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July 25, 2010
Filed Under (Cash 2010, Tournaments) by crumble on 25-07-2010
It’s nearly two months since I last posted on here. In one way, quite a lot has happened in the interim, including a Vegas holiday and finally selling this old house. But online poker wise it’s been poor. Look at June. Not much online poker played and none of it at the cash tables. It’s only the vagaries of foreign exchange rates that kept me in profit for the month:
As you see, I did manage to fit some MTTs in. I’ve been really enjoying the forum games over at PokerPlayersPlace (PPP) lately. I mentioned this gang in my May post, when we went up to Birmingham for a live meet-up. Well, the heart of PPP is the daily online tournaments. These are all in the $1 - $5 range, mostly starting at 8pm on Stars, with live radio commentary on the games through PPP Radio. The radio makes a huge difference, encouraging friendly banter at the tables and making for a particularly fun and sociable game. If I can’t win cash I may as well play for fun; and I haven’t come across anywhere more fun to play than these games. PPP has a special series of events coming up in August - the PPP Series of Poker. This is a multi-event series with slightly higher buy-ins than usual, complete with bracelets for the champions of each event. I really really hope we’ve got the internet sorted in the new house by the time it starts! But in the meantime it’s nearly the end of July. Looks like being a poor month, online poker-wise:
I’m only just hanging on to a year-to-date profit, too:
I’m going to try and keep the poker ticking over despite the house move distractions, but it seems inevitable that I won’t be playing as much. Still, at least Vegas is still fresh in the memory. I’ve started writing up the trip so watch out for it over there on the right under “Vegas 2010″. Can’t wait to go back again…
May 31, 2010
Filed Under (Cash 2010) by crumble on 31-05-2010
It’s a funny thing. My cash game seems to be completely hopeless at the moment. Yet I’m back in profit for the year, thanks to the tournaments. Here’s the scores for May:
I played very few cash hands this month, so it’s not really surprising that the most profitable hand in May was not one of the premiums. In fact it was the mighty J9o, mostly thanks to this little beauty:
Now didn’t that work out nicely! I do think though that I could well have been behind until the river. That we will never know. I’m not really sure about my line, but at least it’s not at all clear what I’m representing with that shove on the river. That aside, June is going to be good because it covers our annual pilgrimage to Vegas!!! I had been planning to play quite a bit of cash this year, but I’ve changed my mind - my results this year have been rubbish. So I think I’ll stick to tournaments again. Talking of live tournaments, this last weekend we got some live practice in at a really excellent forum meet-up with the PokerPlayersPlace crowd at Star City in Birmingham. It was a £30 deepstack 2 day game plus £5 on each player’s head, played in the most convivial company in the most welcoming UK casino (except maybe DTD which I still think of as a poker room even though it’s really a casino nowadays). The baglady and I have not been members there very long yet now it feels like everyone there is an old friend. I was lucky enough to make the final table but unlucky enough to finish 8th for a small cash, picking up four bounties along the way. The backluckboxlady did better - she played the regular tournament on Saturday night and scooped up a Royal Flush jackpot worth £280. Then she won the sweepstake on the winning player in the PPP game for another £50. Can’t be bad! So all in all a fun weekend and a small profit!
May 09, 2010
Filed Under (Cash 2010) by crumble on 09-05-2010
Nick Wealthall has written a thoughtful piece in the current issue of Poker Player magazine. The takeaway line is, “To make money from poker you just need to work hard - talent is overrated”. This is an echo of Gary Player’s famous saying - “the more I practise, the luckier I get”. Now neither Nick nor Gary are exactly devoid of talent, but the point is a good one. Poker has moved on hugely over the last couple of years and only people who have done their homework and built themselves a decent game plan and the skills to execute it can expect to win regularly. With that thought in mind I went back to the $25NL 5-max cash tables yesterday after a break of about a month, determined to turn over a new leaf and “play properly”. By that I mean I want to make a plan for each hand, make bets with purpose instead of just firing at random. To make it easier for myself I decided to single-table and to use the PokerTracker marker to flag interesting hands for later review. I played for three hours and results were mixed. The good news was, I won a little money: a buy in and a half. It feels good. The bad news was, when I looked over the hands I’d flagged, I could see my play was often awful - my pre-flop leaks are still there while post-flop I’m just chucking money into the pot and hoping to get lucky. One example will do…
Exciting stuff. Let’s look at it more closely. Apart from TAGregular, the players at this table have been pretty loose and pretty fishy. So I’ve been tighter than usual, playing good cards and mostly ABC poker. Opponents, if they are watching, will expect something pretty decent from me when I stick in a standard raise from the cutoff. TAGregular calls with position. With stats of 18/15 his range is mostly small pairs I think. I’m not expecting too much trouble from him, he’s mainly there to feed on the fish. Hero is a 38/3 fish. He isn’t going to be squeezing and his range is QQ+, AK. This is an easy fold for me. But after I make the dreadful call, TAGregular comes along to setmine.
So, what happened here? Well, Hero may be a fish but even fish continuation bet. My raise isn’t all that bad, after all I do have top pair top kicker, AK is 40% of his range and has missed. So far so good when TAGregular gets out. But when Hero shoves over the top I should know I’m in deep do-do with somewhere between zero and three outs. It’s an easy fold despite the pot odds. So of course I call…
In fact it was as bad as it can be - I was drawing to running Aces - and Hero gets a well deserved pot. Diagnosis: I seem to be at a similar plateau to the one I reached playing bridge some years ago. I understand the theory pretty well and now and again I put some of it into practice and play some good stuff. But all too often I degenerate into unthinking, novice play. So I really do need to work harder. At the moment I’m mostly flip-flopping between states of “Conscious Incompetence” (like in the hand above) and “Conscious Competence”. The fourth stage of competence may be beyond me - talent does still matter and you can’t make an apple pie out of a heap of shit - but at least with work it should be possible to do the stuff I know how to do on a more reliable basis. So I’m going to carry on with the cash games, carry on flagging hands for review and actually review them properly. I’ll let you know how I get on!
May 02, 2010
Filed Under (Cash 2010) by crumble on 02-05-2010
So, I expect you’re wondering, how did April finish off? Well in terms of cash games I stopped the rot … by the simple expedient of not playing any cash games. I’ve had a fortnight off the cash now and feel all the better for it. I’ll be going back to it any time now … just need to feel in the mood. Here’s the April summary:
I played less than 3000 hands of cash this month. My most profitable starting hand was KK. A statistical anomaly: I won cash with KK every one of the 14 times I was dealt it. Wow. (Don’t ask me how I got on with AA though, it’s not pretty). Anyway, here’s the biggest KK pot:
That was a badly played hand by me because I gave myself a chance to lose the maximum while not giving myself a chance to win the maximum. Looking at it now, I can see I misplayed it. villain was 21/14/1.4 so once he doesn’t continuation bet he is probably polarised between a very big hand and a very small one. Therefore I should treat KK as a bluffcatcher and check-call the river rather than betting out. I guess I was scared of the flush. As played, I wonder what I would have done if he had shoved over my river bet? Made the crying call, probably. When I go back to the cash tables I really have to think more clearly. In the meantime, those nice people at Pokerstars gave me a $109 ticket to a SCOOP tournament this next week. Unfortunately they mostly start at impossible times for English people who have jobs, so my choice is limited - I’ve plumped for the Pot Limit 5 Card Draw game on Tuesday evening. Hopefully it will be a late finish for once! Mind you I’ve never played Pot Limit 5 Card Draw before so I might need a little luck…
April 25, 2010
Filed Under (Poker) by crumble on 25-04-2010
Spring has been late coming this year. On the poker tables, I started April running badly in just the same way as I finished March: out-dealt, outdrawn and outplayed by donkeys. So for the last couple of weeks I’ve hardly played at all. There’s been plenty else to do: busy times at work; my first game of golf of the year; garden to clear up; house to sell; garden to clear up. With the late spring I just hadn’t felt like going outside much so the gardening jobs were well behind schedule. But a couple of decent weekends since Easter and I’ve been catching up, much as the plants have themselves been. I’ve not been completely poker free though, I’ve been playing a few low-level tournaments. I’ve enjoyed the banter at a new forum for me: Poker Players Place. Our paths first crossed in Birmingham the other month while I was up there with the UK Sharks (see my earlier post Not The APAT Team Championship): they not only organised the event they also won it. Anyway, there’s nothing like playing small field, cheap events against the same people to help you get your confidence back, so these have been great for me. Also, staying away from Hold’em for a while gives a break and some of the PPP games are mixed or variation. I’ve had a bit of a play at micro cash on non hold’em games as well. I’ve got a couple of YouTube intro links here, courtesy of PokerStars, appetite whetters both: How to Play Pot Limit Omaha - a game I really struggle with because the pots seem to get very big pre-flop and then I always seem to miss the flop; How to Play 7 Card Stud - a game I really like because people play it so badly at micro stakes. There’s nothing like playing and winning, even if it is against donkeys! I’m sure the frosty mornings will soon stop, spring will be here for good and I’ll be back on the cash games. Can’t wait for ever, Vegas is in June and will be upon me before I know it…
April 02, 2010
Filed Under (Cash 2010) by crumble on 02-04-2010
Wow, March was horrible. Not just the cold, wet, windy weather - the poker was horrible too. I don’t think I’m playing so badly, but the bankroll fell back to the start of the year even though volume was thin (so no rakeback to kickstart April, sadly). Here’s the sorry picture, a sea of red:
I’m definitely going to post more hands for comment on EatMyStack next month, maybe get some sweat sessions in as well. Mind you, it’s nice when the occasional fish wanders in:
AKo was actually my least profitable hand in March with a net loss of $45. Starting hand of the month was JJ. I took down a lot of pots with it in March with net profit $68, so it is surprising to me that the biggest was only half a buy-in. Here it is:
That was a pretty non-standard line. I had my reasons … villain was exceptionally aggressive so I decided to setmine pre-flop. Also he continuation bets close to 100% of the time so when the flop came dry and Q high I decided to flat with the intention of checkraising a blank turn. When the turn made me up & down I decided instead to see if I hit, given that I am still in front a lot of the time. On the river I felt I was more likely to get paid by betting than risking him checking it back. But overall it all looks too passive. In retrospect I think waking up on the turn would have been better. Oh well, onwards and upwards. April will be better.
March 23, 2010
Filed Under (Cash 2010) by crumble on 23-03-2010
My regular reader will have noticed that I haven’t posted on here for a while. That’s because I don’t feel like posting when I’m losing … and this month I’ve been losing. Back to even for the year, in fact. I’d like to say it’s because I’ve been unlucky, but really I’ve just been playing badly. In order to break the monotony, I’ve been playing a bit of micro Omaha Hi Lo. This is a great game when you’re playing badly because everybody else plays it badly as well. So you don’t feel out of place as much as in NLHE, where most people play it pretty well these days. Take for example the hand below, which I picked out because it’s my biggest pot of that session. I played it so badly it actually hurts the eyes to look at it…
Despite that, I have some simple rules for playing this game… 1) Don’t bloat the pot pre-flop out of position. This is because hands change value hugely on the flop; you don’t want to be playing big pots down the streets with a dodgy hand out of position. 2) Play hands with scoop potential. Preferably both high and low, but high only hands are okay if you can get in cheap. Low-only hands and random A2xx types need to be played multi way because on most flops you are only playing for half the pot. 3) Either have the nuts or be drawing to the nuts; don’t be afraid of getting the money in when you are in good shape. The pot usually goes to the player that flops the best draw. I guess I obeyed (1) and (2) on this one, but (3)… well. I guess I knew he was a fish happy to get his money in with an overpair and a couple of backdoor draws. Talking of scooping, I see that PokerStars are bringing back that 2009 innovation, the SCOOP Poker Tournament (Spring Championship Of Online Poker), in May this year. This is special among the multitude of tournament series that has sprung up in recent years, because it’s three series in one. Each event has a low stakes, mid stakes and high stakes option. If I’ve got any money left in May I’ll be giving some of these a whirl. I’m especially tempted by some of the more off-beat games, like the mixed games, the Stud Hi-Lo and, yes, the Omaha Hi-Lo. Anyone want to stake me? Anyway, I’ll see you there, I shouldn’t wonder.
March 02, 2010
Filed Under (Cash 2010) by crumble on 02-03-2010
By the standards of most online poker players I don’t play very many hands in a month. One of the effects of this is, there is enough variance that my most profitable starting hand varies from month to month, as opposed to the long term expectation that AA will win the most. So for instance the starting hand that I won the most with in January was QQ; this month was actually JJ. I was dealt JJ 28 times of which I won 85.7%, total profit $65.97. This was the biggest JJ pot:
Now you have to feel for Victim on this hand, it’s a bit of a cooler, although maybe he should have raised again pre-flop to get more money in the pot when he was definitely in front. Strangely enough, the biggest pot I lost with JJ also featured the Aces:
Again, I don’t like the way the villain played his Aces here. But with a 38 big blind stack it’s not really possible to play “properly” so I guess it’s wp, nh, onwards and upwards.
February 28, 2010
Filed Under (Cash 2010) by crumble on 28-02-2010
February went better than January, poker-wise. At the cash tables I managed to undo pretty much all of January’s damage. The guys at Eat My Stack pointed out how I was playing much too tight for the 5-max games with a big leak on the small blind. So a few little tweaks and voila, here’s the February cash table performance:
It’s a good job that the cash came good because I won precious little in tournaments. I did win a couple of qualifiers for next week’s ICOP on Virgin Poker though, so if I score there that will get March off to a great start. I also lost over $80 due to the deteriorating sterling-dollar exchange rate, which more than wiped out the rakeback from January. So here’s the summary for February and year-to-date:
I’m feeling really good about my game just now, so maybe in March I can press on while the feeling lasts!
February 27, 2010
Filed Under (Live Poker, Vegas) by crumble on 27-02-2010
Well that’s settled then, the Baglady and I are going to Vegas in June to fetch back the money we spent there last year. We also get to have another go at winning a bracelet: our holiday coincides with the WSOP Seniors event that we did so rubbish in last year. This time it will be better. For the benefit of Crispy and anyone else who’s interested, here is the tournament structure from last year. To be honest it’s not great, could use a bigger starting stack, but imagine what it was like a few years ago when you started with just 1000:
Anyway, we’ll be staying at the Flamingo this year, so I expect we’ll be sick of pink by the time we come home again. But never mind that, roll on June!!! |
