Favourite bad-beat from yesterday

Everest Poker $0.25/$0.50 Limit Hold'em - 6 players - View hand 105458

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Pre Flop: (1.6 SB) Hero is BB with 9 6

2 folds, CO calls, 1 fold, SB calls, Hero checks

Flop: (3 SB) 6 9 A (3 players)

SB checks, Hero bets, CO raises, SB folds, Hero 3-bets, CO caps!, Hero calls

I was actually recoding this session with audio commentary. Just before I 3-bet the flop I asked myself out loud "does this guy have A9?". When he capped, I said "Oh no, now I'm in trouble".


Turn: (5.5 BB) Q (2 players)

Hero checks, CO bets, Hero calls

River: (7.5 BB) 9 (2 players)

Hero bets, CO raises, Hero 3-bets, CO caps!, Hero calls

Here again, I wasn't sure whether to raise or not but erred on the side of aggression...

Final Pot: 15.5 BB

CO shows 9 A

CO wins 14.8 BB

(Rake: $0.35)

What a donkey! You have to say that he'd have to be an absolute lunatic to have played that strong with any other hand so I effectively donked 3 or 4BB in that hand. Re-raising the flop might not be so bad (1BB), but betting the river - walking into a raise then re-raising for villian to cap!?!? = 3BB of donkishment.

Dealing with Limpers

Here is a good example of how dangerous it is to take one piece of advice and apply it without considering how it fits into a consistent game plan.

The last piece of advice I heard about limpers was "never over limp, never limp", so last night I started raising regardless of the limpers in front of me.

Wrong.

Stack diminishing quickly before my eyes... hold up! this isn't right! One villain has VPIP of 25, the other guy has a VPIP of 43... I can't just ignore their limps and pretend I'm Open Raising. I'm getting pwned.

This reminded me of another piece of advice (from Danzasmack I think): If someone limps, pretend it's an Open Raise and only open with your 3-bet range. At the time I didn't understand why. It felt like I was getting cheated out of pots by doing that so I ignored the advice.

Put the two pieces of advice together, mix in my previous thoughts about "range aggressive play" and it starts to make sense: you should be playing hands that you think give you an advantage over your opponents range. you're raising to reduce the chance of any more people getting involved in the pot and also to build the pot whilst you're ahead.

Limpers have hand-ranges too, some are pretty tight and you have to take that into consideration.

Enjoying the game

Haven't played for four days due to work pressures and have to say I'm really looking forward to playing tonight.

Avoided the urge to rush to the table when I got home. Had a good 90 minute nap. Just finishing a cup of tea then I'll join some waiting lists.

I completed a survey on Everest Poker last weekend. The questions were exploring motivation for playing at the site. The exercise made me realise I take my sessions too seriously.

Have since started listening to music in the background and will be trying to embrace bad beats as much as possible. Still a little way to go on the latter!

Anyhow, that's enough procrastination. Wish me some good variance...

how not to play a set of Aces

Everest $0.25/$0.50 Limit Hold'em - 6 players - View hand 99777

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Pre Flop: (1.6 SB) Hero is UTG with A A

Hero raises, MP calls, 2 folds, SB calls, 1 fold

Flop: (7 SB) 9 A 8 (3 players)

SB checks, Hero bets, MP folds, SB folds

Final Pot: 3.5 BB

Hero wins 3.4 BB

(Rake: $0.05)

Should have checked the flop, given my opponents a chance to spike some paint. Only one Ace left in the deck so very little chance my opponents had it.

The Challenge of Poker

Was experimenting with the hand range feature in Holdem Manager and stumbled across the "Billings Davidson Schaeffer Szafron" pre-flop hand-ranking scheme.

A short google later lead to an interesting paper called "The Challenge of Poker" describing some of the research done for Poker Academy's artificial intelligence Texas Holdem program (Poki).

Rehab

Well, having said I'd stick to 6-max this month, I switched to full ring briefly on Saturday to reduce risk whilst completing the FullTilt Take 2 promotion. Played more cautiously and won a little back.

Went back to 6-max yesterday for the final day of the promotion and just about broke even.

Could have been up quite a bit but got rivered: dealt TT flopped a set on Txx board. Capped flop. Villian hit one outer on the river to make JJJ. There was also a chance of going out to a flush but I didn't put him on a heart-draw. turns out he didn't have any hearts.

Thanks to rakeback ($7) and the Take 2 promotion ($25), my bankroll is down $15, not $47.

Hope I learnt something. I reviewed some of the hands the day after and realised I was playing very badly. Chasing weak draws, folding when I had good odds. Playing badly on 3 tables at once is obviously going to to hit your bankroll!

Probably the stupidest thing I did was mis-classify a really good player as a fish. That slip alone cost me at least $10 and probably more because the thought of being lucked out on by a fish was creating additional tilt.

I'm certainly going to pay a lot more attention to the style of play of my opponents now. I think there's probably value in sticking at a level until you've identified all the regulars and know how they play.

Wipeout

I just lost ALL the money I’ve won this month and I’m back into the red. All in about 2 hours playing at $.25/$.50 6-max on full filt.

I feel like a sack of excrement right now but figured I’d better post. Can’t just record the highlights.

Really down now. How the hell do I recover from this?

Yeah its nothing in the grand scheme of things, some people lose a whole lot more than I have and would laugh if they read this but it still hurts.

Damn, not sure what I was doing when I started my session today. Tried 3 tabling and was just completely out of it. Lost $10 on each table before I could blink. Totally flustered.

Took a break, tried to relax a bit then returned to a single table but still lost another $8.

It will take ages to win this back and there’s no guarantee I won’t just keep losing.

Drat! really thought I was getting somewhere with 6-max. What a joke!

LAG+TAG = RAG?

The training video series I watched last week helped raise my awareness of opponent-range based play.

The terms TAG (Tight Aggressive) and LAG (Loose Aggressive) are often used to describe players styles. The “Tight” or “Loose” component of these acronyms gives an indication of the range of hands that a player will enter a hand with. “Tight” players play less cards than “Loose” players.

Modern literature (both print, podcast and video) recommend taking into consideration the range of hands a player is likely to play under current conditions and adjusting your own range accordingly. In other words, you would vary your range according to actions of the players already in the hand and the likely actions of those left to follow.

Let’s call this style a RAG style (Range-based Aggressive).

I was hoping to explore the idea further tonight but I’m too tired! Good night.

What leaks when the sun shines?

Woah. Can't believe this is the first post in April.

I've played at least a few hands every day since the 3rd despite being inundated with work. Feeling pretty wrecked to be honest.

Was going to write something reflective today but with the complete absence of posts up to this point... what the hell let's stick to basics.



Have taken the plunge, playing exclusively 6-max at FullTilt. Started off pretty bad but then dropped down a limit, calmed my aggression a little and took on board more of what Danzasmack was saying in his Prices Right videos at DeucesCracked and hey presto, things started to go a little better for me.

Had an amazing set of hands at one point and made a whopping $30 at one table but in the excitment I proceeded to donk most of my winnings again to finish almost even for that session (hence the big spike around 700 hands).

The silver lining to that particular cloud is that it revealed a pretty significant leak : I play like a contented fish when I'm way ahead in a session: playing cards that I'd otherwise muck, chasing draws when I don't have the correct odds, try to bluff more... What the hell?! Gotta cut that out. Sit out and gather yourself man!

The fact that I'm still chasing that illustrious high point in my April winnings chart 500 hands later is a real sobering thought. Hopefully this leak is well and truly plugged.