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.

Morning Bonus Session

I woke up late this morning and was unable to get in to a morning meeting.

...so I spoiled myself a little and played some 50NL for about an hour. I made two glaring errors right off.

The first was shoving jacks into a tight villain who raised and then 4bet from the cutoff against my reraise- with one caller squeezed in between. I always read this as weak enough to call, assuming AQ,AJs+,TT+. But from this guy it's the goods. Pshhh. Adios buy-in.

The second, I raised KK on a deep stack table and got 4 callers. Flop ran K-J-brick, all diamonds. I bet and isolated a spewy player who limp-called preflop. I bet a brick turn and he made a decent raise. Although I would argue it is still closer than people like to think- this guy would definitely slowplay two pair, and overpair, or better on this flop- I shoved and he showed a made flush. Goodbye two buy-ins. The correct line was probably call-fold or call-call. I have not decided which.

Third small, but significant, bad decision. I bet-called a check raised w/AQ TPTK on a coordinated board and let him check-raise me again. I paid off a set.

On the other hand, I did bring my guns to war. I correctly played for set value in a few monster pots, fired a lot of second barrel pots and even a third barrel, and also got my money back from the spewzord who hit the flush on me in a virtually identical spot (my flush vs his strong made hand), except he was drawing dead. And it was a 300-and change pot :D.

I'm glad I'm getting used to 50 NL.