In your face, pokerbots.

In 40 minutes of superturbo play "to pass the time before I shower" I had a 15 game hot streak that tripled my return on the three dollar sit n gos.

They're poker the way MacDonald's is food.

As far as game theory contests go, it beats rock-paper-scissors*. I play these so good I get death threats.

* Free tips: the unexploitable RPS strategy is random. Humans cannot be random- they fail to repeat themselves often enough. If you throw whatever loses to the last hand they threw, you probably win more than your share. Also, few people start with paper. Start with rock.

Nice Day.

Made a deep run in a microstakes tournament. 4 handed, I ran into a lot of confrontations with marginal hands. My opponents were playing well but a little too gambly. Variance took the rug out from under me. Here are my last 100 tournament hands of the night.

Free Advice for abusive players.

If you are not a winning tournament player, please refrain from trash-talking other players in the chatbox. Big Sharky is watching.

A guy laid into me last night and I asked him if I even had to go to Sharkscope to look him up. This is a more advanced technique; the abusive player must know what Sharkscope is in order to react. I suspected he was, he used several poker slang terms correctly. By and large, the soon-to-be-Scoped become quiet if they are a slight loser, smug if they are not, and persuasive about how "Sharkscope is bullsh*t" etc. if their nose is open and chips are pouring out.

This guy chose the last option. Between that and his berating, I could tell he didn't understand the mechanics of tournaments, his ego was hurt by his poor results, and he was willing to take some of that out on me if I let him.

Just a friendly reminder that any information you give away is always in addition to the data available on the web. And I know who lost 2k last year and who didn't.

Session.

Today I played for a little while: two hours of tournaments and cash games. I did pretty well for myself.

Here are my big cash game hands from the day. I should also make the point that the autoreplayer ALWAYS has positions wrong at this point. I am definitely not the guy labeled HERO on most hands.

I did alright in the single table SNGs, and then I won a two table tourney.

All in all it was a nice night for me. I made some goals and I started towards them. Off we go.

January wrap up and February.

So, here is my take on January. By and large, the things I have always been good at, I am still good at.

1) Straightforward limit play.
2) No limit preflop and on straightforward flops.
3) Sit n goes.

Here are a few things I need to improve, primarily in NLH, which killed me.
1) Recognizing when to take a non-standard line.
2) Recognizing when a villain is adjusting correctly OR over adjusting and making counter adjustments.
3) Positional strategy. I need to widen the "positional gap" against most of my opponents. I should be playing less hands upfront.
4) Making BETTER plays on the turn and the river.
5) Better bet sizing in 3 bet pots.
6) Better game and seat selection.
7) Consider more aggressive lines in deep situations.

Here are some hands I posted for my brother to look at. Anyone who wants to may comment on them as well.

1. Limit hold 'em 6max. Thin spots.
2. Bigger NLH pots.
3. 3 bet preflop pots.
4. More 3 bet pots.

Here are my study goals:
1) Watch more session videos.
2) Post one hand per 1k in my HEM.
3) Two more sessions with PES.
4) Read the last two parts of "YBPF".
5) Reread "Ace on the River"
6) Reread "The Theory of Poker".

Here are my poker play goals for February.
1) SNG games more of them, destroy them. I'm stupid not to play at 20/hr.
2) NLH- get up to beating 25 and 50 NL.
3) Try for 15k hands/wk (15 hours!).

A quote.

From an old proverb via Samuel Johnson by way of a Slate blogger.

“He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.”

Pre-strategy. An end of month summary.

As far as first months go, January of 2009 did not go great or even well. I lost money overall trying to adapt my rusty, unsteady my NLH game to the modern $25NL 6max. At $10NL, limit, and in tournaments, I was a winner, but not enough to compensate for my craptacular results in $25NL.

To put it in perspective, the amount I am down is roughly a bad night at $3/$6 limit hold em, or a live tournament buy in:$100. The Kirktholemew J. Thompson of April 2008 cackles at the thought of lamenting a loss of that small size. Nonetheless, it sucks and it's kind of quaint that money the size of a medium pot is now a good or bad month.

I will go into details about zee plan for the next month and overall evalutation by the end of the weekend.