Not So Bad

Another milestone – I’ve cleared my UB bonus. I also made a large portion of my losses from the other night back. Details later.

UB 119.60
PS 79.49

Note To Self

Repeat after me. They are unaware. 90% of these players are unaware. Your fold equity does not exist. It is not worth it to push small edges at these stakes without a large bankroll. Go with your gut.

Brutalized

Just got destroyed tonight. Kept running into hands – in fact, I went back and checked and ran into AA 3x and KK 2x. Played at some super aggro tables, and guys with numbers like 65/45/5 or 40/20/2.75 would catch their 2 outer against my overpair, and I’d misread it – they’d overraise and I’d take it for trying to push me out, I’d shove, and I’d feel the pain. I didn’t play very well. I caught starting hands that semi-committed me based on the overall aggressiveness of the table. I definitely overplayed a lot of hands like KK vs. AA preflop when I knew the guy was tight but thought he was pushing me off a hand, or AQ vs. AK when an A came on the flop and I’d checkshove thinking I was good. Most of the hands are not worth posting because the money got in preflop and flop so there is no analysis to be had. My pocket pairs were ruined tonight, whether I hit or missed. I could have minimized my losses, but I didn’t. Even with the bad plays, I managed to lay down a lot of top 10% hands preflop, but it just wasn’t enough. I guess it wasn’t my night.

I’m really disappointed. It’s not like I wasn’t tight, or concentrating – 16%-20% at a at all 4 tables. I think it may have been my all time worst night in 4 months.

UB – $90.68/$5.06
PS – same

Rough Night

Played a fairly long session of .05/.10 on UB. Got stacked several times with good hands – top 2 pair, sets, hands where I was pot committed with good cards. I made some great laydowns too. A lot of my good preflop hands just weren’t holding up. I made a couple of nice steals and nice checkdowns where I knew someone was slowplaying a great hand. I feel very satisfied with my play, so even though I lost a lot of money tonight, I’m cool with it Just one of those nights were you run into a wall of cards. I fought back with some strong play, but I’m still down about $8 for the night. That bonus sure helped.

Saw a pal at the .01/.02 tables tonight – chased him down after seeing him on UBuddy. 5 minutes of chat was the best part of the night.

UB $125.95/6.82
PS – $79.86

Consolidation Part I

Thanks to Justin at http://grindingforpennies.blogspot.com, I’ve dropped Full Tilt for now. It just didn’t make sense to play with that short a bankroll when they don’t have .01/.02. I plan on trying it again when I have a little more money to spread around.

I was looking for a tourney or two to buy into, so I logged into Pokerstars. I like the cash added tourneys that PokerStars spreads over what they have at UB. However, I ended up playing a short 4 table cash game session instead – .02/.05 with a $5 buyin at each table. I just wasn’t going to have enough time to play any tourneys. I ended up around even.

I’ll probably be back to UB in the days ahead until my bonus is cleared, and then I’ll re-evaluate what I’m going to do.

UB – $133.63/9.66 (no change)
PS – $79.86
FT – $0.00

New PT Numbers

Here’s a link to my latest PT exports – http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pGHLHpEyOyBLftKMAk7D_ag&pli=1# – I’ve got the sheets organized into games with over 1000 hands and games under. What’s awful is that all my games where I played less than 1000 hands are the games I lost the most money in. Either I had bad luck or didn’t adjust correctly, but I probably won’t ever know unless I get my bankroll back to the level where I can play those games again.

Take a look and let me know what you think. The most glaring item I see is that I have a terrible win rate at .25 NL – not just my PTBB/100, but the actual % of hands won at showdown. Most winning players are between 50% and 55%. I’m not even in that ballpark. I’d like to think it was bad luck and suckouts, but I’m wondering if I was pushing 2nd best hands. I’m going to have to go back and look to see how I played the hands where I lost money.

Ridiculous

Well, I’m about to give up on Full Tilt. All I do is make it to about 10-15 place in these 45 mans and I run into a hand or a suckout. I can’t catch a break. I’m down to my last $9.50. With only 7 tourney buyins left, I’m playing with scared money.

That’s not why this post is entitled ‘Ridiculous’ though…

It’s ridiculous that my UB bankroll is skyrocketing since I started playing .05/.10 with my shortstack experiment on Thursday. I haven’t even really played that many hands. I’m getting pretty lucky on my preflop shoves with AA and KK mostly – they’re holding up, and I had a major suckout with a preflop KK vs. AA and flopped a K. It appears that the big stacks think ‘oh, he doesn’t have much of a stack, I’ll call/shove’. I’ve seen some weird hands at showdown for calling a preflop or stop and go allin like J6s. All of a sudden I’m sitting there with a full stack and I can play my regular game. When my stack has gotten a little too big, I’ve gotten up from the table just to make sure I don’t lose some of my profit to something silly. If it were limit, I’d stay, but at NL, with my small bankroll, I want to take some of it off the table. A couple of times I’ve tripled up and had over 20% of my BR at the table – that’s just too much. Hopefully this continues. I realize I’m running hot, so I’m not banking on it, but I am enjoying it while it lasts.

I’ll probably post some new Pokertracker numbers tomorrow. I haven’t done that in ages.

UB $133.63/9.66 (Yes, I’m up over $53 since I started the SS Experiment on Wed or Thurs)
FT $9.50
PS $75.50

Shortstack Results

Started out bad right off the bat. Really didn’t see any hands on any of my 4 tables for about the first 30 hands. Then I caught AQ in the BB, went for a fairly big reraise, only caller is UTG, who is fairly tight. I figure he has a medium pair or AK. Needless to say, the flop had an A, we got it all in, and sure enough, AK. -4. A few hands later, a loose raiser raised, I raised all in with my $2.90 (was getting blinded), UTG calls with 66, no A, no Q. -4 more. Playing deep stacked, I’m probably not going to lose that bad with either hand, but I chose to go that route. Not good. Cards were awful for the most part. Played less than 10% at all my tables.

Well, the next two hands happened in about 5 minutes time on the same table, both against the same guy, and that was pretty much it for the night.

Ultimate Bet No-Limit Hold’em, $.10 BB (10 handed) Hand History Converter Tool from http://www.flopturnriver.comFlopTurnRiver.com (Format: Plain Text)

BB ($5.02)
UTG ($7.25)
UTG+1 ($4.87)
UTG+2 ($5.82)
MP1 ($2.20)
MP2 ($26.29)
MP3 ($10.55)
CO ($22.55)
Hero ($4.98)
SB ($8.09)

Preflop: Hero is Button with Qs, Qc.
2 folds, UTG+2 calls $0.10, MP1 calls $0.10, 1 fold, MP3 calls $0.10, 1 fold, Hero raises to $0.8, 2 folds, UTG+2 folds, MP1 folds, MP3 calls $0.70.

Flop: ($1.95) 7s, 9c, 6d (2 players)
MP3 checks, Hero bets $1.95, MP3 calls $1.95.

Turn: ($5.85) Js (2 players)
MP3 checks, Hero bets $2.23 (All-In), MP3 calls $2.23.

River: ($10.31) 7c (2 players, 1 all-in)

Final Pot: $10.31

Results below:
Hero has Qs Qc (two pair, queens and sevens).
MP3 has 8h 3h (one pair, sevens).
Outcome: Hero wins $10.31.

Ultimate Bet No-Limit Hold’em, $.10 BB (10 handed) Hand History Converter Tool from http://www.flopturnriver.comFlopTurnRiver.com (Format: Plain Text)

MP2 ($3.62)
MP3 ($7.10)
CO ($4.57)
Button ($5.85)
SB ($2)
BB ($29.70)
UTG ($8.90)
UTG+1 ($22.55)
Hero ($9.80)
MP1 ($7.45)

Preflop: Hero is UTG+2 with As, Ah.
UTG calls $0.10, UTG+1 calls $0.10, Hero raises to $0.55, 7 folds, UTG calls $0.45, UTG+1 folds.

Flop: ($1.35) 5d, Qs, 4c (2 players)
UTG checks, Hero bets $1.35, UTG calls $1.35.

Turn: ($4.05) Ad (2 players)
UTG checks, Hero checks.

River: ($4.05) 4h (2 players)
UTG checks, Hero bets $2.5, UTG bets $2.5, Hero calls $0.

Final Pot: $9.05

Results below:
UTG has 7c 4s (three of a kind, fours).
Hero has As Ah (full house, aces full of fours).
Outcome: Hero wins $9.05.

Put that guy in my UB Buddy list.

So, started out crappy, ended pretty well. Final results, I was up a little over 2 buyins for the night ~$9.

UB – $89.98/12.72
FT – $15.75
PS – $80.10

Shortstack Shot

I’m going to give this a run. Instead of buying in for 2.5% of my BR at .01/.02 ($2.00), I’m going to play shortstacked at .05/.10 the next time I play, and buy in for 5% ($4.00). If I drop below $60, I’ll drop down to .01/.02.

What’s my reasoning? I think I can play reasonably ok with a semi-shortstack of 40BB. I won’t be making some of my looser plays (calling with baby pairs for a raise, or smaller suited connectors), and I’ll press some of my better hands. I probably won’t chase some of my higher implied odds hands – overcards and a gutshot without a deep stack, but I think I’ll be fine.

I was planning on waiting until I get to $100 and buying in for $5, but after reviewing my PT stats again, the boost from having the rake cut from 10% to 5% is probably worth the risk to take a couple shots and I should see some immediate impact on my PTBB/100. I’m giving myself a leeway of losing 5 buyins before dropping down, so I think it’s still pretty conservative, as long as I don’t get caught in the idea of chasing losses if I drop a couple buyins immediately. That’s what the ceiling of $60 is for.

Wish me luck.

Dear Diary

In case you hadn’t noticed, this thing has kind of mutated. What started out as a plan to give out info to people getting started in the world of microstakes online poker has basically become my online bankroll diary. I hope the 2 readers are not bummed about that. I may get back to some semi-educational/discussion worthy posts someday. Thanks for reading.