3k hands.

Today's No Limit Lessons:

1)I'm too showdown happy with weak made hands.

I made three mistakes that each cost me >50% of a buy-in with marginal made hands and drawing potential.

On the first, I had AcAx in a 4-way pot with one player behind me. The board was Jc9c9d. My hand is certainly vulnerable and may be good enough to play for showdown. It certainly would benefit from some protection. But instead of betting, to bet-fold or bet-call, I chose a loose-weak strategy and check called a half-pot bet.

Two things occur to me in retrospect. (1) The villain is surely drawing or betting a second best hand and virtually any line short of open-folding or check-folding would be better than a check call here. (2) This was an easy pot-sized bet to nearly commit to the bloated pot and encourage semi-bluffing hands to shove over. If one player shoved and another called, I can fold. I think a push/call push is a little thin at 25NL, but better than a fold facing one raise behind you. People are just very weak bettors at this limit without a strong made hand.

In the second, I made a slightly loose call preflop from the BB with Axs to defend a loose and aggro players HJ raise. I flatted, and check-called second pair on a dry board. The turn completed a straight draw and gave me a flush draw. I checked and the villain bet. I thought for a bit then check raised small. Villain thought for a sec shoved over me. I should have snap-folded, but I thought there was a slight chance he was playing a worse draw.

In retrospect, the implied odds in this hand are thin and I have little fold equity. OOP against a loose and sticky opponent, I'll run into some trouble. Folding pre- should be my standard except against steal position raisers. Secondly, if I had raised larger on the turn to straight up commit to the hand, villain might have thought of my hand as much stronger.

My third hand was one where I raised in the hijack with JJ and called a tight 3bettor to spike a set with JJ. The board was 234 rainbow and I checked. The villain bet. In this case, I do think that at least calling is prudent. It's too likely that the villain would cbet the A-broadway hands in his range.

But if I had raised and the villain shoved, I had an easy fold. I'm repping a set, a big pair or AK and the villain should be scared of these with any hand worse than mine. Whether or not that's the play, I just called.

The turn brought a 7, which with the possible exception of an 8 was the safest card in the deck for my hand vs. the villain's range. I checked and the villain made a committing bet. I thought for awhile and check-raised, because I knew a call would be terrible.

In retrospect, I don't think this villain is second barreling with 88-TT ever on this board and I think AK plays scared here as well. A fold would have been better.

2) It's really hard to identify the villains who will raise light, semibluff hard, or fire additional barrels with air at 25 NL. There's folks who will do all this stuff, but fewer than my strategy hopes for. So, I just need to back off in the following ways.

a) stop being a showdown wizard.
b) Tighten up my range in EP and facing EP raises OOP.
c) Recognize and exploit good IP floating opportunities, either for cheap bluffs or good spots to valuepwn someone.
4) Ramp up my aggression even further.

My AF is nearly a point higher than it has been in the past and I think I can take it up another point.

I'm back!

I'm back after a summer hiatus. Here are some awesome things I have been thinking about.

Poker Tools

1) Evernote. It is free and has a screen capture/autosave feature. This is badass for looking at hands later. It fits in my favorite streamlining concept: "universal capture". Have a spot to put crap and go to that spot later when you have time. Evernote is almost there. I just need a cheap scanner and I'll be all over it.

2) Fourplusmore. Until those bastards at google go to a full beta of the wave, this is the best way I have to compare poker hands with people whose opinions I want. It's been slow since I had "real life" stuff to do, but I am loving thinking about poker lately. I expect it to pick up. Here is how to get set up.

3) Making your own videos. This is so useful. I would like to initiate a "make your own videos month" in September in small stakes no limit. Session reviews, live play, live play with sweat buddy, all will be worth watching.

4. Thinking about the rake. The rake is killing me in low limit hold em. Check this stuff carefully yourself if you haven't. It certainly makes me want to snuggle up and mass multitable or switch back to full time SNGs.

5. Thinking about my big hand DB. Actually doing sophisticated queries and follow up analysis is taking forever, but in general I've learned a bit. Check my old blog entries if your interested.

6) Feed readers. For the love of all that is, sign up for an RSS feed reader and subscribe to poker forums in them. It makes browsing them much smoother.

Poker Play.

1) Heads-up LHE. This game is fun. It is also the only game I have ever encountered where playing two tables at once becomes difficult. I am starting to "grok" showdown decisions and when they occur (or don't as is the case for many villains). This game will only get more fun as I improve.

2) Cash NLHE. This game is still fun, but I hate losing at it and don't play at stacks where booking a win is a big deal to me. Really I just need to get over myself so I can put in the hours to improve. I am getting there.

3) SNGs. These are still so juicy. I'm going to play them more.

4) Omaha. One day I will make time to get good at this game. Until then, I will lose at $5 HU PLO SNGs.

New Poker slang I want to introduce,.

1) "Jon Bon Jovi", "Bon Jovi", "JBJ". I want this to mean "really good". Particualrly, to replace the phrase "is like the nuts". It can be used to describe a play, a hand, or a player. Exs, a) "Against this guy, to pair with second kicker is a Bon Jovi hand here." b) "I'd quit but I'm running like Bon Jovi and I think this guy's about to tilt."

2) "Sid and Nancy". The opposite of JBJ.

3) "Seizure Robots". Players who do incredibad stuff for no apparent reason. Certainly the term "retarded" is used to describe these guys. The second hardest thing I ever did was learn not to say "retarded" or "gay" when I meant "stupid", "awful" or "not that great". I think that in general retarded people spend their time more productively than seizure robots and I'm not sure how I'd feel if I found out I was actually playing a retarded person and getting mad that I lost a hand. "I'd fold but the pot is huge and this guy has been playing like a seizure robot."

4) "Sprinkles". A raise. In honor of the ice cream topping and nearly as effective.

Some more preliminary analysis.

Although I will be more particular in the future (most likely dividing things by percentiles), I initially just split my sample into those who have large (admirable) win rates, are above even, below even, or are losing chips at a swift rate. I chose to look at box plots- which show the range of the data, the median, and the 25th an 75th percentile.

Here are some charts. I apologize for the format within the post. I'm in a hurry. But click on them and they should explain what they represent.

Minus 8 buyins, meet my friend Kirk. Kirk, minus 8 buyins.

Craptacular Session Tuesday night. I played for 90 minutes, and swonged wildly. I ran bad (3 buyins bad), and made three terrrible preflop decisions as well as one questionable postflop decision in a pot where I 4 bet OOP and was called. I'll post it later.

It sucked. I just lost my cool in a couple of choice spots and bit the big one. C'est la vie.

Session Wrap-up.

I played 3.5 hours of poker today to wind up about even, including rakeback.

On the good side:

1. I played a solid UTG game
2. I didn't tilt.
3. I used notecards to keep my ducks in a row.
4. I discovered a reserve of endurance and enthusiasm

On the down side:

1. Two spots where I probably bluffed a little too aggressively.
2. One huge suckout
3. Disastrous results in a HU session.

All-in all, I am satisfied with my performance. I still have a great deal to improve upon.

Preliminary analysis of a v. large poker hand database.

These are the number of hands played by each player in my poker hand database so far.

You won't be surprised to learn that the biggest winner so far is the house, having won $1.1 million dollars or so, less rakeback.

Long time no blog!

Where have I been?

Nowhere special pokerwise.

I've been playing occasionally- mostly HU limit and short tourneys. I am super high variance at HU, but it's fun. I can beat the driftwood at 1/2, but not the handy regs. Game selection, you say?

This month, I am dedicating my poker time to three things.

1. Improving my consistency and my mental game. 50NL will be me grind, and I plan to work on playing a good, semi loose and aggressive game all the time. Tight upfront, floating only to exploit or to invite in callers with a hand that plays well against them, loose in the back, taking control of 3bet pots, and getting in good value bets on later streets.
2. Playing tournaments if Iget bored of cash play. I plan to put in serious hours.
3. A superficial analysis of what good players have in common, what separates good players from bad ones in multiple situations. I've purchased ~11 million poker hands of 50NL play and plan to do some serious number crunching on it :D.

I'll write more as it comes up.

Today's session went pretty well, although I did run into a set w/AA in a 120 BB pot. The guy put more than 10% of his stack in, so he can't really say he "won". Hellooo, variance.