Steady

I’ve been 1 or 2 tabling. Slow going, and I have to exercise more patience, because playable hands come around less often, but I think it’s probably not a bad thing. I had a hand tonight that I wanted to post:

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

MP2 ($5.44)
MP3 ($9.45)
CO ($6.54)
Button ($1.35)
SB ($4.70)
BB ($2.55)
UTG ($9.60)
UTG+1 ($14.90)
Hero ($12.36)
MP1 ($17.66)

Preflop: Hero is UTG+2 with XX
1 fold, UTG+1 calls $0.10, Hero raises to $0.45, 5 folds, SB calls $0.40, 1 fold, UTG+1 calls $0.35.

Flop: ($1.45) Th, Ts, 3s (3 players)
SB checks, UTG+1 checks, Hero bets $0.85, SB folds, UTG+1 calls $0.85.

Turn: ($3.15) 8s (2 players)
UTG+1 checks, Hero checks.

River: ($3.15) 4s (2 players)
UTG+1 bets $1, Hero folds (QQ).

Final Pot: $3.15

Results below:
UTG+1 doesn’t show.
Outcome: UTG+1 wins $3.15.

UTG+1 is very tight, playing about 15% of his hands, and I only have him raising 1 hand ever, where he had KK.

My preflop raise is standard. My turn check after his check was to keep the pot small, but I think I may have given him a chance to represent a hand on the river. River comes and it’s a 4th spade, he bets a 1/3 pot bet, and I think for a long time and fold.

I think I made the right play by laying it down on the river, and really, I want to think he had Axs, but I think my turn check is a mistake that gave him the hand. I don’t see him betting into the river without the best hand with that 4th spade. However, I can’t figure out what he would have check called with on the flop, unless it was Axs.

I only have like 6 hands from him where he played outside of the blinds – he had A6s, KK, KQo, QQ, TT, and 22, so really, he plays my range of hands, except I raise more often. I’m just trying to figure out what he would have called my preflop raise with, and called my flop bet with that ugly board unless he had it. It’s bugging me.

Anyway, I was up about 1.5 buyins for the night after buying in short.

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Going Better

I was up about six $5 buyins for the weekend, a nice showing considering I took quite a few rough beats when I got it in with the best hand. I was disciplined and got up from the table after a reasonable victory. I took several beats at the UPoints tables, but managed to be down only 3 max buyins.

All things considered not doing too bad.

Something Is Different

First off, I have not heard back from AP as to why I can’t make my account a real money account. I sent an email to them, and I’m waiting for them to get back to me.

So I played some cash .05/.10 on UB – I haven’t dropped down to .01/.02 like I was considering. I’m still using my HUD. I’ve been buying in for $5 at the table, which is about 5% of my BR on UB, not my overall BR, but I have not been multi-tabling more than 2 tables at once. Additionally, I have stopped justifying my calls in the SB and BB. Just because you can flop a monster and have some great implied odds, you still have to hit your hand. I think I was bleeding money out of the blinds. I’ve also stopped with some of my loose button calls – I don’t think position buys you that much at this level, because you can’t get someone to feel uncomfortable about top pair on the turn, or so it seems. I seem to be doing a little better, but I think a lot of it is just the fact that I’m hitting some flops. I’ve had to get up a few times from the table because my stack has gotten a little larger than I want.

Anyway, I’ve made a nice little comeback from the past week of crashing, so that makes me feel good. Nothing monstrous, but at least I’m making some positive gains again.

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A New Beginning

So, raketherake.com came back and said that my account was ‘tagged’ by another rakeback site according to UB, which is ridiculous, because otherwise I’d be getting some money back. So, I think I’m going to retire my old account, and create a new one. Hopefully I can get the name to match my AP account, which already does not match my UB and Stars account names, because it was already taken on AP.

I did create a new rakeback account with Absolute, though, and I’m going to transfer my money from UB to AP. Unfortunately, something is wrong with my account at AP (not at raketherake.com), so I’m currently unable to deposit any money there, which is strange. I didn’t have time to investigate it last night, but I’ll be taking a look this weekend. My pal Adam was successful with his AP to UB transfer, and sent me back my $10 stake, so I know it shouldn’t be too hard to get it working.

I had a lot of time to play last night, my wife worked much later than usual. I played a 10000 man Hubble at 8pm, and tripled up on the first hand with AKo vs. 45o and 56o. I had a very comfortable amount of chips through most of the tourney, and was in the running up until the 1000/2000 blind level, where I was surrounded by big stacks. My wife came home, and I figured the hell with it, it’s time to go to bed, so I shoved with KTo, and lost to JJ. Had it been a real money tourney, I would have stuck it out, but I didn’t want to have to explain to the wife that I couldn’t come to bed because of a freeroll, where the top 27 get an entry into another freeroll. LOL.

Anyway, see you on AP soon…

Forcing It

I played a lot last night. I had about 3.5 hours of free time, and I blew it all playing poker. I’m not sure how many hands I played, but it was a lot. I played a mix of a 10000 man Hubble freeroll tourney on Stars (I imploded with about 150 people left, I was in 40th place when I melted down. In tourneys, I usually have one bad hand that puts me into shortstack mode, then I lose a few hands later when I shove in a good situation with a hand that is the favorite. Last night was no different. I don’t have the hand histories with me, so I can’t post details, but they really aren’t important.

In addition, I played some .05/.10 and some Upoints on UB. I was down about $30 and about 2500 UPoints (1/4 of my Upoints roll). My pal Justin was nice enough to look over about 5 or 6 of hands where I got stacked, and gave me some pointers and some things to think about.

With that, I’m starting to think I’m really forcing things. I think I’ve read too many books, believing the ‘be aggressive’ hype, so I’m pressing marginal hands in games where people cannot fold. I’m getting in as a small favorite and losing, or I’m being outplayed with second best hand. Justin made a good point – ‘why get in as a 55% favorite when you can do it as a 75% favorite’. If you read the literature, many authors would disagree with that, saying that longterm, any edge is good, but I think it has merit. I lot of your chance of winning comes from fold equity, and at this stakes, you don’t have much. I think I was taking the stack commitment idea a little too far.

So, I’m making a few changes while I still have about $200 in my online bankroll, with about $85 on UB and about $135 on Stars. I don’t have everything clear in my mind, but I’m going to take a new approach for the next few weeks (I’m sticking to this until October 1) and see. These include:

No multi-tabling
No buying in for any more than $5.00 at any cash table
Signing up with a forum
Posting one hand from each session in said forum

Things I’m considering, but I’m unsure about:

Moving my UB bankroll to Absolute Poker for a spell – with UB allowing transfers back and forth to Absolute, and the fact that I can sign up for a rakeback account with Absolute, I’m tempted to move it there for a spell. However, I want to see what kinds of limits they have for their games, and what kind of bonus I might get. Either way I’m definitely creating an account. From a money management perspective, I think it makes sense. If I’m going to play, I might as well get some of my rake back, and maybe a bonus out of the deal. At the same time, I’m trying to not focus as much on the money, and instead focusing on playing good poker, which was Justin’s suggestion, so I’m still wishy washy on that.

I’m also considering playing without the HUD on for a bit. I’m making a lot of assumptions based on people’s numbers, and I’m going to reconsider that. I think that information gives you an advantage, but if I’m relying on that for 90% of my decision making because I’m too busy multi-tabling to figure out where I’m at in a hand, that’s not a good thing.

Anyway, that’s where I’m at for the next 5 weeks. I’ll still post regularly.

Transfers

I’m hoping other sites get in on the action. It’s about time:

http://www.ultimatebet.com/banking/deposit/method/poker-room-transfers

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Stack Committed

So I’ve been reading my new book – Professional No Limit Hold’em, Vol. I, and trying to apply the stack commitment principles outlined in the book. Based on their math, it seems like you’re pot committed a lot earlier than I had thought previously – I used to think if half your stack was in the pot, you’re committed, but it’s earlier than that. So anyway, long story short, I’ve basically been going all in constantly tonight, and it’s scaring the crap out of me.

Of course I’m down for the night. Cracked AA, KK, sets to straights, straights to flushes, flushes to higher flushes, but I’m paying off because I’m supposedly pot committed. In hands where I’m way ahead, I’m just paying rake because the guy catches up. For instance, I have KQ, I raise preflop, flop is KQQ. I check, guy bets into me, so I know I’m getting paid – figure he has AK or AQ. Turn is a K. River garbage, we’re all in, he has KJo for the one outer to tie. It was like that all night. In some cases I won some hands where I would have folded previously, but overall, I’m really frustrated. I know I got it in with the best of it for most of the night. I did make 2 bad calls where I had position but felt committed yet probably could have folded and saved myself 20 bucks – J high flush vs. A high flush, and broadway straight vs. rivered flush, but hey, I’m committed, right?. At least I picked up more UB points.

UB – $119.23 (11128.76 UPoints)
PS – $135.29

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LOL @ Ryan

Normally I don’t post non-poker stuff in my poker blog, but my friend Ryan kills me. We have a lot of the same opinions on things and a similar sense of humor. This is his blog – syck.org

The Jesus Experiment, Part II

I think Chris “Jesus” Ferguson is a genius. I generally try to follow his bankroll management guidelines of never put more than 5% of your bankroll on a table, and get up when you have 10% on the table, and never buy in to a MTT with more than 2% of your bankroll. It’s kept me from going broke. A couple years ago, he asked someone (I think it was Annie Duke) to give him a dollar online so he could turn it into $20000. He lost the first dollar, but he did it with the second dollar he was given.

More recently, he decided to try to do the same thing, but without getting a one dollar donation, he wanted to do it with no money, winning his first money playing freerolls, with the plan of turning his bankroll into $10000.

Anyway, check out this link –

I guess it took him a month to win a freeroll, then he immediately lost the money, then won another freeroll, and went on from there to turn it into 10k in about 16 months. The only time he broke his bankroll requirements was when he first one the freerolls, and didn’t didn’t have the max bankroll requirement to play in the lowest cash games. Once he got up to $50, he never deviated from his requirements.

I wish there was some info about how many hands he played, how many hands he played at each level before moving up, etc.

Anyway, it just goes to show that you can turn nothing into something playing online poker. I hope you and I can do the same.

Minimal Gains

Ran into some bad hands again. Also had 2 good sets get scary on me so I couldn’t make much off them, even though they did hold up.

At least I’m doing well in the UB points arena. It’s kinda funny, I wish PokerStars would let you play cash games or tourneys for points, but they don’t, only big MTTs, and you earn them so slowly, you don’t get many chances with them. Last year, I won some Stars points and then won my way into the Sunday Million with them, which was cool, but I didn’t fare well in that tourney at all. On UB, they let you play SNGs, cash games, or whatever. So, as a joke when I had a couple hundred, I started playing 100 sitngos. I turned that into 1000 pretty quickly. I started playing 10/25 ‘cash’ ring games, just leaving one open and playing it occasionally. I’m up to 8626, almost enough for a shirt @8700. I could get a sling backpack or a hat, but I’d like to see how far I can go with them. I also have enough to play some Aruba feeder satellites. I’ve done well in the past in the Stars points WSOP supersatellites – earning several satellite tickets, but could never win any of the satellites to get into the WSOP main event. The players are pretty bad in the points games, so I may mess with that some more. who knows. For fun, I’m adding my UPoints to my status from now on.

Cheers.

UB $127.08 (8626 UPoints)
PS $135.29

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