Joe The Pro

Mid Stack

2009-02-04T16:25:00.003-05:00

Last month, mid stacking, I won back all the money the two previous months in my downswing. This month I am doing well with mid stacking also. A long time ago I had a mid stacking experiment that I did for 3 months that I also did very well (5bb/100 average?). Maybe I should just stick to what works for me instead of trying what I'm not good at.

I've always fueled myself to be the best complete poker player that I can be by fixing my leaks and playing in ways that sometimes made me feel uncomfortable in order to learn how to be better. But maybe I should use what I'm good at and work with that. I'm good at preflop. Actually I'm usually very good at preflop.

I'm good at the flop.

I'm pretty good on the turn.

I'm not so good by the river.

I think this suits midstack very well because by the river my decisions are very minimal and I make all the important decisions by the turn, if not the flop. You could argue that if I'm so good preflop, why do I not just play short stacked. Because no matter how good you are preflop, 20BB converts you to merely a mathematical game and there's not much edge to it. Short stacking is also VERY common and people online know how to counter/play against it.

I enjoy midstacking very much because it's not as common and not as mathematical. I feel that the mistakes people make on the flop (which I'm good at) are severely punished because by the turn they think to themselves, he's hardly got anything left, i'll just go with it and it's very wrong to do so because I still have nearly 40bb.

A few tricks I have:

If I raise on the button and one of the blinds is 3betting me at 10 percent or greater and I'm sure of this. I can repush with 88+,AJs, AQs, AQ, AK,AKs and not feel bad at all no matter what he turns over. The close call might be the AJs. But for all the other ones he could be doing it with as low as 9percent.

Another thing I've learned is, say I have KQ, KJ, AT in the BB and someone on the button is stealing from me. It's very difficult to play OOP and even if this guy is stealing often from the button (so your call would often dominate him and theoritically you could make a lot of money from this) if he hardly ever cbets then I usually fold. I want to make money check raising when I hit it because when I miss I will often fold, since OOP is hard to play. Usually deep stack its a dangerous play to check raise with only top pair medium kicker but at my stack and in that situation, I'd get it in every time if repushed.

I'm going to continue to mid stack the remainder of my two months in Vietnam. If I continue to do well I will stick with it and maybe move up stakes mid stacking.

Response to my Aha moment

2009-01-16T05:59:00.004-05:00

I'm going to post Azn_cutie's comment because it was very detailed and interesting (btw I showed my friend your blog and he wished you posted more). I am going to try to respond to the points. Azn will be in blue and I will be in black.

Azn_Cutie has left a new comment on your post "Aha moment":

Hey Joe,
It's nice to see you thinking so much about the game. Just a few points:

-9 out draws like flush draws are going to get there 1 in 5 times, not 1 in 6 (~20% to hit on the river), 8 out draws like OESD draws are going to hit about 18% of the time, or 1 in 5.5 times.

Then this makes drawing even more profitable than I had calculated. It's getting me even more excited.

-This point you make:

Cost of Misses: 5 x 4.7 = 23.5

His "cost" of missing is actually significantly higher than 4.7BB. He is probably going to incur cost calling a sizeable bet on the turn if he opts to call 4.7BB on the flop. Thus, the call of 4.7BB is actually implicity higher because it prices him into larger bets later when he is a bigger dog.

Going to be hard for me to try to explain my point I think.

Two things:

It is exactly 4.7 if he folds when he misses. If he always folds when misses and bets only when he hits it then itcosts him 4.7x5 (or 4.7x4 with the FD as you pointed out) and if he hits he has 2 streets of value that doesn't cost very much to make that back at all!

Then it can be seen exactly as calculated.

But even if he doesn't fold, I think the calculation still stands. This is not a hand like Top Pair that has reverse implied odds and getting priced in now and then facing ballooning turn and river bets (trying again to price you in) will hurt you terribly.

The cost of the expanding pot size street by street does not affect strong drawing hands as it would small pot hands like TP. That's why I believe you can look at the costs without mitigating in the expanding pot size factor (it's fine with this type of hand).

One factor I did not include was when you hit your draw but lose out to a higher flush draw, or FH etc... this would lower your implied odds. I would of course be more careful drawing on paired boards.

This is kind of a weird concept and Barry Greenstein describes it well. The point is you cannot look at bets at individual streets in relation to pot odds strictly unless all the money is going in because there is always a higher implicit cost associated with calling. By getting a good price on earlier streets, you are just forcing yourself into being priced in for bigger bets in later streets.

but i think this is fine as long as you still have deep enough stacks to get the implied odds you need.

when short, it's all about pot odds, but when deep, its a lot more about implied odds. thats why you can have such great successful lags, they understand that preflop and actually even the flop they can fool around a bit in position with deep stacks.

This is the thread that BG talks about it in:

http://www.pokerroad.com/forums/showthread.php?t=621&page=3

Will read right after this post.

If you are having trouble with paying off draws that get there, one thing to consider might be checking the turn more often, which sounds counterintuitive at first.

If you're really deep, that doesn't sound so crazy.

I don't know about the players you're up against, but full ring plays generally tighter than 6max and the hand ranges are a lot more polarized. It's tough to get value on all 3 streets when you flop a big hand. Checking turn controls pot size for your 1pair type hands and gets you an extra street of value on the river from mediocre hands and busted draws. The added benefit too is when the draws do get there, you can pay off smaller bets that don't hurt you quite as much. Once again, this may not quite be applicable to your 6max games since the bluff frequency is probably a lot higher and you can get value more easily from strong hands.

You're probably refering to in and out of position, but, yes, when out of position it's so tough, so I like the idea of checking for pot control. when would you advise checking flop vs turn for pot control. check dry flops?

Interesting post though, I like the way you're thinking. I feel like I explained this in a really convoluted way, sorry.

i think i did understand your points and i hope my points make sense too and i'd like to hear your thoughts on if i'm wrong.

it still seems to me that flop drawing is very cheap because of the implied odds and ballooning pots (and not really even ballooning, just calling his flop bet), is not a factor when deep and you have a strong draw. you need to be paid so little for it to be profitable. He just needs to honestly have something.

there are times when he gives up too and you can take it, or maybe you win with high card.

it just seems that when in position with draws i've been folding way too much and it looks very profitable (perhaps not as much in FR games where people don't pay off as much).

Aha moment

2009-01-15T16:16:00.004-05:00

Lying in bed tonight, thinking about poker and how I keep paying off calling stations who hit their draw. I asked myself a simple question: What would I need to charge someone on the street before to be neutral EV if I paid off their made flush/straight river bet.

After fooling with numbers, I came to a startling conclusion that I was way underestimating implied odds and the so-called fish/calling stations that I often was angry with (calling my almost pot size flop bets!) had very good implied odds to do so.

Let’s play out a hand with bet sizes. Let’s, for now, say that the bet sizes are 2/3 pot always. And see how that bet size deals with implied odds.

Preflop: Hero bets 3.5bb. Villain calls 3.5bb

Flop: (pot 7bb) Hero bets 4.7bb. Villain calls 4.7bb.

Turn: (pot 16.4bb) Hero bets 11bb. Villain calls 11bb.

River: (pot 38.4bb)

So on the flop our Hero bets a standard 2/3 pot size bet. Villian has a flush draw and will hit his flush 1 in 6 times. He will MISS 5 times and he will HIT 1 time. How much does he need to win that 1 time to make up for the 5 times he missed? The answer surprised me.

Cost of Misses: 5 x 4.7 = 23.5

So when he hits, he needs to win this much back to be neutral in EV. But wait, the one time he does call and hit it, there was already 7bb in the pot, plus the Hero’s 4.7bb. So we must subtract that from what he needs to bet and win in the future streets.

23.5 – 7 – 4.7 = 11.8

He needs to bet and win 11.8bb more. Go back and look at the turn pot size. It’s already at 16.4bb. And he has two streets to try to win 11.8bb.

Let’s say Villian called the flop bet and missed on the turn and now faces the Hero’s 11bb bet. Using the same math let’s find out what he would need to earn on the river to justify the call.

Miss: 5 x 11 = 55

55 – 11 – 16.4 = 27.6

With the river pot size at 38.4, this is very reasonable, but Villian will only have 1 street to get his full value. If the villain hits his flush and you pay off more than this number, Villian has made extra money off you from his implied odds motivated call on the turn.

In the examples above I did the calculations assuming there was a 2/3rds pot size bet. But what happens if you charge them more?

Lets say it’s the turn again, and this time, you decide to bet 13 into 16.4, instead of 11.

Miss: 5 x 13 = 65

65 – 13 – 16.4 = 35.6

It turns out there is a good short cut to estimate:

Villain needs to bet the same percentage of the pot on the current street as Hero did on the previous street. So that means if you bet half pot on the turn. Villain would need to bet and win half pot on the river to make his call neutral.

Implications

If you are protecting:

1. There is so much implied odds during the flop (because they have 2 streets of implied odds) that protecting it is more difficult than it’s worth since by betting pot or over betting will get folds from hands dominated or weaker one pair hands. Just bet a moderate amount.
2. The turn is actually the most crucial street in planning because it sets up all the justification for folding or calling on the river. Preflop and flop is the time for speculation and mixing up of play and the mistakes are minimal. But once you get to the turn, it’s business time.

If you are drawing

1. On the flop, if you have a good draw you can call really large bets, even pot size. If the player is really bad, you probably can call overbets. You really just need to hit it that one time and then you have two streets of value to win it back.

This is the MAIN point of my realization is a formula similar to calling with pocket pairs preflop if you think you can win 10x your call:

2. Call with your draw (this goes for flush and OESD) when you believe you can make back the same percentage of the following street. For example, call a pot size flop bet if you think you can win the turn’s pot size (from the turn AND river). Or call a 3/4th pot size flop bet if you can win 3/4ths of the turn’s pot size eventually.

If flop pot is 10 and they bet 8 (4/5ths). Call if you think you can win 21 additional bb (pot = 28) after the turn AND river are done. Not too difficult in position.

2a) You can make adjustments if you have more or less outs. This is an example with 8 outs. This is why with even only overcards, a flop call can still be very profitable still if you are sure that they are all clean outs. This is why “fishes” who call with bottom pair vs me when I have tptk can still make a healthy profit from me when they hit.

2b) This is why pairs and suited connectors have so much value in position.

Tomorrow when I wake up I'm going to see if 6 outs (just over cards) and what the rule is for them, if there is a nice neat shortcut to see for them.

EDIT 1: azn cutie alerted me that for FD it's 1/5 times, which is even better for the drawer.
EDIT 2: if you have just overcards its not a 1:1, but instead approximately a 1 : 1.5. You can call with your overcards (when you're sure they are clean outs) if you can win 1.5 times the percentage of the following street's pot size, after both the turn and river are done.

November Results

2008-11-30T06:19:00.002-05:00

Well, I went and had my worst month of my life. Prior to this, I felt pretty proud saying that I had only 1 losing month of poker and that was probably only a hundred or so dollars.

This month I'm down in the hole negative 443 dollars (rb included). Obv there is some bad EV in there too as I'm down in a lot of lost equity I deserve, but I think there is a lot of bad play also, especially when big pots are concerned.

I do not think I have the right ability to play the big pots at this time and until I do I am going to drop back down to mid stacking, which was shown to work for me.

My worst month was my friend's best month. We have a plan to get a place together in Toronto, barring that he continues to do well until April when I am back in Toronto. He has been putting in a lot of hours and has been doing very well. My plan is to mid stack out a small profit until I can learn from him first hand (he lives in a different city). He also has a 60 percent RB deal with a site which I hope to move to once I'm back in Toronto (signing up is hard in Vietnam).

PS comment here if you're looking for 60 percent RB. I'll set you up.

Never stop thinking

2008-11-20T01:34:00.005-05:00

The funny thing about poker is after you play for long enough, you sometimes begin to think you have most everything figured out, but the truth is you never stop learning. The worst thing you can do for your game is become complacent and stop thinking about your hands.

Back in Toronto when I had my dual monitor set up I was toiling away on 6 tables, sometimes doing 7 and contemplating 8 on occasion. This pushed me towards automation and I was your typical grinding robot. Raising blind vs blind with any ace, isolating limpers with large raises, etc.... This is all fine and good in general, but once you stop thinking why you do things you begin to develop leaks and lose out on much more value than you get from playing the extra tables.

Early in this month, whenever I saw someone with a high open percentage, I would 3bet about 1/3rd the time. Didn't matter what position I was, he was opening more than he should and he usually can't stand up to a 3bet. I squeezed a lot too, as well as open about 60 percent of my buttons. I also did all these things with a standard size and I did everything quite quickly. I had stopped playing poker and was mimicking videos. This was good enough in the old days when the games were easier, but guess what? Everyone is a mechanical robot these days who watch the same videos (I have the misfortune of playing on a site that lets you spend points very cheaply on Cardrunners tutorial videos). Playing like this will make you a break even player, who profits from rakeback.

I have taken back myself. I have lowered my tables to 4. I have questioned my hands while I'm playing and not just afterwards. I ask myself questions while the hand is progressing. What's his range? What's my fold equity based on recent history and my overall image? Have I won or lost a lot of pots recently? Have I shown down anything?

One of the biggest changes in my preflop game is that I have an opening template and then based on the players at the table I make my adjustments.

The template is as follows:

Open bet sizes,

UTG - 4 bb
UTG +1 - 4bb
CO - 3bb
BTN - 2.5bb
SB - 3bb
BB - 3bb

After this I begin to make my adjustments. My UTG adjustments aren't very often and stay quite static. But let's say I am on the CO and I see that the BTN is very loose, I will probably make it 3.5 because of 2 reasons, 1. he will call with worse, dominated hands at 3 or 3.5 and 2. I want to charge him a bit extra for having the luxury of playing in position on me. If BTN is tight and BB is loose, I would probably stick to 3bbs, but if BTN and BB are both tight, I would lower it to 2.5. In this manner I will still keep in dominated hands if the BB decides to play b/c I have given such a discount, but I am in position.

When you are in position, you are basically trying to bloat the pot as large as humanly possible while at the same time keeping in the hands you dominate. If you have KK why are you not raising to 50bb? It's because this will ensure that you will make everyone fold everything BUT AA. But lets say if you raised to 50bb and people with KT, JJ, TT, AK, etc... still called. Then you should obviously be making this raise size. If this is so, then why do people bet so little when they have position on a fish? If you can bet big, or raise big (in position) and still have the fish call with completely dominated hands, why are you not adjusting your bet sizes bigger? If some fish min raises to 2bb in middle position, why are you auto raising to 6bb when you could to 8 or more and have his exact same range call you?

I think the biggest improvement in my game the past 3 months is bet sizing -- not just preflop but post flop as well. And you can only get better at bet sizing if you are actively thinking about the hand. What are you accomplishing with the bets you make? Does his range still include a lot of hands you beat if you are betting for value? With the majority of his range, what is the biggest size bet that range would call? If you start to think that most of his range you beat would not call, you should consider checking (like the case when you have a hand with good show down value, 2nd pair). Usually when I begin to believe my value bet would have to be less than half pot for him to call with the majority of his range, I consider checking.

When you stop thinking about hands, you stop playing poker.

October Results

2008-11-02T01:34:00.001-04:00

Boo. Played only HU sng and double or nothing sngs and made a paltry 240 (most of it from rakeback the month before).

Double or nothings are real fun, and if people get eliminated early, I do very well, but if it stays at 9 or 8 for too long, I'm not sure how to play optimally.

For the Heads up games, I really don't know why I started losing so much. I was having trouble with fish almost more than the better players. I tried to do a lot of different styles to beat the fish from keeping pots smaller preflop with min raises on the button, from inflating the pot big but continuing only if I hit a good flop. I tried raising the donk bets large, small, calling them, everything, but nothing seemed to work consistently.

For the month of november i'm going back to playing cash 6-max, but unfortunately without my HUD. Vista really screws up holdem manager. if you have vista i do not suggest you get holdem manager.

Heads up is no longer my game

2008-10-29T03:51:00.001-04:00

That is all.

Heads up is still my game

2008-10-12T02:52:00.005-04:00

I'm really enjoying heads up. Unfortunately, for some reason, Vietnam does not like FTP and I've been getting disconnected quite a bit (once per game minimum). Not only does it make me lose hands and sometimes all-in games, but it throws off my timing tell reads. I've had to ditch the rakeback (not very big, probably 150 a month) and switched over to PS.

The good thing about PS is that the rake is a little bit smaller which makes up for my RB lost. Instead of 20+1, its 22+1. I've been doing quite well and I hope to find the courage to move up to the 57 dollar games sometime. I am intentionally skipping the 33 dollar ones b/c I believe that recreational players would join 20 or 50 and not choose some random 30 something sized one.

I have much refined my HU strategy than when I was playing on FTP. The two biggest differences are my early game strategy and my fish playing stategy.

In the early game I have more of a probing style and have toned down my aggression. For example I may fold to 3 bets until I get a better idea of their 3 betting range whereas I would defend in the old days if it was done early. I feel that although the games take a bit longer, by knowing their range better before adjusting aggression helps me win bigger.

The second thing I've changed is my mid and late game strategy vs fish. I will now tend to min raise instead of 2.5 times raise calling station type fish b/c I do not want to inflate the pot too large preflop and thereby rewarding their calling station nature postflop.

Below are my updated graphs as of today. I had a downswing on FTP which then triggered me changing my style to hyper aggressive, which was really bad. I had to play very focused to get myself out of that hump (since I tilted playing 50s, and won it back playing 20s).

Here is the sharkscope data for FTP (with a filter for only 20 dollar games and above non-turbo) and for my new PS account.

September results

2008-10-03T19:12:00.001-04:00

I'm in Vietnam right now so kind of hard to post something elaborate until I get my computer set up.

I made 2200 ish last month, almost all of it in HU SNGs, mainly doing 20 dollar SNG. I had one large downswing that even itself out by the end of the month.

I played less hours than cash tables, I played less tables than cash tables (1 instead of 6) and I had a lot less stress and variance than cash tables.

I still have a lot to learn, but I hope I can continue doing well in HU sng.

Making the Switch to SNG

2008-09-10T22:08:00.004-04:00

It started last month when I got a free 50 dollars on Sunpoker and didn't really know what to do with it. Since I'm leaving for Vietnam, I didn't really want to cash out and have the check sent to my address while I am gone, yet it was too little to play at my regular cash games.

I joined a 10 dollar HU sng (back in January I played a ton of turbo ones). I decided even though the regular ones take longer, it takes more skill than turbos so I decided with my limited bankroll that I'd play in the more skillful non turbo HU sng.

I won that one. I continued to play and I won almost every single one. I nearly tripled my original 50 dollars into 150 with an ROI (return on investment) of 23. A good turbo ROI = 5 percent for HU sngs (professionals would aim for this number. For non turbo games I am not sure what the target ROI is, but I'd assume its 10 percent, so my ROI was killing it.

I began to wonder if it was because the players on Sunpoker were absolutely horrid (super passive fish) and if I could achieve similar success on FTP (with rakeback) playing higher.

Long story short, FTP had better players, but game selection was much better. I played 20 dollar non turbo games and was crushing them. I think I've played about 200 games in about 10 days on ftp now and have a really good ROI. I've recently thrown in some 30 dollar games and 50.

I truly feel that HU SNG is where my true natural talent lies. I have always made money in every poker derivative (limit, MTT, 9 player SNG, 6 max NL, HU turbo) but with HU sng I get this natural -- I get it -- lightbulb in my games and I just know what to do. Whereas in the other areas I've always had to study and work really hard on my game (perhaps it's b/c I have all the fundamentals down already).

Below is my ROI graph. As you can see I was negative in 11 dollar turbos (my 5 dollar turbos made up for that and made me a marginal winning turbo player).

Below is my other graph. At a little after 800 games was when I started non-turbo games (the beginning of this month after trying out sunpoker).

You should also take note how I crush the 2 dollar SNGs b/c thats what my poker friend Kevin and I play when we're bored, want a challenge and don't want to pay extra rake. I crush you Kevin. Let's call it revenge for the 5 cent 10 cent money you took from me.

PS thanks azncutie, I signed up for sharkscope and it has helped me tremendously. It predicts which players I should not be using fancy play syndrome on.

Also, taking the small shot at 200NL last post really made me hate poker and how small the edge really was and how boring it was to play. HU is very creative and mano-o-mano and so dynamic that you can't robotically follow some strategy, so much less stress than playing 6 tables. concentrate on one and play it well. No HUD, just personal observations.

Took a small shot again

2008-09-01T12:43:00.002-04:00

So today I just logged on 4 tables of 200NL + 2 other smaller ones.

Out of the 5 players, 3 of them on each table had PFR of greater than 20 percent and 3bet percentages of greater than 6. There was one player on each table that had 3bet percentage greater than 10. I datamined 18 tables for about 20 minutes before I joined, so I had 20 minutes of data on everyone + any past data I had on them.

The aggression was so sick. And a hyper aggressive table is exactly what I don't want to play when I move up. I was lucky to barrel through a short stack with AK AIPF and that was what my only profit came from (ended up down on other tables and up on the 200NL, even overall).

In just 15 minutes of play I had to make 2, 4-bets (one worked, one didn't), 2 squeezes (one worked, one didn't), folded down to all 3 bets that had position on me (except for the 2 four bets I made), and called once OOP with AK. It sucked so much that the person who 3bet me when I had AK was the one tight guy on the table. Anyone else and I would have placed in a 4bet. But with the tight guy I just called, missed the flop completely and check/folded.

Since I had AK UTG, on those tables, I should have limped my AK. Even getting raised by the tight guy his range is much looser raising my limp and I don't mind reraising him in that situation and then getting it all in. Also, since the tables are so agr, someone would have reraised me.

The tables were so aggro that I stopped and played some HU sngs. I went 2-1. I took a tiny shot today b/c I read azn cuties blog and he's already doing 5/10 live and doing well. I felt like I should move up, but the play at 1/2 is just really good and scary for someone who has moving up nit syndrome.

(the 50NL table, for what it's worth, had equally good/agr players) I had 3 of a kind tens with a good kicker vs someone who had a FH on the turn. 3 of a kind was the nuts vs a player as agr as I was playing. We had a ton of history too, he was the guy I 4-bet successfully and squeezed unsuccessfully and 3 bet successfuly 2 times.

August Results

2008-08-31T13:03:00.004-04:00

Cash Game Profits: 1956
Hours Played: 50
Hands played: 19.6K
BB/100: 10.5
Dollars/Hour: 39

SNG HU (mainly 10 dollar SNGs): 168

Another month, another grind. I got burnt out playing cash tables and started playing HU sngs near the end of the month. I was up quite a bit but today, just before this post, I played and had my first losing session of about 80 dollars.

I ran well this month also. I think without the luck on my side, my BB/100 would have been at 7BB/100 which is still considered "killing it." I think anything over 5BB/100 hand these days is considered an ass whooping.

Yesterday I did 2 tables of moving up and then the tables broke and I got too chicken to play on the tougher ones.

I just have an extreme fear of moving up. One unlucky day at the higher stakes equals how much I made this month. 10 Buy In losses are very common for other players (I usually stop loss at 5) and that emotional swing is something I cannot take until I am more financially secure in life.

I leave for Vietnam in October and if I find a job that will let me live and save money. I will definitely move up. Who wants to grind 100NL? I just want to play poker for an hour or two a day.

Evolution of my game

2008-08-24T02:18:00.004-04:00

The first thing you will notice is that I'm horrible at 5 cent 10 cent. =] Actually I load up those tables when I'm trying out a new software program or fixing HUD configurations.

I am very proud to say that my BB/100 has been steadily rising. I'm positive I cannot maintain my current win rate (I'm on a heater), although without the heater I should be at about 12BB/100, I believe I can do quite well.

I am also very proud of my dramatically increased numbers in VPIP, PFR, 3BET and steal percent and reduced numbers in fold to CBET. This makes me a much more unpredictable and harder player to the other regs.

TBH I'm sure many of you laugh at me calling myself a LAG with the new numbers and I admit I actually shouldn't be calling myself a LAG, but compared to my earlier numbers it seems like I could be called a LAG.

The numbers I now sport are good TAGish numbers and if anything I would only tack on only a percent or two. I'm quite comfortable playing at these numbers and understanding how people react to my numbers. I do not believe I am a LAG at heart and so I should not play as someone I am not.

It's quite late now and I may post a little more about how my numbers have changed and what it meant.

Leaving some space below b/c the pictures stretch across to the side bar if I don't.

Late 2007 - Mid February (Full stack TAG)

Mid February - Late July (40-65BB midstacker experimentation)

Late July - Present (Full Stack LAG)

Misplayed hand

2008-08-09T13:51:00.000-04:00

Misplayed my first hand that later I found out was a fish. He got it all in with some guy with 3rd pair 37, and hit his trip 3 on the river.

Here is an early hand I played against him that I misplayed. At this point he was an unknown.

Full Tilt Poker, $0.50/$1 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players

BB: $143.80
UTG: $127.65
MP: $61.70
CO: $129.70
BTN: $163.30
Hero (SB): $114.10

Pre-Flop: dealt to Hero (SB)

UTG folds, MP raises to $3.50, 2 folds, Hero raises to $13.50, BB folds, MP calls $10

Flop: ($28) (2 Players)
Hero bets $16.60, MP raises to $48.20 and is All-In, Hero folds

Results: $61.20 Pot ($3 Rake)
MP mucked and WON $58.20 (+$28.10 NET)

I feel that the best play would be to check. If he bets big I can go all in. If he checks behind I get a free card to look at and then probably give it up if I've missed. By bet/folding I am losing out on so much since I still have good equity against most of the hands that beat me and I possibly beat some bluffing hands.

Hand Two. By this point I know he is a fish.

Full Tilt Poker, $0.50/$1 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players

CO: $135.60
BTN: $118.15
SB: $153.55
BB: $122.55
UTG: $102.50
Hero (MP): $125.95

Pre-Flop: dealt to Hero (MP)

UTG folds, Hero raises to $4, 2 folds, SB raises to $7, BB folds, Hero raises to $17, SB calls $10

He does a funky min raise and if it was other people I'd just call and reevaluate on the turn but I know he'll call my 4-bet with a very wide range so I want more money in now while I know I'm ahead. I might not call his all in b/c a min raise, ALL in 5bet line is a line fishes could take. He calls so I'm happy.

Flop: ($35) (2 Players)
SB bets $35, Hero calls $35

This is a dream flop for me because I have the nuts. He doesn't have top pair since 3 of them are accounted for so raising his pot size bet is just asking for a fold. I'm hoping to keep him either stone cold bluffing or bluffing/value bet? (in his mind) with his mid pairs.

Turn: ($105) (2 Players)

SB checks, Hero bets $33, SB calls $33

The queen comes and he checks. I look to his stack and see 100ish so I bet an amount where I give him what he thinks is fold equity if he shoves (I didn't notice that he had more than me so this was rubbish)

River: ($171) (2 Players)
SB bets $68.55 and is All-In, Hero calls $40.95 and is All-In

Results: $252.90 Pot ($3 Rake)
SB showed (two pair, Jacks and Fives) and LOST (-$125.95 NET)
Hero showed (a full house, Jacks full of Fives) and WON $249.90 (+$123.95 NET)

How do i play this hand?

2008-08-05T19:02:00.005-04:00

His stats are 21/18/16.1 (3bet) over 150 hands. We've had a little bit of history.

I like my 4bet bluff here, but after he calls should I just give up? I feel like I know how to play 3bet pots much better, but I'm lost at 4.

Full Tilt Poker, $0.25/$0.50 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players

SB: $26.55
BB: $50
UTG: $56.35
Hero (MP): $79.50
CO: $64.70
BTN: $29.30

Pre-Flop: dealt to Hero (MP)

UTG folds, Hero raises to $2, CO raises to $6.75, 3 folds, Hero raises to $15, CO calls $8.25

Flop: ($30.75) (2 Players)

Hero checks, CO checks

Turn: ($30.75) (2 Players)
Hero bets $16, CO calls $16

River: ($62.75) (2 Players)

Hero checks, CO bets $33.70 and is All-In, Hero folds

Results: $62.75 Pot ($3 Rake)
CO mucked and WON $59.75 (+$28.75 NET)

Unconventional Line - Forcing people to put you on a hand

2008-08-05T13:59:00.006-04:00

The thing I hated most about grinding and playing TAG was that I stopped thinking about poker and that is the worst. Not only does it suck the fun out of poker but you begin to miss opportunities to make better plays.

Today I made an unconventional play that I think is quite good.

UTG+1 made a strange opening overbet to 6x the blinds. Let's say 6. This usually signifies a strong hand that they aren't completely sure of so likely holdings are AK or JJ.

I have QQs in my hand so I'm feeling pretty good. I raise him to 16, a little less than 3x his raise size. If I get pushed on I won't feel good but I will call and congratulate him if he played AA or KK in this strange manner. However I expect a call or a fold.

If he calls, the worst two cards to see are obviously an Ace or a King. I will be put to tough decisions if I see those cards. I will likely fold to a decent size bet if both the Ace and King come.

He calls and fortuantely the flop comes 2, 3, 4.

As I've said, he most likely has AK and then JJ and perhaps other pocket pairs.

The pot is about 33 and I have about 80 behind. If he has JJ this flop looks good for him. If he has lower pairs, this is the most he could hope for. If he has AK he has a gut shot straight and 2 strong overcards.

I decided the best play to do was to go all in for 80 into the 33. This line forces him to put me on a hand. It puts him to a hard decision.

All his pair hands look great now and my line looks very much like I have an ace or some sort of draw. Even AK suddenly starts getting paranoid that I'm doing this with AQ or AJ and he's completely crushing me. He feels that even if he's wrong with the AK he still has his gut shot and overcards.

So what I have done is have Jacks insta call me, lower pocket pairs have a higher chance to call since they are very suspcious of my overbet, and have AK overcommit on their actual EV.

I could bet small and find lower pairs folding; I could bet small and have ak get good implied odds; I could bet pot and lose the AK.

Going all in HERE is very good for most types of players online who are always wary of their opponents.

ps he had JJ and insta called.

Great Poker

2008-08-03T23:47:00.002-04:00

I'm really playing the best poker of my life in the past couple of weeks. I'm even scheming about moving up and taking shots again. I can't even remember the last time I did that.

I've regained my confidence and am playing full stack again. And it's true about the things I've said in the past, I can't play as many tables (dropped down to 6 from 8) and my rakeback is much lower, but I'm winning more money. There is a place for mid stacking and I would recommend it, but if there are fish out there, deep stacking is the way to go. Playing mid stack also has helped me know how to exactly play against anyone with a 40-65 bbs too. It has given me 2-3 months of experience playing at those stacks.

Since rejoining the full stack I've won 23 bb/100. Sure, it's only been 7.5k hands, but I'm not even running hot (only 1.5 buy ins above expected value). I just feel that I'm manipulating pots in position very well and getting people to do what I want them to.

I've just put together all the things I've learned in the past year and combined it all (from videos and my experiements and my theories) and it works! I am so surprised that it really does work.

Theory

Bet larger OOP

I had a theory before, which I wrote in an earlier post about raising more in early position than on the button. This came from my hearing and learning that if you 3bet from the blinds you should be 3betting higher since you're at a positional disadvantage. Well if it's true for blind 3betting situations, it should apply to early and later position opens.

I open to 4BB UTG and UTG+1. I raise to 3 in CO and BTN. I will raise to 2.5 on BTN if the person has 30BB or less. (the strength of my hand is never revealed even though I vary my bet sizes, it's based on position, not card strength).

I also have made a new theory since that one worked out very well. The deeper you are the more you should 3bet OOP.

Again, this is to counteract their positional advantage. Compare being 90BBs deep to 150BBs deep. If the button raises your SB to 3.5BB, I would 3bet it to 12.5 to 13BBs and that's real tough for him to call, even with position if he doesn't have much. However if we are 150BBs deep, he has a little bit of an easier call, therefore you must raise it up even more, to say 14BB. Looks crazy, sounds crazy, but I truly believe this is how you should play it. (Against good regs you'll have to balance your range and do this with your best hands too, but vs weaker players I might do 14 with my 2nd tier hands and 13 with say AA).

Bet sizing

Boy, I can write so much about bet-sizing. I've learned a ton. Everything is so situation specific, but I'll try to give some generalities.

Big cbets - I would do this with so-so draws things that don't have much show down value. You can hit something later or you can take it down.

ie, 237 and you have 56. pot is 6. I would follow up my open with a cbet of 5. If you get reraised you can easily fold it without any worry. If you get called you still have fours as outs or even perhaps your 5 or 6. You can't make a half assed size bet b/c they might call with just overcards. The line also makes sense because if i have an overpair i could very easily play it this way as well.

I also do slightly larger cbets with players who are bigger calling stations. This should be obvious. I will also do more dbl barrels vs these players if the turn card is suddenly an A, K or Q.

I will also do larger cbets if I have a lock hand and the board is fit or fold.

ie, AK8 and I have KK. Obviously people are not going to take this board lightly. They need a very strong hand or draw to continue. If the pot is 7 I would bet something like 5.75 and pray they have an ace, 88, or a flush draw. Betting 5.75, 5, or 4 makes no difference with the hands they will call with. If they are calling (or raising) they'll do it with any of those 3 numbers, so build the pot.

but do you see how having AA on AK8 compltely changes things? I would be very reluctant to bet big now. You've basically killed all chances of top pair, which is usually the most likely holdings. If you crush someone's top pair ranges then you can't expect them to continue. In this case I would either check or make a really tiny inducer bet to hope that they reraise it. If the pot was 7, I'd bet 3 or I'd check it. Perhaps check if they are not very aggressive and induce bet if they are.

Betting small, obv. when the board is dry, or the person has a high fold to cbet number. On ace flops people generally play more regular so your bets don't have to be as large, but I find that I will still have to be semi large against calling stations.

Putting people on ranges and sticking to it

This is the one thing that has helped my OOP play a ton. Position helps you so much that people people on ranges is not as important. Once you lose that positional crutch, putting someone on a range is so important. You need to put people on a range in order to make the tighter EV plays.

For example today I had AQ in early and raised to my standard 4 UTG and got a MP caller. MP was loose preflop and also called my opens pretty loosely. The BB also called.

The flop was AXX all hearts. A scary flop that is a mixed blessing. I have top pair, 2nd best kicker, but on a very scary board, multiway.

Blind checked, I checked, MP bet around 11.50 into 12 and BB folded. Time to put hands on him.

AK, AX, Flush draw, some monster hand (2p, trips or the flush). Okay, so he is loose so he almost never has AK, he has AX way more often. I also do not think multiway he would bet pot if he has the made flush (even low ones, or 2p).

Versus a normal player I wouldn't be able to take AK out of the equation and this would make a very tough decision (AK calling in position is a regular move), but because I was able to take that out, it made his bet size and the possibility of trips such a remote possibility that I was able to reraise him to 36 and he found a fold.

Table selection

All tables that have lower than 24 average VPIP get filtered out.
All tables that have smaller than 5BB average pot get filtered out.

Table continuation

If someone continually has my number (caught me in big bluffs, constantly catching me opening lightly, winning a few flips) I leave.

If the table falls under 20VPIP average without a fish at the table I leave.

If the table drops to 4 handed, I leave.

If there are two top 25 regulars at my table, I leave.

July Earnings

2008-08-01T14:11:00.002-04:00

Not much to say. I think I made about 825 including rakeback after around 30 hours of play working out to around 27 dollars/hour.

I've had my ups and downs a lot this year, and this is the year that I've experimented the most. I've flipped flop from TAG to LAG, tried out light 3betting for the first time and a bunch of other things. Just last month and the beginning of this month I was feeling the lowest I've ever felt in terms of my poker playing ability. Nothing seemed to be working. And yet again I've flipped to feeling confident.

From my last post I wrote that TAG can be best, but to be honest, it's not the TAG that I was playing. I was playing 15/10 for awhile after I wrote that post and when I looked at the top winners at my stakes, their tag numbers were more like 18/14.

After watching a DC's vid by Gnomeontilt (the winningest player at 200NL month after month) I redeveloped my play and I'm feeling good. I am not as laggy as him (30/25) but I am at a number that I'm comfortable playing (21/18 ish?).

I'm planning on moving to Vietnam and teaching some English there and playing poker part time. I think when I make poker a side activity I do my best and I'm not so fixated on wins/loss and just focus on play (it's a lot more fun too).

TAG can be best

2008-07-04T10:55:00.003-04:00

At the beginning of this year I was completely absorbed and addicted to watching poker instructional videos. After watching so many of them I was convinced that I HAD to play a LAG style to be any good. I adjusted my game and worked very hard to increase my VPIP and PFR. It felt unnatural to my play style but at times I was able to maintain my win rate.

I'll get back to this.

In the forums there is one user who kindly data mines FTP and publishes ONLY the win rate of the top players at my stakes (100NL). Using his list, I made notes on the top 30 players as players to avoid playing if possible. While I was making notes on them I noticed that almost ALL (I think but one) players played very simple TAG (18/14ish) according to the hands I had on them.

Okay back on track.

So why was I trying so desperately hard to up my stats to something like 22/18 when not only did it feel unnatural to me, but none of the top players at my stakes were doing.

Lately I've been alternating between mid stack and deep stack. If the tables are tough, I believe mid stack is the way to go as I can multitable like crazy and limit the tough decisions (I can also punish the regulars by doing 4-bet all in bluffs). But if the table is full of fishes I buy in for full and play TAG.

The other interesting thing to note is that if you hypothesize the winning-most player's yearly salary including rakeback he makes about 60k USD. For some reason that disappointed me that the very best I could do is make 60K a year, but then I thought about it and realized that I had never intended to make 100NL a living. I always believed that I would need to do mainly 200NL and the occasional 400NL.

June Results

2008-07-01T00:11:00.003-04:00

My months just get worse and worse. With less than a week left I was down to almost 0 profits (including the entire months rakeback). I don't know what was going on. I even dropped and played a lot of 50NL.

My 50NL bb/100 was much worse than at 100NL. Then in the final couple of days I pulled through and got some wins in playing at full stack (thank you Saturday/Sunday).

The games are tough and I find that Sat/Sun are two days I do well b/c it ALMOST feels like how the games were 6 months ago.

Only 6 months ago you could find 10 tables with over 30VPIP now you find 4 at most. Most players have 20/15 stats and you can't wring any money off them. They also still play like donks, but aggressive donks (thanks cardrunners and all the instructional sites). They misapply ideas but playing aggressively is much harder to play against then passively.

I'm still going to employ the 50BB mid stack strat when the games are very tough but do full buy ins when no aggressive solid regs have position on me. Full tilt is getting tough. I enjoy the software and game selection too much to think of a change (plus rakeback). But I have considered going to stars.

total money won this month: $607
total hours played: 41
dollars per hour: $14

Not very good this month. At least I worked at my father's 2 days a week this month. I suppose I should be happy I made something and wasn't in the negative and that it was a comeback. TBH I am happy b/c comebacks always feel better than winning outright.

I really learned a lot about poker this month. Really changed my play and I think I will be better in most cases. I will write about those hard lessons in my next few posts.

Update on the midstacking

2008-06-26T11:51:00.003-04:00

I've continued to play a shorter midstack game as in my previous post.

After re-reading Professional No limit Holdem, I tried a few little experiments. PNLH says that the average optimum Stack to Pot ratio is 4 (for top pair). So you should put no more than 4x the pot size by the end of the hand.

Let's say the pot is 10BB on the flop. By the river and action has closed, you want to put in only a further 40BBs (less for tighter players and more for looser). This made me devise of a plan to optimize this information.

The common open raise is 3.5 BB, so if there is one caller, the average hand i'm involved in is about 8BBs. 8 x 4 = 32. So after the flop comes, you want to put in a further 32 dollars to maximize top pair, no more, no less. Working this backwards, we can find out what our stack size should be.

32 + 3.5 (preflop raise) = 35.5. Now considering the stakes I play at, you can push top pair a bit higher. The stack to pot ratio can be 4.5, which would lead me to my 40BB stack size.

So if you're ever playing with 40BB and hit top pair, you are almost always committed and can never be exploited.

Another move at 40BBs you can employ is the flop steal. In the blinds if there is a button stealer who always cbets you can profitably smooth call with any two preflop and then check raise any flop all in. I never had the balls to try it with any two, but I did try it with hands like KJ where I would often miss but have overcards or some sort of draw. Of course if people catch on, you'd need to balance this by doing it when you hit top pair also.

40BBs was good, but I felt that it took away my ability to 3bet. I almost never 3bet lightly b/c it only gave me one chance to win. If they don't fold preflop then a cbet would commit me. I really enjoy having 2 chances to win. I enjoy the 3bet preflop and then if I choose to do so on a good flop, the cbet. This is not possible with 40BBs as any cbet will give you good odds to call someone's all in and you will have to play the guessing game. 50BBs allows you to not only 3bet but also cbet and fold to new information.

Of course the downside of 50BBs is that if you get it all in eventually with top pair your stack to pot ratio is almost at 6. Which is the looser end of top pair.

I'll take that b/c I enjoy the occasional 3bet too much and I play tight as it is and need any weapon I can get to loosen up my image.

Wow. Aggression

2008-06-12T14:41:00.002-04:00

People have been getting ridiciously aggressive in the games I play. I swear to god. In the past session I played, every OTHER time I raised, I got 3 bet. Now you're probably saying, if this is the case I should be 4betting a lot lighter. But it's very tough to do this, especially at my awkward mid 65BB size!

I am just getting run over in the games that i'm playing.

People have gotten a lot better at the stakes I'm at and it isnt' even funny.

So I had a sleepless night and had to revamp my game. Obviously getting 3bet is the kiss of death for my mid stack so I either need to go deeper or go shorter. After a lot of EV preflop calculations I've decided to buy in at 50. I can do a lot of 4 bet pushes and still come out on top.

Surprisingly hands like TT and AQs if paired up against TT-AA and AK only, still has 34 percent equity. NOT BAD. You would assume that TT would be totally destroyed vs that range, but it wins a bit more than 1/3.

So, let's say I open to 3.5 and get 3bet to 11, like I often do in these games. If I push the remainder of my 50, I only need them to fold 1/2 times to be in the positive EV. When I'm called by better 10+ and AK, I will still win 34 percent of the time. If I had made this move with 65BB I would need to steal a lot more than 1/2. If they happen to have a calling range worse than TT+, AK then I would be even making more money.

But the fact is, people are 3betting me very light these days and by me pushing with TT or AQs I'll be making money. In fact I probably could push with AQo and 88 vs the looser people. At my 50BBs I can willingly get it in with top pair in a raised pot almost always without feeling remorse. With the aggression level so high these days, I want to find ways to punish these weak 3 bets preflop and weak flop min raises with an all in.

This being said, it's been a hell of a week. I believe I am about even this month after being up a ton. And now I have made a major overhaul to how my game is played. I had such high hopes for this month, but we'll see how this new strategy works and I'll update here on the progress and success of it.

Joe The Pro Episode Sun Poker

2008-06-03T20:42:00.000-04:00

I forgot to post this on here.

Soul reading

2008-06-03T19:14:00.008-04:00

I've been soul read. Where's the line btwn genius and stupidity? I very rarely ever triple barrel but there are rare circumstances when I will.

1. The player has very high VPIP and is calling me down very lightly on the flop and possibly the turn (draws or marginal pair hands).

2. I have some strong outs (not simply overcards but maybe some sort of str or flush draw, or overcards + backdoor draws).

3. The river is a very good scare card or it's a card that does not change anything.

4. The player in question has not been losing in the recent hands.

Today, all 4 situations qualified and I made my rare 3 barrel bluff. Sure the hands I'm repping are very slim, but you do not expect people to see that you are polarizing your range with the line you take at these levels.

1. His VPIP was 50. His fold to cbet was 47. His went to show down was 29 percent. These are huge calling station numbers.

2. I had overcards + gut shot on flop. I improved my straight draw on the turn.

3. The river paired the board so I knew if he had a pocket pair he still only had that pair.

4. He's stacked 4 people already either coolering them with set over set or lucking out on the turn/river with straights/flush.

This is a go. Here is the hand and I believe I still would have made this play if I could have seen his hand.

Full Tilt Poker, $0.50/$1 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 5 Players

Hero (BTN): $65
SB: $281.95
BB: $117.10
UTG: $96.30
CO: $108.15

Pre-Flop: dealt to Hero (BTN)

2 folds, Hero raises to $3.50, SB calls $3, BB folds

Flop: ($8) (2 Players)

SB checks, Hero bets $5, SB calls $5

Turn: ($18) (2 Players)

SB checks, Hero bets $15, SB calls $15

River: ($48) (2 Players)

SB checks, Hero bets $41.50 and is All-In, SB calls $41.50

Results: $131 Pot ($3 Rake)
Hero showed (a pair of Fives) and LOST (-$65 NET)
SB showed (two pair, Sevens and Fives) and WON $128 (+$63 NET)

My nemesis Part One

2008-06-02T11:11:00.004-04:00

At 100NL there's this one multitabler that just owns my soul. Every time I 3 bet him and have something good he insta folds and every time I don't he 4 bets me. 9/9 times this has happened. And when I actually do get it in with him, he has the goods.

He just has my number so often that I have decided to not play on any tables with him.

Yesterday, I entered a freeroll tournament for invited grinders and obviously he was there too. There were 500 people and the top 3 people get the 10K buy in while everyone else got nothing. Throughout the tournment I was sometimes in the top 20 and sometimes a little above average. It irked me to see that his name was almost always near the top.

To make a long story short. He ended winning the entire thing and I got 13th. I'll get you NEMESIS. You just wait and see.

I pegged 3 guys on my table as people i would possibly repop with b/c my stack was at a good resteal size.

A good situation came up when one of the 3 guys raised in late position and I had a suited ace in the blinds, but he had AA. gg me. but i feel good cuz he didn't make top 3.

May Results

2008-05-31T20:07:00.009-04:00

Since I had been making very good BB/Hour, I said to myself this month that I would simply play more hours and obviously make more money.

Forcing hours onto myself, I wasn't leaving bad tables, and joining when there were no good ones just to get in the hours. The good regs ran me over and the extra hours put extra stress on me and I tilted much easier. I even berated a few fish that sucked out on me which I never did and they promptly left the tables, leaving the good regs.

I took some time off. Watched poker vids to get my game back on focus and remotivated. I kept up the added hours, but when the tables were hard I played fewer (at some points I only played 3 tables). After awhile playing only 3 or 4 tables, I thought to myself, why don't I throw in some 50NL? It's one limit lower and it's better than playing nothing. Turns out it was a great idea. This solved my problem of not finding enough good tables. Between 50 and 100NL there are always at least 8 good tables.

I was now 7 and sometimes 8 tabling and broke into the black. I climbed up pretty well and learned a few knew things (1. 3betting in the blinds vs the button stealer can be done with smaller sizes since my stack is smaller. Do not over do the squeeze, especially at my stack size). Overall, I did not do as well as I had hoped for the month, but I have good expectations for next month.

Whenever I do my monthly total, I include last month's rakeback. So for this month's results, I've included February's rake back (since rakeback pays the following month). Looking at my rake back with my extra hours and 8 tabling, it seems that I will have almost double the rakeback next month (because of my play this month. See how it works? The following month my rakeback should be bigger as I will be playing 8 tables from the start of the month).

Total dollars earned: $1390 (includes -$50 in 12 dollar turbo SNGs)

Total Hours (not including the SNGs): 54.25 (much higher than last month. I was aiming for 60 hours but I had to take a long break when I was down a bunch).

Dollars/Hour: 25.67

BB/100:

(200 NL) -6.65 (660 hands, I took a small shot at the beggining of the month)

(100 NL) 4.67 (20,798 hands)

(50 NL) 15.00 (4253 hands)

Next month I will not be taking a shot at 200 NL again. I'm going to continue to 8 table and see how it goes at both 100 and 50 NL. I already know my rake ($422) but I should make more the following month.

I only wish I made as much as that "Life of a grinder" guy I have linked in my poker links on the right.

WSOP

2008-05-29T23:04:00.002-04:00

FTP has a fantasy poker thing going where you choose players who you think will do the best in each WSOP tournament. You have 15 choices in 3 groups: A, B, C.

People in your A group get their points multiplied by 3. People in group B by 2 and C by 1.

I had a core group of players that I "let it ride" for all the tournaments b/c I didn't want to pick a team for each of the events b/c there were just too many.

A:

Phil Ivey - obv choice. natural at every game, so i can feel safe leaving him there for everything.
Bill Edler - makes it deep everywhere.
Pearl Jammer - very solid TAG internet player.
Allen Cunningham - like ivey, a natural at every game (when i say this, i mean cash too and other types of gambling games).
Danny Wong - many people would be surprised at this pick, but hopefully he's the guy that will set me apart from all the other people who choose the same as me.

B:

Daniel Negreanu - solid player at every type of tournament play (limit/no limit/omaha)
Erick Lindgren - solid player
Kirk Morrison - creative player who is very consistent in making it deep
Scott Clement - gotta pick an internet player. but this one has good live results
David Pham - very aggressive tournament player

C:

Daniel Alaei - talented cash player but i don't know why but i'm a big fan of his
Nam Le - strong, aggressive player
Gus Hansen - loose, small ball player
Erik Seidel - Cardplayer of the year number 1 right now. old school tricky player
Dan Harrington - Very solid player. Author of many books.

Once in awhile when I wasn't lazy I tailored my list for other games. For example in a mixed game one I threw in old school players like Barry G and Doyle Brunson b/c they have more experience in other games of poker. For limit hold'em I threw in Joe Cassidy and Howard Lederer b/c they are very solid at that game. For omaha I put David Benyamine and for 6 max no limit I threw in some cash game internet players like omg clay aiken and aggressive God, Patrik Antonius.

This Sunday I'm in a freeroll where top 3 get entry into the Main Event. Should have about 200 people, so I have a 1.5 percent to get 10k. Woohoo! This is would normally be about 150 dollars entry if we had all chiped in, so this is a very good freeroll.

3 Bet Sizing Article

2008-05-04T15:22:00.002-04:00

The more I play better players, the more I realize that I have to deal with 3-betting. Although I feel that I am much better than my old spewy self, there was more to learn. Specifically, 3-bet sizing.

In the past, I wrote that I learned after a 3-bet, the flop c-bet is allowed to be much smaller and will still garner the same level or respect (1/2 - 2/3 pot). I also learned which players to 3-bet, aggressive players with high fold to cbets or players with close VPIP/PFR numbers.

I have added a few new weapons to my arsenal. First, I now also look at WTSD (went to showdown) numbers if the fold to cbet number is on the fence. But the more important element to my 3bets is sizing it correctly. Before a 3.5 bet would mindlessly get bumped to 11, but now I have two sizes.

75% of the time I will raise it to 10BBs.
25% of the time I will raise it to 13BBs.

Since my stack is at 65BBs even a raise to 10BBs, often is enough not to let loose raisers have the odds to call. But this is a side not, the main reason why I am raising it to 10 is so that the flop will be 20BBs large instead of 22BBs and this will allow for cheaper and stronger looking cbets.

There are 2 types of blind stealers, ones that give up very easily to your 3bet and ones that call your cbets very easily. For the ones that give up easily, betting 10BBs saves you money over the long run. For the ones that call very easily, 10 or 11BBs will be called and both will garner equal preflop respect. These are the types of players that will always defend their PRF but will often give up on the flop.

Betting 14 into 20 is much scarier at my stack size then betting 14 into 22. I have saved a dollar, plus my bet looks more intimidating.

The second 3bet size of 13 is interesting. I made my calculations and find that if you win 3/4 times, you are making a healthy profit. Since a 3.5BB bet is being raised to 13BBs and I only have 65BBs, it looks like a comitting raise. I believe people will only call or raise me with the top 5 percent of poker hands (my guess is its: TT-AA, AK,AKs,AQ,AQs).

So let's do some simple math. If I need to win 3/4 times a person raises and they raise 20 percent or more and they only call with the top 5% of poker hands, I am making money.

Anyone with a steal raise percent of 20 or greater, is a very good target for this move and let me tell you there are tons of people who have 20 or greater steal numbers. Heck, there are tons of people who havea a PFR percent of 20 or greater, let alone steal numbers.

However, if you keep raising to 13 dollars all the time, people are going to catch on that you aren't getting these premium pot committing hands and will call you down or push over you. I will likely only do it 1-2 times per session while mainly sticking to the 10BB raise.

As for when I get called with the 13BB 3bet, I will need to hit the flop to continue as most people aren't calling me too lightly.

Grinding more hours

2008-05-03T18:51:00.003-04:00

Since my hourly rate was so good the past two months, I decided to rack up the hours to try to make some major dough.

It's not working. I was doing very well, at 10-20BB/Hour and then when I pushed myself too hard, I began to fatigue.

I don't think I play that much worse when I fatigue, but I tilt waaaaay easier. This is why I don't play long hours. I found myself snapping at fish/coolers/bad beats. I hardly ever do that, but I did it on so many occassions the past 3 days. When I play the longer hours I let my emotions get to me easier.

In at least 2 different occassions, after I made some snide comment, the fish left the table.

I also found that I hung around tables who had tough aggressive players. I wanted to prove something and win their money. When before when I played less hours, I would have just quickly left those tables.

For some reason, I took today to try out a few new ideas including min betting the button, which I have heard is the new buzz thing to do. Now I think it does work sometimes, but I found out the hard way that it prices in way too many sb's who love to see flops.

I think I will add it into my arsenal only when both the sb and bb don't like to see flops and in that situation, I'll throw in a few more button steals than I normally wouldn't.

I haven't felt this steamed in such a long time. I spewed away pretty much all my winnings this month which was about 350.

I will not be moving up to 200NL after this spew session.

Bad Play

2008-05-02T17:04:00.002-04:00

I made two bad plays today and I'm writing both down so I can remember and not repeat my mistakes.

1. I opened UTG+1 with AQ and the cutoff, a tight player with PRF of 10%, 3bet me. I called and we both checked a flop that had middle cards loosely connected. The ace came on the turn and I check raised him and then we got it all in and he showed AK.

The mistake was calling in the first place. Against a loose player AQ is great, but against a tight player it's a trouble hand. You'd much rather be playing pocket pairs or heck, maybe any two cards that don't contain an ace or a king.

2. The second hand involved two fish/calling stations.

Full Tilt Poker, $1/$2 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players

BB: $195
Hero (UTG): $155
MP: $198.75
CO: $325.85
BTN: $278.60
SB: $184.90

Pre-Flop: dealt to Hero (UTG)
Hero raises to $7, MP folds, CO calls $7, BTN folds, SB calls $6, BB folds

Flop: ($23) (3 Players)

SB checks, Hero bets $14, CO calls $14, SB calls $14

great flop for me. either fish will call me down with any ace. i bet 2/3 pot to reel the one with the ace in, but unfortunately for me, both called.

Turn: ($65) (3 Players)

SB checks, Hero bets $49, CO calls $49, SB folds

I'm scared with two calls and a somewhat dry flop, but these guys are both utter fish so i bet out a little over 2/3 pot again.

River: ($163) (2 Players)
Hero bets $85 and is All-In, CO calls $85

by this point if he's got aq, he's got me so I just throw in the last of my money. WTF? he his flush. Should I have potted the turn to protect my hand vs two drawing fish? Would a fish continue to call even if potted? 59 would have been a better bet perhaps?

Results: $333 Pot ($3 Rake)
Hero showed (a pair of Aces) and LOST (-$155 NET)
CO showed (a flush, Ace high) and WON $330 (+$175 NET)

Started 200NL

2008-05-01T20:11:00.005-04:00

I've been taking my 2nd shot at 200NL for the past few days now (my first shot was about 2 months ago. I've done a few smaller shots that don't really count). I am mixing in 2 tables of 200NL along with 4 tables of 100NL.

Although I have only played for 3-4 days, I can happily say the amount of fish there are the same. I also assume that the regs are a bit better though.

I was doing quite well today, but then was absolutely coolered. There was a fish playing on 2, 200NL tables and I quickly joined both. He was playing 60/14 and in tons of pots. I had a run of good cards in just my first round and isolated him 2x back to back and he folded both times. Then i got AQ, a trouble hand, if you have NO RESPECT. You second guess yourself if it's because they have no respect for you or if they really do have a hand.

Full Tilt Poker, $1/$2 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players

Hero (MP): $137
ripkeniv (CO): $277.60
Rangerek (BTN): $488.25
boozer6262 (SB): $199.80
longtruong521 (BB): $100.70
RandomRR (UTG): $217

Pre-Flop: dealt to Hero (MP)

RandomRR folds, Hero raises to $7, 2 folds, boozer6262 calls $6, longtruong521 calls $5

Flop: ($21) (3 Players)

boozer6262 checks, longtruong521 checks, Hero checks

I have the nut flush draw, so I decide to check. If I had the king or queen flush draw I could see some merit in semi bluffing. Couple the fact that I have the ace flush draw + I will have no fold equity b/c this is my third raise in less than 5 hands, I would get no one to fold.

Turn: ($21) (3 Players)

boozer6262 checks, longtruong521 checks, Hero checks

River: ($21) (3 Players)

boozer6262 checks, longtruong521 bets $21, Hero raises to $130 and is All-In, boozer6262 folds, longtruong521 calls $72.70 and is All-In

This guy was so fishy that I was sure a king flush would call me and quite possibly a jack flush.

Results: $208.40 Pot ($3 Rake)
Hero showed (a flush, Ace high) and LOST (-$100.70 NET)
longtruong521 showed (a straight flush, Eight high) and WON $205.40 (+$104.70 NET)

April Results

2008-04-30T18:10:00.003-04:00

After starting this month off, like last month, in the negative, I was really bummed out and didn't even feel like playing poker at all. I played a lot of low stakes SNGs (HU and 9 handed) to relax and not concentrate too much on cash tables.

I feel like although I am not very good at HU, after playing so many games my hand reading has become much much better. If you ever need to practice texture and hand reading, you definitely should play heads up because you have nothing to rely on but pyschology and trying to figure out what the other person has (much tougher since everyone plays most of their hands).

In the 9 player SNGs I did quite well too. It was very refreshing getting respect from my bets coming from a cash background. I couldn't believe the bet sizes that would get people to fold if you were the PFR and there was an ace or something scary on board.

This month I made $123 from 6 dollar heads up and primarily 11 dollar SNGs. So as you can see, it is not very profitable (actually I was in even for HU).

As for my cash game, I made 4/5ths of my money in the second half of the month.

Total Hours played: 29
Total dollars made including 160 in rakeback: 1620
Dollars/Hour: $56
BB/100 hands: 9.68

As for dollars per hour it does not match last month, but last month I had another 200 dollar bonus from FTP. As the month was ending I was and am determined to log more hours into poker to try to make more money. I even lightly treaded at 1/2 tables yesterday and today.
I am going to try to have 60 hours logged next month.

3 bet pots

2008-04-14T18:45:00.004-04:00

A while back I wrote about 3 bet pots and how after watching DC videos I was 3 betting a lot and trying it out. At that time I was getting totally killed using it incorrectly because I was following their advice without thinking about the stakes that were being played.

They were playing high stakes and I was not. The calling range of people at my stakes is much tighter, while the bluffing range is extremely tight. At one point I was 5 bet shoving with AQ if I even had a little bit of history with the person. I sure learned my lesson fast.

The single biggest thing I learned from 3 betting is that my cbets do not need to be very large at all. Half to 2/3 pot bets routinely can take down pots without a fight. You also do not need to cbet every flop. A lot of the value of cbetting lightly is for image/metagame and also taking the pot down right away preflop. It pays off itself when you have AA or KK and they stack off b/c of your 3betting; you don't always need to win every 3bet pot you initiate. Pick and choose good ones with high fold equity or check it down and if they show weakness on the turn shoot a barrel.

It also pays to pick who you are 3betting lightly.

There are 2 types of players to 3bet. The hyper aggressive guys and limpy mc.limp. Yet, you don't want to be reraising all hyper aggressive guys and limpy players.

I will 3bet the hyper aggressive guys who have nearly identical raise and VPIP numbers. These are players who play hard or not at all. Let's say his VPIP is 25 and his PFR is 24, this means he rarely plays looking to hit things, he plays only when he is the aggressor. If I reraise him, he will very likely fold. Now take someone with even higher PFR, say 26, meaning he's even raising with worse hands so theoritically, my 3bet should be even better to scare him to fold and take it down, but his VPIP is 35 (highly divergent from his PFR) so although he is likely be playing with crap, I'm not usually going to be able to take it down preflop b/c he'll call to speculate, thus losing a lot of my 3bet fold equity power.

But this is not to say I will not 3bet this sort of player either. If you combine that along with fold to flop cbet numbers and say it's over 80 percent. He might even be a better player to 3bet b/c he calls so much preflop and always fold on the flop.

To review:

VPIP/PFR/Fold to Cbet (flop)

25/24/60 - LAG who rarely plays pots w/o being the aggressor and I'll win it mostly preflop with a 3bet. YAY!

26/34/80 - LAG who will call my 3bet will likely give it up on the flop. YAY!

26/34/50 - LAG who calls my 3bet and doesn't give up easily on the flop. NAY! I just don't mess with this guy without premium holdings.

Then you have the limpy guys who play a lot. I usually raise it to 5BBs with premium holdings no matter what kind of fish they are, but say I'm light 3betting.

I pretty much only light 3bet with high VPIP players from any position if they have a high fold to CBET percent (pretty rare). Otherwise I will only do it on the button when I'm more sure that I can isolate the fish.

March Totals

2008-03-31T11:56:00.004-04:00

So March was the final month I had to work at my brother's resturant and it was the month I made the least amount of money, yet my highest hourly rate.

Total: $2103
Hours: 26.75
Dollars/Hour: $79/Hour

This includes rakeback of 240 (naturally) and another 200 (from Fulltilt's apology bonus for all the disconnects from earlier, worked it off in 2 weeks).

Dollars/Hour w/o Rakeback: $62/hour

Obviously this rate is not sustainable at all and it was due to the small sample size, but I also do believe it had a lot to do with my 60BB experiment that I will continue to use that allowed me to play 2 more tables than usual and still maintain a good BB/Hour rate.

After over 20K hands and the bad downswing of last month, from the start of when I started the experiment (mid February) I have had a 7BB/hour income. Considering that was what I was making with 4 tables (or maybe less) adding two more tables and maintaining or increasing my BB/Hour is huge (plus the increased rakeback).

The one thing I did not include is my Heads Up NL play. I did a ton of 6 dollar HUs and some 11 dollar ones. I have not added this to my profits or the hours I played even though I probably played many many hours of HU. I am up about 70 dollars in heads up, with nearly all the profits in the last 10 percent of my games played. I think it will be a great relaxing side game when I need to cool down.

If I were to guess I've probably played about 10 hours of HU which makes my hourly about 7 dollars/Hour which sounds about right. I probably have a net total of one extra win over an hour period.

UPDATE: an hour after i wrote this i lost 145 in cash and 12 in HU so that should change things a little for the month.

Omaha

2008-03-30T12:52:00.000-04:00

In my hours playing HU SnGs NL holdem, I sometimes accidently picked Omaha. After mistakingly picking it, I quickly looked up the rules to the game while playing in my first game and I won. The few times after I picked it by mistake I also won and then I decided to try it out once in awhile when I was getting sick of NL.

The rules are exactly the same except that you get 4 cards instead of two, 8 times the card combinations and therefore tons more drawing power. The value of made hands goes down while the power of drawing hands goes up. It really is a game about powerful hands and I'm not sure that everyone gets that.

I decided to look into it and ordered a PLO book that everyone on 2+2 is raving about so I am very excited about reading it even though it's a full ring book. However, I think that the money making potential of PLO is very big.

I always remember thinking, I wish I had played NL online back when no one knew what they were doing and the games were soft. Well, now I don't have to think that. Here is my chance with PLO. Now is when the games are soft and people really don't understand the game.

I took a quick look at the 6 max games on FTP and noticed the average VPIP for NL was around 28 percent and then looked at the PLO average VPIP and they were 60 percent! I have no idea what the optimal numbers should be but 60 sounds ridiculously high. Hopefully after reading the book I can get the fundamentals down and then make adjustments for 6 max games. Or I could just play the FR games as long as they are abundant.

The big news

2008-03-27T12:40:00.003-04:00

I got the go ahead to reveal the big news.

Sunpoker offered to sponser me as a poker player. As well as hosting any new videos I make at their own video tutorial site, they are hoping to have the group of us (the video uploaders) hit up some live big Canadian tournament events together and barrage the place, Sunpoker style. At the events I'll be sporting their sexy clothing gear.

Heads Up

2008-03-18T22:02:00.003-04:00

Since I've been watching a ton of heads up videos from Deuces Cracked I decided to give it a try awhile ago. I found that my edge was okay, but the rake was eating me up at the low stakes I was playing at so then I just stopped playing.

A week ago my brother came home and he has been doing nothing but Sit N Go heads up and said I should give it a try. With the buy in charge, rake is capped in a way so I started playing some 5 dollar Sit N Gos. I found that I was doing pretty well, but the amount of time I put in each game was simply NOT worth it. I tried to do two tables, but being new at it, plus HU you need to be very READ and player dependant, I couldn't keep up well.

Then I switched to SNG turbos. Although the blinds go up fast enough that if you're in the later stages, it's just coin flipping, I feel that my edge is good enough that these quick games can get me a good profit over time. I feel that even in the flipping part of the late game, I'm choosing better spots to flip and eating away at the timid players who refuse to stick it all in with anything less than pairs, ace or king.

After some time, I've now switched to 11 dollar turbo SNGs and thats what i'm doing when I want to take a break from the 6 max grind. It's a great way to freshen things up. If there aren't any good 6 max tables or if I've been losing a bit, I'll jsut quit and open up the SNG heads up. Feels like I'm starting fresh when I play either types of game.

I believe I'm barely making a profit right now, but hopefully I can improve my heads up game.

River Betting Part 2

2008-03-15T13:58:00.004-04:00

This next hand illustrates narrowing down Villian's range by street and then sizing a river value bet.

Party Poker, $0.50/$1 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 5 Players

joethepro (BTN): $57
SB: $148.76
BB: $97.15
UTG: $19.76
CO: $69.73

Pre-Flop: dealt to joethepro (BTN)

2 folds, joethepro raises to $3.50, SB calls $3, BB folds

Flop: ($8) (2 Players)
SB bets $4, joethepro calls $4

A bet out like this almost always means a very marginal hand or a Monster. Marginal could be top pair bad kicker, mid pair, bot pair. I don't think he is semi bluffing some sort of straight draw because they tend to be larger b/c they want you to fold. I decide to float in position and reevaluate on the turn.

Turn: ($16) (2 Players)

SB checks, joethepro bets $13, SB calls $13

He check calls. Bye to bottom pair. Top pair bad kicker looks like our most likely candidate followed by a much less likely mid pair. After getting check called, I am satisfied enough that he doesn't have trips. Don't need to worry about straights for reasoning mentioned above, plus he did not check raise. The hand I'm afraid of most that fits everything from PF to Flop to Turn is JT. I'm happy with every river card except T,8,9.

River: ($42) (2 Players)

SB checks, joethepro bets $23, SB calls $23

River is a blank. I decide to assume he has 2nd pair (not 3rd pair) and bet what most passive players would call if they had the T. I decide over half the pot.

Results: $88 Pot ($2 Rake)
joethepro showed (a pair of Queens) and WON $86 (+$42.50 NET)
SB mucked (a pair of Eights) and LOST (-$43.50 NET)

River Betting

2008-03-15T13:19:00.006-04:00

I am getting a whole lot more money doing something I rarely did before. Betting on the river with marginal hands.

Now, understand, that I'm not just doing it when I think I am ahead. If I did this everytime I thought I was ahead, I might get pushed off the winning hand with a reraise or check raise bluff often enough that it would negate all the value I've gained when I get called.

I am ONLY doing the thin value bets on the river when I think I'm ahead AND if they are passive players with AGR numbers below 1.5. I don't want to be check raised or reraised off a better hand. If the passive player does do that, I probably have to fold.

This was the best example I could find today, but it may not illustrate the concept perfectly.

In this hand, 2 people JUST sat out, so it immediately just switched to 4 handed, making my TT a strong hand even though there was a raise UTG.

Full Tilt Poker, $0.50/$1 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 4 Players

UTG: $125.50
BTN: $33.50
SB: $100
joethepro (BB): $64

Pre-Flop: dealt to joethepro (BB)
UTG raises to $3, 2 folds, joethepro raises to $10, UTG calls $7

Flop: ($20.50) (2 Players)

joethepro checks, UTG checks

The flop looks good. I was only afraid to see an Ace or a King, but I check for pot control being OOP. I will check call here if he bets and I think if I had bet, he would have folded any lesser hands because of my strong preflop move.

Turn: ($20.50) (2 Players)
joethepro bets $15, UTG calls $15

River: ($50.50) (2 Players)
joethepro bets $15, UTG calls $15

His call on the turn would almost always make me shut down on the river and I used to do check/call here. But a check/call makes no sense. All mid pair hands (with passive players) I beat are going to check this river. If i'm check calling a passive player, I'm leaking A LOT of money. So check fold here is what I would normally do vs passive players (and check call agr players). However, I decide to value bet thinly here. I think the chance that he has a pair from 4 to 9 is MORE likely than him checking a queen on the flop or hitting runner runner trip 7s. But you must ask yourself. If he has this very marginal pair of 4s to 9s, what size bet would he call? I figured he'd call what he called on the turn and bet 15.

PS betting 15 vs someone smart aggressive is asking for trouble. Any thinking player will know you do not have a seven.

Results: $80.50 Pot ($2 Rake)
UTG mucked (two pair, Sevens and Fours) and LOST (-$40 NET)
joethepro showed (two pair, Tens and Sevens) and WON $78.50 (+$38.50 NET)

Push or Call with QQ preflop after a 3-bet?

2008-03-14T12:21:00.003-04:00

Forum post by a DC member and my response that followed. The forum was split between people telling him to push and people telling him to flat call. I decided that a flat call would be best vs nits and a min-raise would be best vs looser players. Someone in between, I guess, just push, can't be too big deal.

I came across this hand, not really special but I find it hard to play QQ when I get 3betted.

Grabbed by Holdem Manager
NL Holdem $0.25(BB) Full Tilt Game#5615874870

SB ($42.15)
BB ($33.80)
UTG ($40.20)
Hero ($26.10)
CO ($25)
BTN ($64.95)

Dealt to Hero QQ

call, Hero raises to $1.20, CO raises to $4.20, fold, fold, fold, fold, call,

FLOP ($9) 75T

check, CO bets $6.20, Hero raises to $21.90, CO calls $14.60,

TURN ($50.60) 75T7

RIVER ($50.60) 75T7A

Hero shows QQ
(Flop 8.4%, Turn 4.5%)

CO shows AA
(Flop 91.6%, Turn 95.5%)

CO wins $48.10

I wanted to 4bet preflop, but decided to call last minute. I don´t know exactly why i played this way against an unknown. Probably his 3bet range is TT> and AK. And I only beat Jacks and AK.

So my questions are:

-Do I need to 4bet this against some opponents? But if I do this don´t I commit myself with QQ? How to play?
-What line do I take with QQ when 3betted? Play it for set-value?

Thanks!

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Here is my response:

i just ran some numbers in pokerstove.

if player = nit (3bets with only JJ+, AKo,AKs)

your equity is at 47.3 percent if you go all the way to the river. that's not bad. if you factor in the overlay and if small chance that nit folds AKo, then it could be laying you even odds if you just reraise all in. not bad.

i really don't know if i can explain it, but i think it might be even better to just flat call and put it all in (ck-raise) for a non ace/king (vs nit). you're doomed if he has AA, or KK anyway, so it's just realizing which way is better (all in or flat call) when he has JJ or AKs or AKo. if you reraise all in, nit might fold JJ? one of the hands you really dominant and tons of lost value if he does. also, AK misses the flop 2/3 flops and so you're not letting AK see all 3 streets, which is what they love/want to do (and they get to see it all if you push all in). You're not forcing the race, you're only pushing when you're most likely ahead. Jacks probably check back on an A or K flop, so if he bets the A or K flop, you can fold securely. if nit steals with the JJ, oh well.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
against a looser raiser maybe you can min raise to induce him to shove? it might entice him to call which is fine too since, you've committed almost 1/3 your stack preflop and it's easy postflop to play.

News

2008-03-09T00:09:00.002-05:00

I have HUGE news coming up soon. In around 2 weeks, I'll be able to announce life changing news on this site and it does have to do with poker.

February Results

2008-03-05T15:24:00.003-05:00

Working at my brother's restaurant gave me very little time to play poker and I also believe I had a bad swing at the end of the month, but here is my February results:

Profit: 480
Profit with Rakeback and Bonuses: 1154
Hours: 48.75
Dollars/Hour: 23.7

Downswing continues

2008-03-01T11:59:00.004-05:00

Combine 3 things and you're in trouble: Unlucky, Coolers, Bad Aggressive play. The gap between my EV and actual value is over 600 (400 in the last graph. The bad luck continues). This is 10 buyins purely on bad luck. Completely nothing to do with how good or poorly I play. It's the equivalent of losing 20 coinflips over the course of 4000 hands.

Unlucky:

All in on flop and he gets runner runner flush. AIPF AQ vs KT (this one isn't too bad, but i made a great call, so it felt bad). also all in on turn, 3 outter on river.

Coolers:

AK 3 way preflop and i hit the ace. Pot is huge already, but he has trips.

Bad Aggressive play:

(btw he slowrolled me, I bluffed him off a pot later and showed it and then he lost 2 coolers to other ppl and i mocked him). He has been reraising me small 2 other times already.

$0.5/$1 No Limit Holdem
6 players

Stacks:

UTG		($345.95)
UTG+1		($101.00)
CO		($102.50)
Hero		($59.50)
SB		($22.55)
BB		($132.35)

Pre-flop: ($1.5, 6 players) Hero is BTN

1 fold, Hero raises to $3.5, 1 fold, BB raises to $7, Hero calls $3.5

Flop: ($14.5, 2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks

Turn: ($14.5, 2 players)
Hero goes all-in $52.5, BB calls $38

River: ($119.5, 2 players)

Final Pot: $119.50
Hero shows:
BB shows:

BB wins $116.5 ( won +$57 )
Hero lost -$59.50

The real downside of being unlucky

2008-02-29T19:13:00.008-05:00

Losing money in the hand isn't the worst part of being unlucky. The worst part is any time I have a losing session, I cut myself off from playing for quite some time. Then if I have a losing session again, I will wait longer before I play and it compounds on and on.

I lose as much money from NOT playing as I do from the badbeats themselves. It's like a double whammy. I lose money from the badbeat and then I take a long break because I want to feel motivated, happy and on my A-game when I play. The time recouping my confidence is time not making money.

Here is a hand that I put a lot of thought into, even though it looks easy (I have the nuts) and nearly put me on tilt.

$0.5/$1 No Limit Holdem
6 players

Stacks:

UTG		($124.55)
UTG+1		($134.15)
CO		($98.50)
Hero		($59.25)
SB		($112.50)
BB		($100.00)

Pre-flop: ($1.5, 6 players) Hero is BTN

UTG calls $1, 2 folds, Hero raises to $4.5, 2 folds, UTG calls $3.5

Flop: ($10.5, 2 players)
UTG checks, Hero bets $3, UTG calls $3

If I have pocket TTs or KKs, imo, both are the nuts. I have never seen anyone limp UTG/call with KK. So even though BOTH are the nuts, in this situation, I would play them totally differently.

If I have KK and there is a king already on the board, that severely diminishes the chance that villian has a K. Also, villian had fold to cbet number of 60%. If he doesn't have a flush draw, he is folding everything. Ignoring the flush draw, this board cannot be any dryer or scarier except if it was an ace instead of a king.

How is trip tens different? He is 3x more likely to have a king in his hand as there are 3x more kings in the deck. I don't mind if I bet and he folds here because the chance that he has a King and pays me off all the way to the river makes betting on all street worth it.

If a heart shows up I'll reevaluate and play a smaller pot, but otherwise, I'm going to play big on the turn. My play would be optimal if he was aggressive (induce check raises, induce turn donks), but his agr numbers were very small, so I didn't not expect him to check raise me.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention the stack size. I only have 60BBs, so I can play all funky like this and still have a reasonable chance to get most of my stack in by river. If I was 125BB++ I would not play this way. In that case I might OVERbet the pot.

Turn: ($16.5, 2 players)
UTG goes all-in $117.05, Hero calls $51.75

He went all in on me while I'm holding the stone cold nuts. I was totally shocked b/c of his agr numbers, but my weak line induced it from him.

River: ($185.3, 2 players)

Final Pot: $120
UTG shows:
Hero shows:

UTG wins $182.3 ( won +$57.75 )
Hero lost -$59.25

The gap in my EV and actual value continues to diverge. I will post the final EV graph at the end of the weekend b/c I expect to put in some hours this weekend.

last 3 days

2008-02-28T17:49:00.004-05:00

I've always felt that over the long haul I've run slightly unlucky. And I know this is something that most poker players think and they don't realize how often they run into sets, or that KK vs AK loses quite often.

I KNOW the numbers and I know that a 80/20 favourite still loses more than it feels like it should, but now the program I use called hold'em manager calculates EV for any time you are all in. It is sort of like a luck graph. Are you winning the percentage of time you're supposed to? and then maps out the theoretical amount of money you should be at.

I've only had the program for 3 days, so the numbers aren't accurate, but it reaffirms to me that I know when I run bad and I felt like the past 3 days I was extremely unlucky. I should be slightly positive over the 3 days yet I'm down hundreds.

The worst part about running bad is that it does affect your play, but I think this program gave me the reassurance, don't worry joe, you don't suck balls, you've just been unlucky and I've maintained my cool better than usual, but nevertheless, unluckiness always does impact your play.

UPDATE: this doesn't even show the times in the past three days when i've bet nearly pot on the turn to charge flush draws with like 8 dollars left on the river in a 100 dollar pot and ppl hitting the flush (happened once). it only counts if you were all in before the river, not on the river.

Forum Strategy - Strategies vs Player Types

2008-02-26T01:06:00.004-05:00

Before I blog about how I 3-bet these days, I am going to repost a forum post. There was someone in the forum that I disagreed with on a few of his points. I will post it here. Please feel free to write who you agree with as I am always ready to change my mind in light of good convincing.

You must learn to play each person at the table differently.

This is where I recently fixed this problem your having. If someone is raising a lot I am folding a lot, unless I have a pair that is then because of the wide range that person can raise with I will gladly call. If he is the sort of person who likes to keep firing barrels with air I call him "my little chip magnet" his stack climbs but I have a plan to make that stack mine. Sometimes I will even call the odd continuity bet just to make sure he feels comfortable firing off into me.

But here I am set mining.

Do not be the person who raises with too wide a range too aggressively too often or I guarantee someone will play you this way.

if you are set mining vs a loose aggressive person, you're just not going to get paid often enough to set mine for value. he's raising with such a wide range of hands (garbage) that he's not going to pay you off when you hit your monster hands. i would instead rather set mine with someone tight aggressive. i love being in the BB with a pair when someone really tight open raises.

the way i play vs LAGs is to generally out AGR them if i have position on them or to tighten up if they have position on me.

Against a tight passive player, I am going to call with anything. I will fight this guy after the flop if I think he has missed, other than that the pots his.

if he is passive PLUS has a high fold to cbet percent then i will fight if i think he has missed. some passives are calling stations and i like to avoid betting into those people. for example, if the flop is all low cards and i know the calling station has missed. i'm not going to bet with my overcards b/c i know he'll call with HIS overcards so i've lost my fold equity (and since we're calling him TIGHT, he probably has better showdown cards than me). also, if he is TIGHT passive, i am going to avoid playing dominated top pair hands like KJ, AJ,AT and KT against him and would rather play suited connectors and pairs and even suited one gappers over those dominated hands.

So where do the moves fit into all this?

Well they don't very often. Every so often I will do a move against someone but I am generally only going to do it once in a blue moon just to show the table that I have some flair to my game. You see, the beauty of the moves you see on this site is they throw a lot of players off balance when they see them made. Here is another thing, what you going to do if you only make moves rarely and yet everyone folds? I know what I do, show my hand. Thats it then, the move has served its purpose, no need to bother doing it again or really any other move for the next 30 mins or so. Back to ABC poker and with a bit of luck when I finally hit that monster I am going to get the action I need. If not then I wait a while and shoot another move, show em it and back to ABC poker.

i am going to make my moves quite often if it's a small pot, dry board and the people in the pot have approx 50% fold to cbet numbers. i love making moves at these small pots, just to SHOW ppl, hey i make moves a lot and then they mistakingly generalize this to me making moves all the time, including big pots when i hardly ever do, or to calling stations or to drawy boards.

flop is K72 rainbow and there are 3 players in the pot, i'll be out even first to act. sometime i'll even bet out 4 in the pot. i'll pound at these small pot, dry flops if i am able to OPEN raise. gives me a good image at the table that is opposite of my natural play (i'm a nit).

Working on my game 2

2008-02-25T01:12:00.003-05:00

In December I wrote a blog about my playing statistics and what they mean. Here is the link to it.

My numbers were 14.2 / 9.7 / 4.

Looking back at them now, I see that I was probably the biggest nit on EVERY table. I cannot even believe how tight I was playing. Anyone with any stats on me could play me so easy. Either fold to my raises or call with pocket pairs to hit trips and stack me.

Then in January, I was on a goal to work on changing my game by playing more hands and raising more hands (effectively). The post is HERE.

My January numbers were 18.2 / 12.2 / 3.6.

I was very proud of my January numbers and January was a very good month (except for the experiment when I tried to play an EXTREME LAG style that really put me in my worse downswing in a long time). I was able to get much more calls from people and people were less able to read and narrow down my range when I raised. So anytime I raised, people were less apt to know what hands I was raising with.

BUT anytime I reraised someone, my hands then came transparent. What I never realized was that I was hardly EVER 3-betting. 3-betting light (properly) was the best new thing I've learned in a long time. I guess, something good came from my extreme lag style disaster, because after that situation, I learned how not to 3-bet or how not to play on the flop after a 3-bet.

My February numbers are 19 / 14 / 4.8.

This does not seem that different from my January stats, but every percent at this point is significant. But what is most signifcant is my advancement in 3-betting. A number that I never showed before.

Pre January numbers: 3.3
January numbers: 4.1
February: 7.3

As you can see, I am 3-betting more than twice as much as I was when I started this blog. In fact, I am 3-betting now, almost as often as I was raising in the old days. Now I am a much tougher opponent, someone you don't want on your left if you are a timid player.

In the next blog I am going to write about the mistakes I made and why my 3-bets are working much better these days.

Forum Strategy

2008-02-22T10:23:00.003-05:00

I've been posting a lot in the SSNL forum in Deuces Cracked and thought I'd like to post my responses here. A lot of the time I'm answering other people's questions and I feel that I'm helping myself a lot by thinking of my decisions.

His Question:

Please help me out here. I want to push with my JJ here. Villain is 34/20. He goes to SD 33%. I take it pushing is worse here against an unknown?

No-Limit Hold'em, $2 BB (8 handed)

MP2 ($182.25)
CO ($198.40)
Hero ($230.15)
SB ($141.40)
BB ($257.55)
UTG ($202)
UTG+1 ($232.15)
MP1 ($370)

Preflop: Hero is Button with J, J.
4 folds, CO raises to $6, Hero raises to $22, 2 folds, CO raises to $40, Hero...

Can I push here with JJ given his stats? What about against an unknown? With what hands, if any, can I push with here?

Many thanks for your help.

My Answer:

maybe i'm playing this wrong, but from looking at his stats i have no respect for his raises in the CO,

YET his 4bet min raise is very alarming, so that compensates and makes his raise back to worthy again but not as worthy as someone who had tight stats and raised in the CO in the first place. i'd trust a PFR of 8 percent PRF in the CO over someone who 4bets min bets in having a tighter range.

if that was your FIRST time 3-betting him i'd consider folding, but if you've 3 betted him in the past i'm calling him and reraising him 3.5 times (or all in, the pot is 80 already) his cbet if no ace or king falls and probably folding to any ace or king. i'm even reraising if a queen falls. i think he could have mid pairs to JJ and AK here and sometimes suited connectors lower than jacks.

i'd just give him a lot more respect if i had never 3betted him and he 4bet me (no matter what his 4bet size). but if he and i both know that i've done the 3 bet before, that i'm capable of the 3 bet then his POSITION (steal territory), HUD STATS (loose raiser), VALUE OF MY CARDS (JJ), my POSITION (button) and 4 BET SIZE (min raise) is too good not to call and see a flop.

other situations:

against an unknown i'm folding. deeper stacks i'm calling the min raise for set value.

i would really like to hear what a DC coach has to say on this hand. it'd probably be a very easy answer for them b/c usually PF play is pretty standardized.

Sick

2008-02-19T22:37:00.001-05:00

This is the sickest, most degenerate gambler I know. He practically plays in stakes where he has 2 buy ins for. He has run his money up to hundreds of thousands a few times only to go completely busto.

Sometimes he puts money aside, buys a house, but then he just takes it right back out and bets it all.

Has no table selection skill whatsoever and plays against the top players.

Just read his posts from the beginning and you'll feel sick to your stomach.

http://88percent.blogspot.com/

Differences between live and online play and the Power of the Mid Stack

2008-02-18T12:38:00.003-05:00

I am going to try an experiment to play 60BBs on all my tables and leave at 110BB+. The reasons are below.

I have never been satisfied with either the buy ins sizes for short stacks or deep stacks. If you are a bad player, there is probably nothing better you can do than play short and premium. Your short stack takes away the weapons of a good player (position and implied odds). As a good player, playing short is costing you money. You are losing too much money by not covering the bad players on the table. However, I believe that although full buy ins and deep stacking is the optimal strategy for LIVE play, online play has its own special considerations that could make mid stack buy in (60BB) the optimal size (leave when you double up).*1

There are 3 reasons why live and online play differs and why you should consider the mid stack.

In live play, the general make up of a table not only is more polarized in skill (sharks or fishes), but has many more fishes on the table. In a short handed online table, it’s typical to have 5 decent B rated players on any given short handed table, while in a live game, you’ll have it polarized with really good and really bad players. This makes it much more important to always be able to cover the fishes or you are losing out on a lot of value.

Not only is there a greater number of fishes, but the fish at casinos are less apt to and less able to run away once they have doubled up. Continuing to build their stack and you continuing to build your stack will put you in a great position to take all their money.

Online play there are less fish (relative to live), the fish jump tables or leave often and the implied odds that work on fish so well do not work as well on regulars.

(I understand that this doesn’t show how the midstack is better than deep, just how deep live is better than deep online).

When you buy in for full your decisions become tougher. When you’re sitting at a live game you are only at ONE table. You have all the time in the world to make each decision and each decision can be fully fleshed out. Buying in full with deep stacks, you can fully concentrate on each hand. Online you are multitabling. Buying in mid stack takes away much of the opponent’s post flop implied odds thereby making OOP and other post flop decisions (varying stack sizes of players in the hand) easy.

Often with only TPTK, after looking at their HUD stats, you can bet out and get 3 easy streets of value. No more pot controlling.

Easier decisions = many more tables. Many more tables = more monies! I believe that if you play mid stack you can play 1.5x more tables. If you played 4 tables before you could play 6 now. If you 10 tabled, you can 15 table. The money you are losing by not covering the regs (you are better than) are easily made up by the extra tables you can play because of the simpler post flop decisions.

Taking away the power of implied odds, weakens the strength of good players who now have less power in putting pressure on you and punishing you for playing out of position. Of course, playing short stack REALLY takes away a lot of the power of great players, playing mid stack is a great compromise. This makes table selection a lot easier. If the skill of the opponents on the table do not matter as much when you’re playing mid stack, then you can almost join any random table and do well. Less time finding great tables and a greater selection of tables to play = great for online.

Still not convinced? Let’s look at the disadvantages to short and deep stack and how a mid stack hopes to alleviate these problems.

Shortstack cons

1. you do not cover the bad player’s stack (collary: other players will likely take fish’s money before you can.)

2. you do not have good implied odds (collary: you play less hands PF, you can never just call a raise). (collary 2: you’re missing out on value when you ever get a monster hand)

Deep stack cons

1. Decisions are are much tougher (collary: you can’t multitable as much)

2. Implied odds are important (collary: playing OOP is less profitable)

3. Skill of opponents matter more.(collary: harder table selection)

Midstack

Decisions are still VERY easy (your stack is at most only 8 times larger than a flop pot severely taking away post flop implied odds a great deal)

Overpairs and better and very easy to play. You’re committed. With top pair against fishes you don’t have to worry about pot control, you simply just bet out three streets of value at 3/4^th pot each time (works out very nicely). It will be a huge mistake for them to call you as their implied odds are totally gone. When you were deep stacked you may have had to pot control vs the fish on the turn because they could stack you on the river with implied odds if you continued to bet.

You still cover the majority of the fishes stacks

Fishes usually do not have a full buy in. at 60BB you are usually covering most of what a fish has. It may not be as good as playing deep and covering them completely, but it’s a hell of a lot better than 20BBs. On average I see fish with 20-80BBs and you cover most of that. If you ever do see a fish with 100BB and you have direct position, then just buy in full.

Since decisions are easy you can multitable like crazy

You STILL have implied odds.

One of the bad things about shortstack play is your implied odds are completely gone. Playing pairs for set value or the like or other creative preflop play is for the majority gone. But with 60BB, anyone who raises to 3.5BB or 4BB, you still have actually the perfect size to sneakily take their roll. Technically, most suggest that you need to make ten times the call in order to get good set value. With 60BB you usually have enough money to make 15 times your preflop call. People will gladly pay off 60BBs with an overpair, yet are much more cautious paying off 100BBs. They might even try to bluff raise you off your set and would never dream of doing that if you were deep.

you STILL can SQUEEZE or 3 bet to steal, for value or to mix up your preflop play. At 60BB the squeeze is usually given up if called preflop, but I find that many people fold to the squeeze since it looks like such a large percentage of your stack. It definitely looks legitimate. Also, at 60BBs your 3bets look menacing enough with your remaining stack size AND you have enough money to choose to cbet if the flop looks bluff worthy. (not possible at 30-50BB).

Imagine a 45BB stack compared to 60BB stack when 3betting + cbetting.

45BB

button raises to 3.5. you 3bet to 11 and he calls.

Pot 22. your stack is 33. The pot is so big relative to your stack size, it puts you in an awkward position.

The common cbet to push people off really weak hands and take down the pot is 3/4ths pot. If you bet 17 dollars into this pot, you only have 16 dollars left and almost have to call with most cards if opponent goes all in to see both streets. In a way you are practically betting 33 to win 22 and opponent only calls when he decides he’s ahead of you.

Imagine 60BB

Pot is again 22. but now your stack is 49. your cbet of 17 still leaves you with 32, which is still a scary enough number for them to fold middle and bottom pair and some not so great draws. If you have complete air you can safely fold as you know you do not have outs and you know that they think you are committed.

So you are able to win both on the 3bet preflop and sometimes the cbet when you see a good flop to try it on (ace high flops, dry flops, etc…) people will fold to your 17 when you have 32 left on these kinds of flops. The power of the 3bet, cbet is still available to you.

the skill of the other players matter less.

You can just play your game and not worry about how good the other players are. Most of the time, you know that your TPTK is effectively the nuts for your hand and if some smart guy outplays you, your mistake will be very marginal. He has little room postflop to use implied odds. The only implied odds he could have are preflop when he is going for set value.

*1 If there is a very obvious deep stacked fish to your right, you should always just buy in full.

Deuces Cracked Home Game

2008-02-13T19:50:00.004-05:00

I played in the Deuces Cracked members home game and even though I made a recording of it, I don't think I'll make a video.

There just isn't that many interesting spots in the 1.5 hour video to warrant me talking through the entire video.

However, the game was very fun and interesting. All the other members in the game were either tight aggressive or loose aggressive and I mean really aggressive. I think there was only 1 or 2 walks in the entire session. Limps were few and far between and every third raise was 3-betted. One guy squeezed every time it came to him if it was a squeeze situation.

The instant the game started pr1nnyraid said, "I have 5k on Joe." Then he told me not to choke as a joke and that scared me to shitz. I knew that my style of play would on average definitely net me a win, but since I had such low variance there would be no way I'd be the one who won the most. I play very TAG and very low variance. 4/5ths into it I was up only 20BBs while the leader was up close to 300BBs.

Then I was raised in the SB (by someone else) and felt like he was stealing so I 3-bet him. He then 4-bet me slightly larger than a min raise and I pushed with 7s feeling that he was 4-betting me light. He folded and that pushed me up higher and then a great situation came up the following orbit and I doubled through a guy with only a few minutes left in the game.

I believe that pushed me into 2nd place. If it's true and I got 2nd, I'll have the chance to play vs pr1nnyraid and 3 other DC members.

After that pr1nnyraid joined the (50NL) game and started going all in nearly every hand. I called him with Q9 suited (this was his first hand and he said he would be going all in no matter what). Unfortunately for me the sb called too (he had 50 dollars I had like 150). But to my surprise both guys had garbage hands and I ended up hitting a full house. A few other well timed all in calls vs Krantz eventually got me close to 400 dollars. One funny all in had me and Krantz both with AQ and a third guy (deeper stacked than Krantz) with 77. The ace hit on the flop and we split his money.The last hand I went all in with him I had Ah9h and he had 6h8h but he won that one, otherwise I would have won every all in that I was ahead in against him.

I really feel that playing all these tough guys improved my game. I was really happy it was at a lower stakes table than I was used to, so I wasn't playing scared (until Krantz told me he had 5k riding on me). When the big hands came up my heart was racing b/c I felt that 5k was riding on it. Later on Krantz told me he didn't have any money riding on me and he was joking!

Joe The Pro Episode 8

2008-02-03T17:03:00.000-05:00

January Total

2008-02-02T11:49:00.001-05:00

Before Rakeback + Bonuses: $1818
After Rakeback + Bonuses: $2546
Total Hours: 98.25
$/Hour: $26

From hands 20,000 to hands 30,000 was when I switched to playing a LAG style that I didn't really understand. I tried to copy Krantz and Whitelime, but I do not regret what I did. I know now that at my stakes, it just pays to be a solid TAG. During that downswing I lost over 1000 dollars and when I tried to switch back to TAG, I couldn't remember or I didn't have the confidence in myself.

I am neither happy or sad about my January results. I am only satisfied. I rushed out to such a strong jump that I expected to do better. However, if I make 2546 dollars again in February I will be happy. I was just disapointed that I didn't keep the momentum.

February is a short month and I will be working 5 days a week at my brothers, giving me much less time to play. I hope I can reach the same numbers, but I do not expect to. I do want to reach the same hourly rate though.

New Video Soon

2008-01-29T11:12:00.000-05:00

I'll be in another video soon, but it's not the video you think it'll be.

Having since joined deucescracked.com, I have been participating in their forum occasionally and I luckily chanced upon a thread where they said that the first six people to respond would get a chance to play in a 50NL "homegame" style NL game against each other (members) and then one of their members will do a running commentary about how well people played.

Also, the top 2 winners from this will get to play in a home game against the deucescracked.com coaches. So a chance to play against krantz and maybe whitelime.

This will be a great opportunity to get some real feedback on my play as I have been feeling unsure of how good my play is.

I will ask first if they don't mind, but I will probably post a youtube video of my own, with my own commentary and thought process for why I made the plays I did.

Call me Calling Station

2008-01-28T11:15:00.001-05:00

$0.5/$1 No Limit Holdem
6 players

BB is a solid but sometimes tricky regular.

Stacks:

Hero		($100.88)
UTG+1		($76.68)
CO		($150.15)
BTN		($111.32)
SB		($100.50)
BB		($139.23)

Pre-flop: ($1.5, 6 players) Hero is UTG

Hero raises to $4, UTG+1 calls $4, 1 fold, BTN calls $4, 1 fold, BB calls $3

UTG I raise to 4BB (larger than my usual 3.5BB) because I am UTG and the table is sort of loose. I want this to be heads up and I want to remove all trash hands from calling, so I can read the flop texture more easily. If I am reraised, I will probably muck b/c my UTG 4 dollar raise represents real strength as I am not really ever out of line. I get 3 callers. At this point I'm going for trips. If I see any overcards, I'm probably check-folding.

Flop: ($16.5, 4 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $10, 2 folds, BB raises to $25, Hero calls $15

Interesting flop for me. I am pretty sure that QQ-AA would have wanted to not play multiway. The only hand that was ahead of me preflop was JJ. Most likely I have the best hand and I'm up against people with lower pocket pairs or overcards. I bet just under 2/3rd pot if I'm reraised I'm out. At least that's what I was thinking until the BB reraised me. At this point I should fold, but in my head I was thinking, he is a tricky player. I'm still ahead of his overcard flush draw combos, or he could just be doing this with a lower pocket pair and I'm way ahead. I'll call and get to see what he does first on the turn.

Turn: ($66.5, 2 players)
BB bets $33, Hero calls $33

This does not change the situation at all. I believe that I have to call if I thought I was ahead in the first place.

River: ($132.5, 2 players)
BB bets $40, Hero folds

Again, does not change the situation at all, but I didn't believe he would 3 barrel bluff with overcards or a missed flush draw because he saw how committed I was. I decided to cut my losses and pitch to his most likely set of 3s or 4s.

Final Pot: $172.5

BB wins $169.5 ( won +$67.5 )
BTN lost -$4.00
UTG+1 lost -$4.00
Hero lost -$62.00

My problem here was making the initial reraise call on the flop. After that I talked myself into calling the turn. If I was a good thinking man, I would have put him on a set right away. The most likely cards BB would call with and then check raise with is a pair. Most of the time, he WILL not be calling with overcards like KJ or AJ in a 4 way pot out of position. There is too much reverse implied odds that hurt him. He could have also limped with suited heart connectors.

SO, I'm up against a set and getting destroyed, maybe up against JJ that didn't want to squeeze, or a flush draw. Best case scenario, I'm not that big of a favourite. I should have just ditched my hand.

What the?

2008-01-25T23:17:00.000-05:00

Just saw this hand on a 2+2 forum post. BLdSWtTRs is a very aggressive player.

UTG ($1103)
MP ($2307.50)
BLdSWtTRs ($9246)
Button ($1822)
captZEEbo ($8409)
BB ($2917.75)

Preflop: captZEEbo is SB with 3, 3. captZEEbo posts a blind of $10.
2 folds, BLdSWtTRs raises to $68, 1 fold, captZEEbo raises to $122, 1 fold, BLdSWtTRs calls.

Flop: ($264) 4, T, 6 (2 players)
captZEEbo checks, BLdSWtTRs calls $9113 (All-in), captZEEbo calls $8415 (All-in)

Turn: ($16838) 3 (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: ($16838) 4 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Final Pot: $16838

Results in white below:
captZEEbo has 3h 3c (full house, threes full of fours).
BLdSWtTRs has 2d 2h (two pair, fours and twos).
Outcome: Hero wins $16838.

Bounce

2008-01-25T20:30:00.000-05:00

I feel like a hungover alcoholic. Half alive I've grinded out two days of poker where I've played extremely conservative just so I was more sure there would be no variance and I could eek out a win.

Two days have passed and I've had two small winning sessions. This is enough for me though. I'm just happy I got back to back wins. Tomorrow is going to be a big day of fishes b/c not only is it the weekend, but Party Poker has an AA promotion going on that you get 15 dollars back if you lose with AA.

The one really unsatisfying thing about playing really tight was that all my raises were folded around b/c I had so much respect. I was really angry b/c I wasn't absurdly tight and I was playing on REALLY loose tables, but out of the 14 times I had AA, I only got action 2 times and one was with a short stack.

Playing so bad

2008-01-23T14:37:00.000-05:00

I'm losing ALL my confidence. It's completely shattered. I've somehow misapplied Krantz and whitelime's LAG play into my low stakes games. I overdid 3 and 4 betting and didn't know how to play postflop.

I'm so out of it right now. I can barely even make sense of anything.

I just lost my flush to someone who hit their full house on the river. I've lost so many river hands today, but in addition to that, I've also made bad plays. In addition to that, I didn't catch any straights or flushes and have to check down to donkeys who have called me down with 3rd pair.

Capitalizing on luck

2008-01-20T10:10:00.000-05:00

Green Plastic said, A good player is someone who miniimizes his losses when he is unlucky and maximizes his winnings when he is lucky.

Villian is 54/15 and has a betting frequency of 40%. I only have about 2 orbits of hands on him. I do have a bit of history with him as he min 3-bet me in position when I had 88 and the flop came 962. I then check raised his pot size bet and he took a long time to fold.

$0.5/$1 No Limit Holdem
5 players

Stacks:

UTG		($99.85)
CO		($101.25)
BTN		($88.36)
SB		($192.73)
Hero		($111.05)

Pre-flop: ($1.5, 5 players) Hero is BB

2 folds, BTN calls $1, SB calls $0.5, Hero checks

Flop: ($3, 3 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $2, BTN calls $2, SB folds

I bet 2/3s the pot with top pair mid kicker.

Turn: ($7, 2 players)
Hero bets $4.6, BTN calls $4.6

I feel more confident about my hand and continue to bet 2/3s pot.

River: ($16.2, 2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $12, Hero goes all-in $103.45, BTN goes all-in $68.76

Probably the best possible card in the entire deck. Give me the fullhouse, but finishes the flush, and finishes T9 straight. So it gives a lot of great hands to players who think it's the nuts. The way he was playing and just calling down, I don't put him on the queen (I think probably 1 pair or a monster hand). If I bet here close to pot (14 dollars) he'll call me down with queens, fold all marginal hands, call me down with the straight and reraise me with the flush.

If I check. I could induce bluffs with all those marginal hands that donks like to bluff with if checked to them. I would STILL get a large bet from a queen, straight and flush but then I can reraise this (he has a large betting frequency of 40% and his donkey VPIP will urge him to value bet trips).

After my check raise, it took him his entire timebank but he ended up calling me and I won an extra 70 dollars that I wouldn't have won. If I bet pot he would have simply called me down. So yes, I got lucky on the river, but I capatialized on it. I totally didn't put him on Q9 but the move incorporated the possibility of that and was good if a player of his style (donk) had it.

Final Pot: $200.41
BTN shows:
Hero shows:

Hero wins $198.41 ( won +$87.36 )
BTN lost -$88.36
SB lost -$1.00

It was only a matter of time

2008-01-19T14:08:00.000-05:00

Despite saying I wouldn't try to emulate pr1nnyraid, I went ahead and tried. I knew I wouldn't know how to pull of his style properly. Maybe it was too small a sample size of hands, but out of this month, it was the biggest 1 hour session of the month. I lost about 350 dollars at 100NL. Previously I had lost 220 and that was over 2 hours.

There was one hand, I played very aggressive with AK. UTG raised it to 4BB and I raised it to 12BB. The SB who had 9% preflop raising went all in for 100BB. I probably would have folded to a 36BB bet, but the 100BB made me really think. A little birdie in my head remembered Krantz saying AK is like the nuts these days. I called and was stacked by AA. I should have saw that it was a 4-bet that

1. Wasn't a squeeze play
2. Saw an UTG bet and 3-bet
3. Was in the SB
4. Was made by a guy who I had over 300 hands on and PFR was 9

I had 12 in the pot and his range was QQ, KK, AA, AK. Putting that into poker stove it was 2:1 and I was not getting the odds to call.

Another aggressive play I wouldn't have done was 3-bet with AQ and got two calls. I hit the queen and felt that the stack to pot ratio was high enough to go broke with and thats what happened because he had trips. (Is this bad results oriented analysis?)

I believe a few things that are making the style not work for me is that I'm not taking into account the VPIP of the table. I'm reraising and not being able to isolate. Much of the time, I'm faced with a scary board with 2 callers and I have to give up on the pot thereby making me look like a weak passive player thereby giving people more incentive to call me in position again, or to float me in the future.

I was able to break even and even make 13 dollars for the day which felt very good. But I think I'm going to put the LAG style on the shelf for a bit until I get better at being a decent TAG.

Deuces Cracked

2008-01-16T14:34:00.000-05:00

I ponied up for a cardrunner's instructional video website alternative called Deucescracked (just opened this January). I have watched 4 videos so far and am VERY impressed. The quality of the videos is excellent and the people involved are people worth learning from.

Krantz is known online as pr1nnyraid online and is 2007's biggest online NL winner at over 2 million. His style is aggressive, constantly putting pressure on people like I've never seen before, pushing them to breaking point and then switching gears to stack them. I do not think I can emulate him as I do not have his post flop skills and know-how of how people react pre/post flop to this image, but it's not to say I'm not learning a ton as I will be playing people using his style and there are parts of his play that I want to incorporate into mine. It also helps that he is an extremely funny guy and entertaining to listen to.

Whitelime is Krantz housemate and also high stakes online player. He rounded out the top 20 NL online winners of 2007 (he's no push over). His style is what I will want to emulate. I believe he has a lower variance style than Krantz and his style focuses on the other player, inducing bluffs on players prone to bluff, c-betting certain player types and not others. It's so interesting to hear him dissect player archtypes (what to do vs weak or strong players) and how to play vs them.

I signed up for 6 months at around 25 dollars a month (no sign up fee, unlike cardrunners). I am sure they are going to continue to produce quality videos for at least 6 months, because all of the members seem VERY hyped and involved in the project and Krantz himself said, he will not hold any information back whatsoever.

The videos are DRM free and also in IPOD format, so you can bring them anywhere. Perfect for viewing on long boring bus/subway rides.

The biggest thing I've found is that I have not been 3-betting light whatsoever. They are 3-betting light all the time, in all sorts of positions and situations. If I even add the 3-bet only in the cream of those situations, I could be stealing so much more extra money b/c of my tight image and at the time loosening up that tight image to help my legitimate raises not look so scary when I do have a big hand. Krantz was raking in so much 3-bet money and he looks like a maniac at times. If my tight ass started 3-betting, I'd get everyone to fold all sorts of hands.

Poor play

2008-01-15T00:10:00.000-05:00

I haven't tilted for a long time, but for some reason, my poor play in this one following hand set me off. I think it was because I was so angry that it was MY bad play that lost me the hand and not HIS.

Full Tilt Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $1 BB (6 handed)

saw flop|saw showdown

Button ($100)
SB ($65.15)
BB ($118.50)
JoeThePro ($141.30)
MP ($105.50)
CO ($156.45)

Preflop: JoeThePro is UTG with Qd, Jd.

JoeThePro raises to $3.5, 1 fold, CO calls $3.50, 3 folds.

I'm UTG with a speculative hand and I've got a good stack so I open raise standard. The CO calls who also has a deep stack.

Flop: ($8.50) 2s, Js, Qc (2 players)

JoeThePro bets $7, CO calls $7.

I hit a great flop and I know my hand is best. I think CO would have repopped with QQ or JJ preflop so only hand that beats me is 22. At this point I want to make the pot larger, so I make a nearly pot size bet.

Turn: ($22.50) 6s (2 players)

JoeThePro checks, CO bets $16, JoeThePro calls $16.

The turn card is not great as it completes a flush draw. I still feel that my hand is the best, but I'm not willing to play a huge pot. Check/Call.

River: ($54.50) 8c (2 players)

JoeThePro checks, CO bets $40, JoeThePro calls $40.

The river is a safe card if he doesn't have the flush. Here I believe I should have done a blocking bet. After taking long to call the turn bet, if I think long again on the river and then bet out 30 no one is going to reraise me but a very high flush draw (the long think on the turn makes him think I may have hit the flush and am contemplating a checkraise and a sudden bet out on the turn could confirm this suspicion). Even some low flush draws might not reraise but if I was, I could release. Instead, In my head, I was thinking, I'll call anything up to 40. Unfortunately, for me, he bet exactly what I said to myself I would call.

Final Pot: $134.50

Results in white below:

JoeThePro has Qd Jd (two pair, queens and jacks).

CO has 7s 5s (flush, jack high).

Outcome: CO wins $134.50.

Within 2 orbits of the same short handed table, 2 other guys flushed out on me and I paid them off, making me even more angry and then this hand came up on another table. I played it so bad. UTG is very LAG.

Full Tilt Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $1 BB (5 handed)

saw flop|saw showdown

UTG ($116.15)
MP ($197.10)
Button ($184.35)
SB ($124.65)
JoeThePro ($100)

Preflop: JoeThePro is BB with Qd, As.

UTG calls $1, 3 folds, JoeThePro raises to $4.5, UTG raises to $14, JoeThePro calls $9.50.

UTG has a very high VPIP so he limps with many cards. I'm almost sure that my AQ is better than his limping hands. I'm surprised when he reraises me but I want to see if I catch the flop.

Flop: ($28.50) 9d, 5s, Th (2 players)

JoeThePro checks, UTG bets $28.5, JoeThePro raises to $78, UTG calls $49.50.

LAG UTG bets pot and I've seen him bet pot on missed cards, so I push him all in figuring if he has a pocket pair I'll still have 6 outs.

Turn: ($184.50) 4c (2 players)

JoeThePro bets $8 (All-In), UTG calls $8.

River: ($200.50) 6d (2 players, 1 all-in)

Final Pot: $200.50

Results in white below:

JoeThePro has Qd As (high card, ace).

UTG has Ks Ad (high card, ace).

Outcome: UTG wins $200.50.

When you tilt, your aggression factor goes over the roof. At least I was able to restrain myself and recognize the limp reraise UTG trick and wanted to see a flop (at this level big UTG limp/reraise usually means AA, KK or AK while a min reraise usually means AK or pairs). When I missed I should have dropped my cards but instead I spewed.

Strategy vs Loose or Tight players

2008-01-13T14:20:00.000-05:00

Question for you:

Hero is deep and in the BB with JT suited. Villian is deep on the button. Would hero prefer a tight or loose PreFlop Raiser (PFR) to be raising his blinds?

Intuitively you would think you would want someone loose to raise your blinds. Assuming they will not have much of anything, you could take the pot from them if a quality face card shows up. But this results in a marginal win. JT suited as well as pocket pairs have the potential to make monster hands. If and when you make these monster hands, you will want to be paid off. Do you really think someone who is loose preflop is going to have a great hand to pay you off big when you hit the hand?

You want someone with a PFR to be of less than 12 percent. He is playing only premium and you could bust his aces or great cards if he doesn’t know how to play deep stack correctly.

This reason is also why I will always call ANY UTG raisers with pocket pairs. Even loose players tighten up UTG. You want to play against premium cards with monster drawing hands. If you don’t hit your monster hand/draw, you pitch your hand. Obviously the best case scenario is a Tight UTG raiser. You can easily put him on a monster hand and take his money if you hit the flop. The tighter they are, the more willing you’re to call a larger raise. I would not call a loose raiser UTG of 5 BBs because it could very likely be total garbage and I would not get paid off. But a tight raiser UTG of 5 BBs is screaming JJ-AA, AK.

This is the problem with playing extremely tight. You are predictable, so you would really need to protect your hand preflop by making a large raise. But by making a large raise you scare off everyone and don't make any profit from your hand.

2 blind examples:

1. VERY loose button raises it to 4BB and you are in the SB with 33.

Worst play: call.

The button's range is so wide in that position is so wide that he could hit any type of flop. Your 33 will see all overcards on the flop and will have to play out of position the entire hand without being able to hand read very well b/c of button's wide range.

That leaves folding or raising. I personally believe that when out of position, you really can't hurt yourself much at all by folding. I really believe that even if you folded JJs in this position all the time, the money you would be losing would not be that much considering most of the time the button is not going to pay you off a big pot. Folding is also a good choice if the BB has high VPIP. when you have pairs you do not want to play 3-way. You want it either heads up or 4+ multiway and go for trips. If the BB has high VPIP, he'll might be dumbly enticed to call your reraise because he sees it as multiway and he has an ENTIRE 1BB invested already.

I believe most good players would tell you to raise here. As mentioned, the buttons range is wide. You could get him to drop a lot of hands with a reraise and if he calls, he would drop to most c-bets. There is then also the chance of hitting trips (although they won't get paid off).

Recommended play (if you're good and confident): 3-bet.

2. VERY tight button raises it to 4BB and you are in the SB with 33.

Worst play: Reraise.

Unless you are both VERY deep and even after his 4-bet you still have enough chips to get good implied odds (both your stacks are still 10x larger than the total of his bet) a reraise does nothing but harm. He has an excellent hand, so you will not get any fold equity. You are lowering your implied odds by making the preflop pot larger (when your hand is very likely behind). You are risking giving him the chance to 4-bet and blow you out of the pot.

As I said before, fold and you do yourself no harm in this situation. Never feel like you can't fold preflop even if you started the raise to 3.5.

Calling here, which was the worst play earlier, is the best play here. First, you've got a discounted rate being in the small blind. You're sure he has a great hand since he's extremely tight. If you miss your flop you just instant drop. Before you didn't want to just call because you didn't know where your pocket threes stood when the flop came, but here you're going for trips and you know where you stand if it hits. If you hit your trips, you're going to be in great shape. Since you hit trips 1/8 times, you'll need 10 times his raise in your stack for this play to be profitable.

In summary: play strong drawing hands vs tight players. play hard with heads up hands (pocket pairs, Ax, Kx) vs loose players.

Min Raising is different than Min bet

2008-01-11T12:28:00.000-05:00

As much as I hate the min bet, I do believe that a min raise in the right situation is very good. However, I do believe that the min-raise preflop is horrible.

On the flop, if you are out of position, it is very hard to build a pot without giving away your hand if you are not the preflop raiser.

If someone who has position on your raises preflop and you call, a large bet from you rouses suspicion and a large check raise does also. A large bet could make the other person fold. If they call, they will likely fold on the turn. The large check raise really defines your hand.

I prefer the min check raise with lock hands. Most players will c-bet and must call a min check raise with the odds they seem to be getting. After that many seem to not mind as much calling large raises thinking that your min-raise was a semi bluff and the turn and river bets are continuation bluffs.

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $1 BB (6 handed)

saw flop|saw showdown

CO ($102.88)
Button ($100)
JoeThePro ($97)
BB ($182.89)
UTG ($109.01)
MP ($20.55)

Preflop: JoeThePro is SB with 8d, 8s.

2 folds, CO raises to $4, 1 fold, JoeThePro calls $3.50, 1 fold.

Flop: ($9) Jh, 8c, 9s (2 players)

JoeThePro checks, CO bets $6, JoeThePro raises to $12, CO calls $6.

Straight heavy board. A min check raise is okay only if you're willing to dump the hand if the turn is bad and Villian's bet sizes are too big.

Turn: ($33) Jd (2 players)

JoeThePro bets $15, CO calls $15.

All the worries about the scary board are gone. The J is a scary card for anything Villian could have had, coupled with the check raise on the flop, any big bet will force a fold, so I bet small with my lock hand.

River: ($63) 2s (2 players)

JoeThePro bets $28, CO calls $28.

Safe river, but Villian is still probably cautious. I bet small again to get some value vs Top Pair or QQ, KK, AA.

Final Pot: $119

Results in white below:

JoeThePro has 8d 8s (full house, eights full of jacks).

CO has Js Ks (three of a kind, jacks).

Outcome: JoeThePro wins $119.

Results show that he had a jack. I probably could have stacked him, but I felt that my play wasn't bad.

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $1 BB (6 handed)

saw flop|saw showdown

UTG ($68.47)
MP ($51.38)
JoeThePro ($154.90)
Button ($158.39)
SB ($104.01)
BB ($100)

Preflop: JoeThePro is CO with 5c, 5h.

2 folds, JoeThePro raises to $3.5, Button raises to $8, 2 folds, JoeThePro calls $4.50.

Min raises preflop almost always means a monster hand or medium pair like 77-JJ.

Flop: ($17.50) 5s, 2c, Qh (2 players)

JoeThePro checks, Button bets $10, JoeThePro raises to $20, Button calls $140.39 (All-In), JoeThePro calls $126.90 (All-In).

I only lose to QQ. I'm surprised of his move but it's an easy call.

Turn: ($314.79) Jh (2 players, 2 all-in)

River: ($314.79) Qd (2 players, 2 all-in)

Final Pot: $314.79

Results in white below:

JoeThePro has 5c 5h (full house, fives full of queens).

Button has Ah Ks (one pair, queens).

Outcome: JoeThePro wins $311.30. Button wins $3.48.

I still play against Newbs

2008-01-09T11:14:00.000-05:00

The one really good thing right now is I'm at a level where there are still tons of fishes. 100NL I believe is the absolute pinnacle of the sweet spot in poker: You have 1/3 the table with fishes.

If you play lower, you'll have more fishes and more swings, which if you're on a hot streak can make you rich, but so many ppl are involved in hands that your swings are so large that you can go insane/tilt at the things people do.

If you play higher, the skill level increases slightly.

My goal, if possible is to multitable 2/4 and maybe throw in a 3/6 sometimes if the table there is weak. I think most pros and really good players are usually at 5/10 and greater and maybe sometimes swing down to 3/6. At least this is what I'm banking on.

Here is a deep stack hand that I was very happy to be playing against a fish. It was pretty clear exactly what hand I had.

Full Tilt Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $1 BB (5 handed)

saw flop|saw showdown

BB ($37.30)

JoeThePro ($182.35)
MP ($100)
Button ($258.50)
SB ($97.50)

Preflop: JoeThePro is UTG with As, Ad.

JoeThePro raises to $3.5, 1 fold, Button calls $3.50, 2 folds.

Flop: ($8.50) Ks, Qh, 6h (2 players)

JoeThePro checks, Button bets $6, JoeThePro calls $6.

The flop is very scary. Clear flush and str draws out. JT a popular deep stack hand and it has an open ended str. KQ has 2p which can often call a raise in POS. Agr flush drawers in position could play aggresively, so I decide to check this hand.

He bets 3/4 and I call happy with his bet size as it was what I would have bet myself in position.

Turn: ($20.50) 7h (2 players)

JoeThePro checks, Button bets $14, JoeThePro calls $14.

A bad card. This completes the flush, but I believed the flush is one of the least likely holdings of someone who cold called my bet on the button. It usually happens with KQ, AQ, JTx, or pocket pairs. Most pocket pairs did not hit the flop b/c I doubt he had KK or QQ b/c he did not reraise. The flush is unlikely, but if he bets huge on the river I tank my hand.

I am hoping for a low card on the river to negate the chance of a str filling up.

River: ($48.50) Jd (2 players)

JoeThePro bets $20, Button calls $20.

Very bad card. At least it wasn't Jh, but it's pretty bad. AT filled up. KJ and QJ have 2p now. He still has that flush possibility. KQ beats me. I can hardly even think of many hands I beat, but my passive play would let many people semi bluff their pairs or Ace gut shot and other random hands.

Against a good player I would have to make a pretty reasonble sized blocking bet, so I won't get reraised bluffed, but then I would lose out on the value bet of someone with a single pair. Lucky for me that a small blocking bet still works versus fish, so I bet out 2/5ths the pot. If I am even min raised I grudgingly fold.

Final Pot: $88.50

Results in white below:

JoeThePro has As Ad (one pair, aces).

Button doesn't show.

Outcome: JoeThePro wins $88.50.

Full Tilt Poker

2008-01-08T16:11:00.000-05:00

I'm doing well, so I decided to split some of my winnings and put it into another site. Unlike Party Poker I'll be getting rakeback with this site. I decided this would be a good idea because at certain times at night, there aren't any good tables at Party, but at FTP there still are since the players are mostly in my time zone.

Similar to the Party Poker, I modded the look of it. Since I'm so used to the party screen I decided to mod my FTP to look like my Party Poker so the screens look good matched up beside one another.

1. Killed the avatar
2. Put the names of people in a simple black box
3. The active player has a yellow box around them
4. Dealer button is the same from party
5. The table is the same as from party I use minus the rake coaster
6. Changed the color of the cards to be a light red simliar to party

Modding My Party Skin

2008-01-06T23:53:00.000-05:00

Trying to keep the poker screens as simple as possible, I've modded the party poker table. When I multitable, I do not want to see clutter and distractions as I'm skimming from table to table.

Below is a before and after shot of what my party table was before tinkering.

Before:

After:

From their options menu, you can get rid of the ppl seated at the table, but you cannot get rid of the chairs. I had to make them pixel large and the same colour as the background. From their options you can turn off the annoying blackjack 21 cards. I also got rid of the dealer by using photoshop. Just after I took this screen shot, I also got rid of the smiley face on the bottom by making them transparent GIFs. By doing all this I make a lot of space available for my HUD which displays stats on other players.

Messing with Min Raisers

2008-01-06T18:13:00.000-05:00

Nothing pisses me off more than when the pot is huge and someone does a min bet. Here are two hands that I had to face the Min Bet.

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $1 BB (6 handed)

saw flop|saw showdown

Hero ($117.67)
UTG ($53.03)
MP ($98.34)
CO ($111.11)
Button ($52.64)
SB ($88.02)

Preflop: Hero is BB with Kc, Ac.

UTG raises to $4, 4 folds, Hero calls $3.

I have two options. I could go all in or I could call his bet. I feel that reraising him all in would put me at a loss because if I miss the flop, a c-bet is so akward because of his stack size. A few things lead me to just call.

1. He was UTG which could mean a monster, no point in going all in vs someone when there is a better chance than normal he could have a monster and at the same time chase away all the hands that I dominate.

2. 4 dollars + blinds = 5.5 is just only 10 percent of his stack size. Not worth it to take with an all in. If he had bet 8+ dollars I could go all in and skip the difficulty of playing AK out of position.

Flop: ($8.50) 7s, Ad, 7h (2 players)

Hero checks, UTG bets $1, Hero raises to $2, UTG calls $1.

Great flop for me. I now beat KK, QQ, JJ, TT and dominate Ace everything except A7 (highly unlikely). I am almost positive I have the best hand except vs AA. If I bet here, he's going to play very cautiously and I could chase away hands that could pay me off. There are no draws on this board at all and I most likely have him dominated.

He does the 1 dollar bet. I hate the 1 dollar bet. It is a very safe flop for me, so I have the option of slowplaying. I decide to be an asshole like him and min raise him back, hoping if he has AQ or even AJ he'll be fed up with his own medicine and reraise me again. A frustrated, no information KK or QQ could reraise me here too.

He only calls.

Turn: ($12.50) 4c (2 players)

Hero bets $11, UTG calls $11.

Awesome sauce card. Totally safe if I was already ahead on the flop. I decide to do a pot bet because I believe almost any of the hands he could have would call because of my flop min raise and yet it triples the pot. He calls and I am now almost certain he has TT-K, AQ or AJ (AK would reraise the flop or at least the turn. AA he could still slow play if that's his style).

River: ($34.50) 2s (2 players)

Hero bets $19, UTG calls $36.03 (All-In), Hero calls $17.03.

Safe card again. I'm thinking in my head what he would call if he had the lower end of the spectrum 77-JJ, AJ and I decide that he would not call an all in with those hands and decide that 2/3s the pot is the max he would call with those hands. 2/3 = 22.50 but I decide to make it cheap for him and bet 19. To my surprise he reraises me all in. Did he have the unlikely AA? Or did he play AK strangely?

Final Pot: $106.56

Results in white below:

Hero has Kc Ac (two pair, aces and sevens).

UTG has Jc Jd (two pair, jacks and sevens).

Outcome: Hero wins $106.56.

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $1 BB (6 handed)

saw flop|saw showdown

Hero ($173.15)
SB ($99)
BB ($85.84)
UTG ($109.61)
MP ($90.77)
CO ($55.37)

Preflop: Hero is Button with Kd, 9d.

UTG calls $1, 2 folds, Hero calls $1, 1 fold, BB checks.

Table is loose so I won't be getting much steal/fold equity with a reraise here and decide to limp on the button.

Flop: ($3.50) 4d, Jd, 8c (3 players)

BB bets $1, UTG folds, Hero raises to $4, BB calls $3.

Flop isn't bad with a draw to the second nut flush. BB bet 1 dollar so he could have any kind of pair from a pocket to any of the ones on the board. I reraise him pot and don't mind if I take it down right here.

Turn: ($11.50) Qd (2 players)

BB bets $1, Hero raises to $4, BB calls $3.

Turn card gives me the flush and I'm pretty much considering my hand the nuts. If he was deeper then I wouldn't but he was only at 80+BB. He did his god damn min bet again. Again, this could mean anything from him hitting a lower flush to him testing out how good his pair is. My guess is he has a pair of jacks b/c he called my big reraise. Now the queen is up and he is scared.

Here is the tricky part. If he has just a pair then a 2nd barrel huge reraise would definitely scare him off his cards, but if he has a flush I really should be making the pot as large as I can.

BUT keep this in mind. Either he has a pair or a flush. Imagine pair first.

PAIR - I reraise big, he folds. I call. He check calls a small bet on the river. I raise small. He calls and then he checks calls a bigger bet.

FLUSH - I reraise big, he goes all in. I call. He bets big. I go all in. I raise small. He calls or reraises, but will bet again on the river if he just calls and then I go all in and he calls.

So in the flush scenario. I'm getting all his money no matter what. But in the pair scenario, the best option is to reraise small like you're scared of the flush card too, but at the same time you're actually building the pot slightly (much better than checking behind or reraising big).

River: ($19.50) 3c (2 players)

BB checks, Hero bets $25, BB calls $25.

He checks, so I know he doesn't have a flush. I reraised him small (like I was scared of the flush). He wouldn't check again with the flush b/c he'd be scared that I'd check behind. So now I know he only has a pair. Time to overbet the pot and hope that the J pair calls.

I feel that a jack would call from 0-8 dollars (only 1 overcard), not call 9-24 (looks like a value bet), and maybe call 25-30 (looks like a bluff, especially since the reraise on the turn was tiny).

I have to think that the 25 dollar call is 4 times less likely to make it less profitable than making the 8 dollar bet. At these stakes I doubt the 25 dollar bet is 4 times less likely so I go for the overbet route.

Final Pot: $69.50

Results in white below:

BB has 9s Qc (one pair, queens).

Hero has Kd 9d (flush, king high).

Outcome: Hero wins $69.50.

Working on my game

2008-01-04T19:00:00.000-05:00

The past few days I have really been working on my game. Watching cardrunner videos and implementing more positional raises and opening up my raising standards and calling standards in position. I can see now that I was playing much too tight.

My previous numbers: 14.2/9.7/4
My current numbers: 18.2/12.2/3.6

I'm in a few more pots and i'm raising a few more pots, which makes my raises with the premium hands not stand out like a red flag. I've also tightened my aggression a little bit on certain flops such as ones that have JT, J9, T9 with or without suits as those flops have a lot of draw or pair potential. While betting larger on flops like 226 because before people were calling with overcards if I didn't bet large enough when I'd rather just win it outright with the semi bluff.

4 Tables

2008-01-02T18:54:00.001-05:00

I've decided that for now I cannot handle 6 tables. It's not that I can't think fast enough, but there's just not enough time to prevent timing tells. I truly believe that my timing on certain plays gives me some value. Taking two to three extra seconds before checking sometimes instills doubt in weaker players mind checking down the river and giving me a showdown (just one example of using timing).

I've switched to 4 tables, but the bigger move is playing with a max buy in instead of half. If you look at my past hand histories I've always come in with half the buy in to make my life and decision making easier. Most of the time, top pair commits me and I push it hard on ppl very easily punishing people who draw. But now I feel that the real money is stacking people who are deep and don't know how to play it.

The game is much harder, but I want to put the hours in to learn.

My most annoying hand of the day was when this guy who lucked out on me already went all in UTG with his full stack and I sat in the SB holding aces. He had QQ and hit his trips. I was so furious. But I usually stay for 2 orbits b/c people respect you after they see you had aces so you can still a lot preflop and flop. But after that it's not worth it, b/c I play a tight game and they continue to respect me too much. Plus I usually switch tables to prevent tilt. Luckily within that two orbit I witness him lose his entire stack.

Hold'em Manager

2007-12-30T14:24:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I bought a second monitor. I've decided to 6 table. The only thing holding me back from 6-tabling before was that my reads of people made me more money than the extra tables were worth.

That changed when I signed up for Hold'em Manager with it's HUD. The HUD overlays the important numbers I need to know, and although it is no substitute for careful observation, the EV I lose from not being able to pay attention as much is mostly offset by the help of this program allowing me to make more money 6 tabling compared to 4.

The HUD came with a lot of information, but I reduced the information. I decided to allow it to show 4 numbers instead of 9 b/c the screen real estate was cluttered. I decided to only keep the most important.

VPIP - So I know how loose they are playing preflop.
VPIP Strat - On the button reraise (Ace or King anything) any high VPIP people who have limped. VPIP ppl are limping with too many hands, you can steal a lot of their money preflop.

PFR - I need to see how aggressive they are preflop.
PFR Strategy - I can 3-bet high PFR or defend more confidently I can fold to low PFR all the time.

AGR - Their aggression from flop onwards.
AGR - This is what I need to improve on. I am going to show a few hands below where I did or did not take into account this number.

Hands - To see how accurate the numbers actually are. The more hands the more I trust the numbers.

Also, I have decided to only trust these numbers if they are in the very high or low spectrum of what is expected.

The first example Villian is 59.5/16.7/1.5. He is extremely loose and will call with almost any two cards. I had played a decent number of hands versus him also.

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $1 BB (6 handed)

saw flop|saw showdown

Button ($150.55)
SB ($132.07)
BB ($89.05)
UTG ($106.58)
Hero ($63.50)
CO ($118.43)

Preflop: Hero is MP with 5c, 5d.

1 fold, Hero raises to $4, CO calls $4, 3 folds.

Flop: ($9.50) 5s, Th, Jc (2 players)

Hero bets $9, CO calls $9.

This was me just trying to build a big pot with someone who seemed to be a calling station. The board is pretty dry and I'd have to put him on some overcard with a gut-shot draw.

Turn: ($27.50) 2s (2 players)

Hero calls $50.50 (All-In), CO folds.

Complete safe card and me truly hoping that he has the Jack or 2p. I know this move looks extremely dumb and in this situation vs this player it is dumb, but in some instances it works. I am not used to looking at the stats yet and using them to my advantage. Since his VPIP was so high I should have just bet 3/4 the pot and he would have most likely called with his overcards, gut shot, 1 p or whatever other junk he had. Instead I force him to fold. This move works on people with very high AGR and his was only 1.5. People think other's think like them so when a hyper AGR person sees a huge overbet they will call you down with something as low as mid pair + overcard or flush draw on the turn.

Next hand Villian is 33.3/16.7/6. He is loose/aggressive.

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $1 BB (6 handed)

saw flop|saw showdown

MP ($185.83)
Hero ($58.88)
Button ($136.38)
SB ($208.67) Villian
BB ($100)
UTG ($31.61)

Preflop: Hero is CO with Ad, Kc.

UTG calls $1, 1 fold, Hero raises to $4.5, 1 fold, SB calls $4, 1 fold, UTG calls $3.50.

Flop: ($14.50) 6h, Ts, 2s (3 players)

SB bets $12, UTG folds, Hero calls $54.38 (All-In), SB folds.

If Villian hit 2p or trips, he would check raise me as the board is a very safe looking board (apart from a flush draw and usually preflop raisers aren't going for flush draws). Yet he almost mashed the pot. The pot is already 27 dollars which is half my stack and this hyper aggressive guy led out. If I push and I'm wrong and he has a pair, I'll still win a quarter of the time, so this decision wasn't that difficult for me.

Final Pot: $80.88

It's my 2nd day trying out the HUD. I think it can really improve my game once I learn how to take full advantage of it.

My Stats

2007-12-29T14:31:00.000-05:00

i've been reading CTS' blog, from his very beginnings when he was still playing at 200NL. he is a very interesting read and i agree with a lot of his ideas.

LINK HERE

Here is a snippet from one of his earliest posts:

Poker players usually describe their opponents using three numbers, VPIP/PFR/AF. Voluntarily put money in the pot (VPIP) is the percentage of hands a player plays excluding free plays from the blinds. In 6-handed no-limit hold'em, a winning strategy can include a VPIP anywhere between 20 and 30. Some players play a little tighter and some a little looser, but a VPIP of over 40 is far too loose and the mark of a poor player. Preflop raise (PFR) is the percentage of hands a player chooses to raise before the flop. Good players have PFR's somewhere between 10 and 20; a PFR of below 10 is very passive and indicates a weak passive player. Aggression factor (AF) is a measure of how often a player bets and raises as opposed to checking and calling. Good players have varying AFs, but anything below 1.5 is too passive and poor, passive players have low aggression factors. There are also maniacal players with high AFs that bet and raise at every opportunity, so a high AF does not necessarily mean a good player. My VPIP/PFR/AF statistics are about 26/16/2.2.

I looked into my poker tracker to find out what my stats are after about 26k hands. They were 14.2/9.7/4.

from the looks of it, i'm entering the pot not often enough . my raising standards are almost there, but starting to error on the side of nitty (which i don't think is such a bad thing). My aggression factor is pretty high, but i think this number was inflated by the fact that i used to almost always c-bet, however i know check on certain boards.

Instinct

2007-12-27T00:11:00.000-05:00

I believe the key that sets apart a good poker player from a great one is great instincts and that draws from a deep understanding about the theory of poker as well as the psychology of the other player.

In every poker session, since I multitable I play a very standard game of poker. I don't want to think too deeply about a hand and am willing to lose a little EV to keep myself not stressing about difficult calls. That said, in every session, there usually is one hand that I don't play how I would normally play either because I feel like a have a good read of the board, the player or the flow of the game.

In this session, I had two moments. I've pasted the hand history below. Try to figure out which play was I ahead in and which one I was behind. Read them both first and decide which play would have been the one you agree with more then see the results.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $1 BB (6 handed)
MP ($225.48)
CO ($60.92)
Button ($71.82)
SB ($29.45)
Hero ($50)
UTG ($120.59)

Preflop: Hero is BB with 7, 6.

2 folds, CO calls $1, Button calls $1, 1 fold, Hero checks.

Flop: ($3.50) 6, 5, 3 (3 players)

Hero bets $3, CO folds, Button raises to $6, Hero calls $3.

I flop top pair with a gut shot str draw and am very interested in seeing where I stand. The flop is very draw heavy with straight draws and flush draws on the board. I believe if I was triple raised or greater then I would have folded the hand, being min-raised led me to believe he was semi bluffing with a flush draw + overcards or a straight draw or even overcards with a backdoor flush draw. I believe an overpair would have reraised me larger to protect this draw like board. I called to see if the next card would complete any draws.

Turn: ($15.50) Q (2 players)

Hero checks, Button bets $10, Hero calls $43 (All-In), Button calls $33.

The Qc does not complete the draws. I am losing only to the pocket pairs (that I don't think are likely b/c of the min-raise) or overcards that included a Q. Once he bet 10, I wanted to charge him as much as I could for his draws and if he had a Q or an overpair I still had my 2p outs and my gutshot str.

River: ($101.50) K (2 players, 1 all-in)

Results in white below:

Hero has 7c 6s (one pair, sixes).

Button has 7s 4s (straight, seven high).

Outcome: Button wins $101.50.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $1 BB (6 handed)
Hero ($49.50)
CO ($68.55)
Button ($146)
SB ($121.84)
BB ($100)
UTG ($199.96)

Preflop: Hero is MP with Ks, A.

UTG calls $1, Hero raises to $4.5, CO calls $4.50, 3 folds, UTG folds.

Flop: ($11.50) 5, 2, 5 (2 players)

Hero checks, CO checks.

I check to represent a big hand. The cards are so low that there could be many types of overpairs, an ace with gut shot, and flush cards that all would call me.

Turn: ($11.50) 3 (2 players)

Hero bets $10.93, CO raises to $21.86, Hero calls $34.07 (All-In)

His check was very nice information because I believe that most pairs would bet to see where they stand and also to protect their hand somewhat. The 3 is also nice because it doesn't hit the big overcards that contain a K or Q. I continue my play of representing a big pair by betting just under the pot (as if I want a call and am betting just a little bit below the pot).

He reraises me minimum. My choices are to fold, call the 11 or push the 34. I do not believe he has the pocket pair b/c of the flop check and also he would have pushed here with a medium pair like 77-TT b/c with the pot over 50 dollars and 20 something behind he is already pot committed with the overpair. This play made me very suspicious and the only explanation in my mind that could explain his bet size was either he had A4 (highly unlikely) or AJ-A8 thinking that he could still spike an ace or a 4 on the river in the worst case that I call. I do not believe he had a flush draw (a call with 30 something behind for implied odds or a push to maximize fold equity if I had a medium pair).

Results in white below:

CO folds.

Final Pot: $78.36
No showdown. Hero wins $78.36.

Joe the Pro Episode 7

2007-12-27T00:07:00.001-05:00

Did I miss out on Value?

2007-12-25T13:46:00.001-05:00

For quite some time now, I've felt comfortable multitabling 100NL and every time I hit 1000 in profits I would cash out, but I've decided to ride it and try to climb stakes. Today I played 2 tables of 200NL as well as 2 tables of 100NL.

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $2 BB (6 handed)

MP ($205.40)
CO ($63.95)
Button ($53.41)
Hero ($98)
BB ($187.21)
UTG ($198)

Preflop: Hero is SB with K, A.

1 fold, MP calls $2, 2 folds, Hero raises to $9, 1 fold, MP calls $7.

With a limper I did the standard reraise in the small blind.

Flop: ($20) 8, 2, 4 (2 players)

Hero checks, MP checks.

The board is relatively dry with no flush or str draws. If I was in position, I would have definitely bet out 3/4ths pot, but being OOP I played it safe and checked.

Turn: ($20) K (2 players)

Hero bets $14, MP raises to $28, Hero calls $14.

great card for me, so I decide to get some value from this and bet 3/4ths. To my complete surprise and dismay I was min raised. I could go all in at this point, but thought I would only get called by hands that beat me, so I decided to call.

River: ($76) 6 (2 players)

Hero checks, MP bets $32, Hero calls $32.

Final Pot: $140

Results in white below:

Hero has Kd Ad (one pair, kings).

MP has Td Kh (one pair, kings).

Outcome: Hero wins $140.

If he put me all in, I felt like that's how he would play Trips or a BLUFF. But he didn't, he bet small, should I have sensed a small bet would be a dominated king and should I have reraised all in? Was I playing to passively? I'm not sure at all how well I did in this hand.

Joe the Pro Episode 6

2007-11-19T12:50:00.001-05:00

The longest episode

2007-11-16T11:52:00.001-05:00

I'm nearly done the longest/biggest/most epic episode I have ever made. I feel that I'm getting more comfortable with the software, so making the episodes are becoming easier. I'm also not afraid to use popular music b/c if they remove my video, I could very easily just change the song to something else.

I'm trying to branch out the series to include some poker related in-jokes, but try to broaden the appeal of the videos I'm trying to include broader themes like this episode where it's more like someone who has a crush.

Episode Five

2007-10-25T20:29:00.001-04:00

It took me a long time to finish this because during this time I had to move to 2 different houses and in the process I couldn't find my camcorder. As you watch the episode, you see how I included that into the video by saying I pawned it =] In the end I found that working with webcam was a lot easier for me.

Interview

2007-05-02T21:09:00.001-04:00

I was interviewed at Sixty Cent Main Event.

Hopefully, this helps me get some more exposure.

A Good One

2007-04-29T18:16:00.002-04:00

I must say that I enjoyed making episode four. It was very fast to put together. It only took me two days to film and edit, upload and advertise =]

As you can tell with each episode, it's taking me longer to make a new one and I think the trend will continue, but I hope to never stop making the episodes --- it just might be a very long wait between episodes.

Episode Four

2007-04-29T18:16:00.001-04:00

Episode Three

2007-03-25T23:08:00.001-04:00

Coming soon

2007-03-18T16:02:00.000-04:00

Episode three is coming soon. I'm not as sure if it's as funny as the other two, but I tried best I could.

Lately I've been playing poker more and unlike before making this video seemed to be getting in the way of playing poker.

I'm still very much enjoying it, but after episode three, episode four may take a little longer to get out (it's written, it just needs to be filmed and edit, which takes much longer than the writing, since I'm no actor).

Episode Two

2007-02-26T16:35:00.002-05:00

Things I learned

2007-02-25T16:49:00.000-05:00

Wrapping up episode two. It should be out tomorrow.

I learned a few more things about directing. For example if you only slightly change camera angles and do a rough cut between shots, it looks like you made a mistake. It has to be a significant angle change to make it look like it was on purpose. However, if your angle change is like so big that now you're filming on the opposite side then the viewer's sense of direction gets all messed up and they don't know where they are viewing from.

In this episode I put in more poker jokes at the expense of the general audience. I think non poker players may like the first episode more and poker players will like this episode more. I didn't want to completely sell out so I had to do some poker jokes.

Episode Two

2007-02-23T16:33:00.000-05:00

I'm finally home from California and started filming/editing episode two.

I learned a lot from making episode one, which has saved me a lot of time recording/editing this episode, however I started tinkering with effects, slowing me down once again.

I know using too many effects, especially at my amateurish level, will cheapen the look of the video so I tried not to overdo it. My video already looks cheap enough without me doing anything extra!

The fascination with the effects has got me looking into adobe after effects, an adobe program specific to effects.

As for this episode I have filmed the intro, which makes up the bulk of the episode, and I might add that I really enjoy watching it. It has some old school Jane Fonda work out action.

I plan on finishing this episode by Tuesday and come out with a new episode every three weeks.

Out of the Country

2007-02-12T12:31:00.000-05:00

I've written episode two and three, but cannot start the filming yet because I am out of the country.

The views for the youTube post is rapidly catching up to the metacafe post despite no advertising.

I've read a bit more including the instruction booklet for my camcorder, an ebook on amateur movie making and an ebook about premiere pro 2.0. I still need to check out adobe audition, but I am getting tired of reading so many books. I want to get back to filming.

Here it is

2007-02-06T05:39:00.000-05:00

Here it is on Metacafe, the site that I've been advertising. It has about 500 views so far there as opposed to like 5ish on the other two. I'm afraid it won't pass the review because I used a copyrighted song at the end.

Joe The Pro - video powered by Metacafe

First Episode

2007-02-06T05:29:00.000-05:00

Four grueling day, but I've completed my first short film.

Day 1: Getting the software, reading the instruction booklet and organizing my scattered ideas.
Day 2: Filming with my photo taking camera and at night finding out that I could use my father's old camcorder.
Day 3: Filming with the camcorder and putting together a rough draft that I sent to 3 friends for advice.
Day 4: Using their advice (lower the length of the scenes, equalize the volume, adding a mom scene, slow mo and more thrusting in the dance scene, and have more quick cuts to liven the pace).
Day 5: Finalizing the video, posting it on youTube, Veoh and Metacafe and advertising on two poker sites.

Out of the two poker sites, one was Daniel Negreanu's forum and the other was a Poker Publishing Group's forum (2+2), because my video looks pretty ghetto at the beginning, I knew the first testimonial would be important in getting others to actually give my video an honest chance.

At Daniel's site, the first poster wrote a nice comment, which then encouraged others to give it a shot and has led to dozens of positive comments and over a thousands views so far. The other site, the first comment was "meh" and then no one gave it a chance.

All the videos

2007-02-05T13:41:00.000-05:00

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