you check, if they bet what looks like a bluff/continuation, you put in a nice raise. When it folds to you, you make steal raises in the late positions a reasonable amount. Every once in a while you make a nice raise early and get ready to play a big pot.
"Intermission" was surprisingly not bad. Usually I hate big ensemble movies; they suffer from too many characters, none of them really developed, lots of thin stories standing in for the lack of one good one. This movie does not disappoint in that way. Colin Farrel turns in his best performance that I've ever seen, playing an Irish misfit/lowlife hoodlum (very good casting to type, I'd say). Colm Meaney also does a nice job; you can sense him having a laugh, really relishing making fun of the type he portrays.
Seat 1: hero_2_zero (1755) Seat 2: chukb (1795) Seat 4: jalanh4680 (1065) Seat 5: StubomAnn (1815) Seat 6: dsmith3622 (2475) Seat 7: annieduke99 (2895) Seat 8: Danielcerda (2825) Seat 9: srains (1005) Seat 10: uncletaka (2060) StubomAnn posts small blind (25) dsmith3622 posts big blind (50) ** Dealing down cards ** Dealt to chukb [ Qs, Kh ] annieduke99 folds. Danielcerda folds. srains folds. uncletaka folds. hero_2_zero folds. chukb raises (150) to 150 jalanh4680 calls (150) StubomAnn calls (125) dsmith3622 folds. ** Dealing Flop ** : [ Qh, 7s, 2d ] StubomAnn bets (1665) StubomAnn is all-In. chukb calls (1645) chukb is all-In. jalanh4680 folds. ** Dealing Turn ** : [ 3c ] ** Dealing River ** : [ 3h ] Creating Main Pot with $3790 with chukb Creating Side Pot 1 with $20 with StubomAnn ** Summary ** Main Pot: 3790 | Side Pot 1: 20 Board: [ Qh 7s 2d 3c 3h ] StubomAnn shows [ Qd Ah ]
It's such a weird play, it's so hard to say what to do here. I'm not sure if I made a good call or an absolute donkey play that only pays off better hands (two pairs and such). There's absolutely no draws for her to defend against, but I guess it worked. This seems to be a major leak in my game, I'm paying off better hands when they ridiculously overbet.
I'm on a terrible losing streak in the last few days. I've lost about half the big winnings I made in the last week. It's hard for me to tell how much of it is bad play and how much is just variance and bad cards. Certainly any time I lose a big pot or go out of a tournament, it's usually a "bad beat" because I'm usually in with the best of it, but that's just because I play tighter than the average on party poker (the above hand is an exception, of course).
Some simple things you can do online : 1) Bet weird amounts. If you were going to bet 100, instead bet 107. This is really dumb, but it makes your opponent think about something other than the hand. 2) Chat weird nonsense during the hand. You need to do this consistently and randomly in order for it to not give away information. 3) Have a distracting name, like "loosecaller". Whether or not you are a loose caller, it will distract your opponents.
This hand is in a $20 tourney and there's a very dangerous mix of good players and complete donkeys. Everyone limps so people can be on almost any two cards (limpers in this game are very loose). I'm in the BB with A4s. I flop top pair with a good draw (11 outs against an overpair).
Seat 8 is the button Total number of players : 10 Seat 2: steerpike_x ( $585 ) Seat 3: alcher74 ( $530 ) Seat 4: Tempest61614 ( $2605 ) Seat 6: sdtaft348 ( $180 ) Seat 8: ruffster111 ( $1520 ) Seat 9: Silverdog ( $590 ) Seat 10: chukb ( $720 ) Seat 1: TIMETRAIN ( $1605 ) Seat 7: outformoney ( $2440 ) Seat 5: zurk11 ( $1715 ) Trny:17350698 Level:3 Blinds (15/30) ** Dealing down cards ** Dealt to chukb [ As 4s ] TIMETRAIN folds. steerpike_x folds. alcher74 calls [30]. Tempest61614 folds. zurk11 folds. sdtaft348 folds. outformoney calls [30]. ruffster111 calls [30]. Silverdog calls [15]. chukb checks. ** Dealing Flop ** [ 2d, 4c, 3s ] Silverdog checks. chukb checks. alcher74 checks. outformoney bets [300]. ruffster111 folds. Silverdog folds. chukb is all-In [690] alcher74 folds. outformoney calls [390]. ** Dealing Turn ** [ Ts ] ** Dealing River ** [ Qh ] outformoney shows [ Kc, Ks ] a pair of kings. chukb shows [ As, 4s ] a pair of fours.
There are several problems with this semi-bluff. One, I don't have enough chips to make them fold a better hand, so any kind of bluff is inappropriate. Two, the pot before the action is not that big, so it's not worth fighting over. Three, by the betting I can be pretty sure "outformoney" is on an overpair. I can't imagine that a moron would limp KK like that, that's a terrible play, but I could certainly imagine a medium/low pair. There's no way an overpair will fold here, so basically I'm running all my chips at 35% odds on a pot that's not offering that.
Perhaps the best play would have been to lead out with a probe bet on this flop, then when "outformoney" come over the top, I can either fold or call if the pot is then giving me enough odds. The pot after the flop was 150, so if I bet 90, it would be 330 and 600 more to call, so again clearly not the right odds and an easy fold.
Now, outformoney was a bit of a bluffer, so there was some chance that she just had two overs, but I don't think it was enough.
This hand is early in a two-table tourney and my lower house pays off the higher house.
Blinds (10/15) ** Dealing down cards ** Dealt to chukb [ 6c 8c ] ejf1969 folds. pktrkts75 folds. SportsHec8 folds. jecttu calls [15]. alban71 calls [15]. BriLariche folds. krhegg calls [15]. J_P_King folds. chukb calls [5]. tonygaw checks. ** Dealing Flop ** [ 9s, 9h, 8d ] chukb bets [55]. tonygaw calls [55]. jecttu folds. alban71 calls [55]. krhegg folds. ** Dealing Turn ** [ 8h ] chukb checks. tonygaw checks. alban71 bets [95]. chukb calls [95]. tonygaw calls [95]. ** Dealing River ** [ Jc ] chukb checks. tonygaw is all-In [990] alban71 folds. chukb: wow chukb: you do know houses beat straights right? Your time bank will be activated in 5 secs. If you do not want it to be used, please act now. chukb will be using his time bank for this hand. chukb is all-In [895] chukb shows [ 6c, 8c ] a full house, Eights full of nines. tonygaw shows [ Kc, 9d ] a full house, Nines full of eights.
The thing that fucks me up is the way he moves allin on the river. He's played it slow the whole way, as he should, but that could also have been TJ or some nonsense like that. Then he's allin on the river, a massive overbet. He doesn't try to milk it at all, so I think there's a reasonable chance he's bluffing. There are only 2 nines in the deck, so it's much more likely he has any other hand. On the other hand, he can't really have any other hand - I have to fold here. It's just too much to risk for not a very big pot.
When people overbet a pot, it may be a mistake, it may look fishy, but the only proper response is to fold unless you have a really big hand. You may lose some pots that you could have won, but you stay alive and get a chance to double up later when you actually do have it.
I've been playing so well the last 10 days or so, today I've taken a big step back. I'm back to making mistakes where I'm thinking in my head "don't make this donkey mistake", and then I do that exact thing.
***** Hand History for Game 3002739247 ***** 30/60 Tourney Texas Hold'em Game Table (NL) (Tournament 17240452) - Tue Nov 08 13:28:19 EST 2005 Table 2 - Table(509831) Table 2 (Real Money) -- Seat 6 is the button Total number of players : 6 Seat 1: timm_ (1800) Seat 2: nolgrtrkr (635) Seat 3: so_standard (855) Seat 6: chukb (1235) Seat 8: SADHP (2145) Seat 9: r821546 (3330) SADHP posts small blind (15) r821546 posts big blind (30) ** Dealing down cards ** Dealt to chukb [ Ac, Kc ] timm_ folds. nolgrtrkr raises (125) to 125 so_standard calls (125) chukb raises (1000) to 1000 SADHP folds. r821546 folds. nolgrtrkr calls (510) nolgrtrkr is all-In. so_standard folds. Creating Main Pot with $1440 with nolgrtrkr ** Dealing Flop ** : [ 5h, 3s, 3c ] ** Dealing Turn ** : [ 3d ] ** Dealing River ** : [ 8d ] ** Summary ** Main Pot: 1440 | Side Pot 1: 365 Board: [ 5h 3s 3c 3d 8d ] nolgrtrkr balance 1440, bet 635, collected 1440, net +805 [ Qh Qc ] [ a full house, Threes full of queens -- Qh,Qc,3s,3c,3d ] chukb balance 600, bet 1000, collected 365, lost -635 [ Ac Kc ] [ three of a kind, threes -- Ac,Kc,3s,3c,3d ]
We have a guy early who comes in for a 4x raise. That's surely a pair or a good ace. The next guy just calls. Again surely a pair or good ace, possibly KQ or QJ. I look down and find AKs. In the game, I push in here, because this was just a day after I folded AKs like a moron so I'm damn well not folding AKs. However, I think I made a big mistake here. I think probably the best play here is just calling. Usually I hate just calling with AK, but here I think it's right. If they both have pairs - that's good for me. If one has a pair and one has an ace, the pair is a big favorite, especially if the guy with the ace folds. Instead of having a 45% shot to win, I only have a 33% shot. If I just call, I can see the flop and if there's an Ace or King, I'm in good shape, if not I can get out.
20/40 Tourney Texas Hold'em Game Table (NL) (Tournament 17294387) - Thu Nov 10 12:45:54 EST 2005 Table Multi-Table(509675) Table 38 (Real Money) -- Seat 1 is the button Total number of players : 9 Seat 1: steeler535 (900) Seat 2: schwatzz7 (2050) Seat 3: cliffnotes14 (990) Seat 4: decatur247 (420) Seat 5: chukb (785) Seat 6: RMangham (2685) Seat 7: ukfan20 (1315) Seat 9: Bgworm68222 (345) Seat 10: Benini747 (1975) schwatzz7 posts small blind (10) cliffnotes14 posts big blind (20) ** Dealing down cards ** Dealt to chukb [ Jd, Ac ] decatur247 folds. chukb raises (50) to 50 RMangham calls (50) ukfan20 folds. Bgworm68222 raises (345) to 345 Bgworm68222 is all-In. Benini747 folds. steeler535 calls (345) schwatzz7 folds. cliffnotes14 folds. chukb folds. RMangham folds. Creating Main Pot with $820 with Bgworm68222 Board: [ 9h 4s 9c 3s 5h ] steeler535 balance 555, lost 345 [ Ks Qs ] [ a pair of nines -- Ks,Qs,9h,9c,5h ] Bgworm68222 balance 820, bet 345, collected 820, net +475 [ Ah 7h ] [ a pair of nines with ace kicker -- Ah,9h,9c,7h,5hAh(kicker card) ]
This is very early in a multi-table tourney, the blinds are still tiny. "steeler525" has just been moved to the table so I don't have a good read on him. "Bgworm68222" is a fish - if it was just him, I'd have called. I make a standard open raise with AJ, one short stack comes ott allin, and a moderate stack cold calls him. That sets off alarms in my head, he must have a big hand, so I fold. Turns out I had the best hand and would have taken a nice pot. At the time I started going "gosh, should I have called?". No, of course not, just because calling was the right move here doesn't mean calling here is good in general. In this situation I have to assume "steeler525" at least has a higher ace or a pocket pair like TT or better, so I'd be racing with bad odds.
The fact that people are playing this way, especially near the end when the blinds are big, seems to put the lie to the gap concept and Harrington's end-game strategy. That all works when everyone is playing sensible and tight, but not when they're calling with these types of hands. The result is I have to tighten up and play more of a double-up game rather than blind-stealing. Which sucks for me too.