Supernova!

Ship the Supernova and the 3.5x multiplier and conceirge. Yay! I put in a massive session yesterday and another today to get it done. Well I guess it's actually the 31st now, but I'm putting it down as the 30th.

Yesterday went very very well for the first 75% of the session and I was on the verge of having my first $1k day. I made it all the way up to $980 for the day 24 tabling 100NL, then had a bit of a downswing and dropped nearly $400 back. Today was a rollercoaster of tilt and exhaustion but I finished the day at +$14 after 9k hands, lol.

I am taking the day off tomorrow, and maybe the weekend too, and meet up with some friends for the evening. It'll feel really good getting back to playing fun, comfortable poker. This last week especially felt like a job with the crazy amount of hours I put in.

One thing I would like to know is how I manage to put in 35 hours 24 tabling since the 24th and manage to not get dealt into any of the milestone hands Stars had going this week. That would have been a real nice boost. I guess that's only 55k hands, but I should have had a relatively good shot at it. Who knows.

Happy New Year everyone!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you're all having a great holiday and, if you live anywhere like I do, trying to stay warm =) I'm finally done work for the year and it's time to put in hardcore hours to get my Supernova in.

I worked the night shift this week and it was actually kind of nice for a change. I did a ton of thinking about my game and my thought process over the past 3 nights while I was working away and made some pretty significant changes to it after running a bunch of math and reading some interesting thoughts by a few different people.

I think what my problem was for the past few weeks has been that at 100NL, the days of stacking top pair or even 2 pair by some random like I did at 25NL are over, which means I have to find a way to exploit and adjust to that. I had been getting pushed around a ton with my 25NL game and it just wasn't working out. But I can't really stop people from trying to push me around because it's going to be a bigger risk than it's worth to do it and they might just not stop anyways, so I just let them take it to the extreme and make mistakes. I find that's the best way to exploit people - find their most likely characteristic and let them go too far with it while having a counterstrategy to fight back at the right times.

And I've come to the realization that CRAI is not the strongest line possible in this game. c/f is.

So the only times I was getting my money in decently were coinflip situations for the most part where it was monster draw vs. top pair or 2 pair - and we all know I am the worst person for flipping - and this resulted in some whacked out variance. I have since begun to get my money in as a 60%+ favorite again and I'm enjoying the results!

I did have the worst suckout I've ever laid out on anyone happen last night though, lol. Villain's a 57/20 superdonk and shoves something like every 6th flop he sees and 3bets/squeezes every 5th hand. Turns out he actually has something this time and I have 3% equity on the flop:

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

MP1: $108.50
MP2: $38.50
CO: $36.60
BTN: $70.65
SB: $60.30
BB: $18.15
UTG: $92.80
UTG+1: $98.45
Hero (UTG+2): $101.50

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is UTG+2 with K K
UTG raises to $4, 1 fold, Hero calls $4, MP1 calls $4, 5 folds

Flop: ($13.50) 3 5 2 (3 players)
UTG bets $12, Hero calls $12, MP1 raises to $104.50 all in, UTG folds, Hero calls $85.50 all in

Turn: ($220.50) 2 (2 players - 2 are all in)

River: ($220.50) K (2 players - 2 are all in)
Hero: Merry Christmas to me!

Final Pot: $220.50
MP1 mucks 4 6
Hero shows K K (a full house, Kings full of Deuces)
Hero wins $217.50
(Rake: $3.00)

Troughing

I haven't posted in a week. I had a massive cooler/beat induced downswing and ended about $800 below equity. $300 of this was at 100NL and the rest was at 50NL. I've never run this bad in my life, but eventually you run worse than you ever thought possible. I'll probably run worse at some point in the future, but it's amazing how terrible it feels. And don't think it's impossible for it to happen to you. I am totally convinced after reviewing my database for the week that I was playing my A+ game (A+ since it's the best I've ever played, ever) approximately 90% of the time and during 100% of those beats. There is just nothing you can do.

I should have been running pretty decent except that spewing made my equity flatline - which is good to know that I can run breakeven when I feel spewy. Granted I wouldn't feel spewy if it were not for the beats =)

Anyways, I think I hit the bottom of the trough. I'm playing a bit tighter to lower variance and it's working out so far and I've recovered a little.

I almost gave up on Supernova. I'm going to have my work cut out for me after "giving up" and playing 25NL for 2 days on the weekend. I just have to keep reminding myself that if I can get the points in, it's $3k in my pocket, so I can actually stand to lose quite a bit and end up ahead. I'm still up something like $450 for the month. I need to get over losing money that I've won. It makes me feel like every 5+ downswing is a tragedy. But I really shouldn't complain because my entire poker career has been a freeroll.

I'm going to keep at the 100NL and 50NL to hit Supernova. I'll have to pound away some 6 hour sessions when I'm on holidays next week.

Back under control

I played a longer session of 25NL than usual today to get myself going and finished up 5 buyins. Now that I'm confident again and playing well I'll head back up to 100NL.

I also read a pooh-bah post on Pot Control by AlexB182 that is the absolute nuts. I realized there were a ton of spots where I was using pot control incorrectly and the way he's got it laid out makes the concept easy to understand and apply - and also know exactly when to not apply it. No more thinking "Is this a pot control spot or not?"

This game gets easier with every "aha!" moment. Thank you Alex! You don't find too many "aha!" moments typed out in plain English.

Between that and Splitsuit's article on bet sizing, I don't know how anyone can go wrong. People say 95% of poker is automatic and 5% is tough decisions. But when you have stuff like this down pat, you can even reduce that to below 5% because you have a plan and stick to it for every hand.

No more sick turn cards where you don't know what to do. No more getting c/r where you don't know what to do. No more spewing.

AAAAHhhhhhh

Thank you. Just needed to vent.

23% WtSD. 35% W$SD. 5k hands.

I have been doomswitched.

This might be an interesting spot to talk about doomswitches. I'm at a loss to figure out what to do when you run completely card dead breakeven for 20k hands and get coolered when you finally do catch something every once in a while and get called down by trash the rest of the time because you never have it. It just makes me feel physically ill. Totally helpless.

I mean, there is absolutely not a single thing you can do when you have massive equity preflop/flop and consistently see the worst card in the deck on the turn that makes you take a puke/fold line - or spew.

Sometimes it's the rivered 3rd flush card against a loose-passive. Sometimes it's an A on a ragged board and you know they floated you with A high. It's just so sick.

My instincts/reads have been absolutely killer this month, but all they are doing right now is telling me I'm beat hand after hand. Sometimes I call down anyways out of frustration. But my reads are correct more than 80% of the time.

So the only conclusion then is that there are periods of time where you have no choice at all but to lose money. That's the way the game goes. Just try to lose it as slowly as possible. Don't become a nit, but just try to not spew.

I don't believe taking a break works because future hands are completely independant from past hands and your doomswitch can end at any time. I mean, if you're flipping coins, there's a chance you get heads 40 times in a row, however unlikely. Quitting for the day is not going to change whether or not that coin is going to flip heads another 40 times in a row when you start up again.

There could be something wrong in your game that has doomswitched you, but if you analyze it and find nothing different than when you were winning, then it's just pure variance. I'm a bankroll nit and I hate variance. A site where I get paid my share of equity on every hand that is all-in before the river would be interesting, but it would last about a day before the fish realized just how brutally terrible they are.

I only started playing last year. People say the games are tougher than they used to be. I have no idea. I can't even imagine how rediculously soft the games must have been before. But the doomswitches would have been that much more rediculous, too.

I really need some motivation to keep at the Supernova thing. Doomswitches make me feel like not playing. However much you try to suppress the superstition, you still feel like you are getting ready to donate stacks when you sit down.

Attack of the Limpers..... errr....

My focus this week is going to be on attacking limpers. After reviewing the last few weeks of play, I noticed I had really cut down on doing this and was back to just playing my cards instead of playing the situation optimally.

Since there are no decent 100NL tables (or 50NL for that matter) running this early in the morning I fired up 18 tables of 25NL to see if I could keep up with HUD stats and focus on attacking limpers based on their postflop tendencies. TheZodiac (25NL/50NL reg) had started a bunch of tables so I sat on a lot of them and we waited for the $15 buyin fish to show up.

This led to my really fun loose-TAG/LAGgy game and it helped that I was running really decent. I was about 19/16 and totally ran over the tables for 17 ptBB/100 over 1300 hands. I got into a few really fun reg wars as well. Most of these 25NL regs still have my stats at around 11/7 over enormous samples so their reads have been way off lately and probably will be for a while.

I also watched the Leatherass/Mbolt 400NL 6max video yesterday and picked up a lot of things that I hadn't thought about before regarding postflop play. Definately check it out if you're a Stox member. I think a lot of their thought processes translate very well over to full ring.

I am waiting on Stox to get part 1/4 of SplitSuit's new series up today, too, so I'm looking forward to that.

One reg war from today, he was getting pretty sick of me I think - I was at 6 of his tables and 3betting him a lot before this and he was starting to get pretty aggro. Expert flop call imo. Keep his and my ranges as wide as possible so he can stack off the turn and there isn't a single card I don't mind seeing - except the one that gives him a set if he doesn't have one already, but I don't know which one that is =) I'm only worried about an A or K peeling off and killing my action.

Poker Stars $0.10/$0.25 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

UTG+2: $11.90
Hero (MP1): $25.00
MP2: $31.20
CO: $24.30
BTN: $14.65
SB: $25.95
BB: $38.30
UTG: $27.70
UTG+1: $27.25

Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is MP1 with A A
3 folds, Hero raises to $0.75, 3 folds, SB calls $0.65, 1 fold

Flop: ($1.75) 4 6 2 (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $1.25, SB raises to $3.75, Hero calls $2.50

Turn: ($9.25) 9 (2 players)
SB bets $8, Hero raises to $20.50 all in, SB calls $12.50

River: ($50.25) Q (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $50.25
Hero shows A A (a pair of Aces)
SB shows J J (a pair of Jacks)
Hero wins $47.80
(Rake: $2.45)


Results for today:
Attacking limpers was working very very well. Except for the part about hitting 3 outers on the turn when I had them dominated with top pair to make 2 pair and stack me 3 times in the first 300 hands lol. Oh well, I managed to get back to breakeven and finished the day up 1/2 a buyin. I'm going to keep on focusing on this.

The games this month have been the best I have seen in a very long time. All week has been playing like the weekend regardless of time or day. Good to see the economy has not affected online traffic at all yet and apparently traffic actually increased by 40% as of September. Weird. But I guess it stands to reason. Track betting was the most popular pastime during the 1930s.

100NL > 25NL imo

I played a long session of 100NL last night and did quite nicely ending up almost 5 buyins.

I played a short session of 25NL this morning and ran trbl ending down almost 5 buyins.

Play 100NL ldo.

People are so trbl this game is going to be good for a long time.

Supernova Race

As I said, I am attempting to hit Supernova before the year is up. Bankroll wise, I can actually have a -$1500 month and end up +$1500. I would get a $1500 bonus for this month and an extra 100k FPPs on the first 100k VPPs next year for another $1500 bonus. Of course the plan is to actually make some money along the way.

I've been trying to 18 table 100NL for the past week or so every day for 2-3 hours. I've really gotten used to the level, but it requires an intense level of focus for me. I will probably be burned out at the start of January, but the motivation to hit Supernova is really pushing me right now.

I am going to have to adjust my calculations though due to VPP rates dropping in the last few days. Normally 100NL runs at .32 to .36 VPPs/hand and it's at .30 VPPs/hand. 50NL has dropped from .21 to .18. So this is going to require a few more hours than I had anticipated.

I considered 24 tabling and shortstacking but decided against it. The variance is too big and if I went on a large downswing I might give up. The other option may be to pick up another monitor. I don't know if my decision making is fast enough for 24 tables, but I've been trying to keep it fairly simple and play my game. 24 tables is a bit much on a 19" widescreen but it can be done. I won't resort to that until the last week of the month or so if required.

I finish work at 7:00 am on the morning of the 24th and don't go back to work until January 2nd. This is when I really want to put in the bulk of my time and will be putting in 6-8 hours per day for that week and put in maybe 2500 VPPs per day there. If I can do that, I only need to put in about 10k VPPs in the next 2 weeks, but I'm trying to do as much as possible obviously.

100NL has been going alright. I had a bad session last night where I ran card dead and was getting called down a lot. I played some 50NL today to regain some confidence and won back most of what I lost yesterday, then some 100NL with a quick -1/+1 buyin session to end breakeven over a couple hours. I am finding a lot more success in letting people make huge mistakes at 100NL rather than trying to price them out when I don't even know if I'm ahead. A lot of them are overly aggressive so I just let them go ahead and bet.

At 50NL, I again came to the conclusion that helped me figure out how to beat 2NL when I first started out but it takes me a while to rediscover it every time. There's always those one or two guys at the table that you can't figure out how to beat. My brother is just starting out playing some 2NL and I told him, "You know that jerk on the button that you can't beat? Don't try to beat him. You be the jerk."

The solution: Don't try to beat them. Try to be them.

At 50NL, that means I am going to be the floaty, check-raising douchebag that I always get so pissed at. At 100NL, I'm the guy that relentlessly 3bets the weak-tights' obvious steals. And it works.

Canadian "Coalition" Majority

Canadians will be preparing for the hostile takeover of the government that we elected only 7 weeks ago. On October 14th, Canadians elected the Conservative Party to a 2nd minority government.

The trio of parties that lost the election have decided that the voters' decision was not good enough. They don't understand what "no" means. They are claiming that aid to jump-start the Canadian economy will not come fast enough under the Conservative stimulus plan.

Their solution: topple the 7 week old government and lead us down one of two paths.
1. The governor general will dissolve parliament and we will plunge into yet another election campaign.
2. The governor general will accept the unprecedented modern era proposition by the 3 opposition parties to form a majority government.

Option 1 will be the fairest option to Canadian voters although it will be expensive.
Option 2 will end in the largest political crisis this country has ever seen.

The fact that the opposition Liberal Party has decided to join forces with not only the socialist NDP but also the seperatist Bloc will mean that democracy, at least for the time being, is dead in Canada. Liberal voters did not vote for seperatists. NDP did not vote for Liberals. Seperatists, well, what can I say about them?

Economic aid will actually end up taking longer if we do wind up with either an election or a coup and between campaigns and transition of government, the earliest we would see any stimulus package from the coalition would be by the end of February. The Conservatives plan to roll out their plan shortly after seeing what the new Obama administration is going to do and would be in full effect by the last week of January. This renders the coalition raison d'être moot.

Bloc Quebecois
The thing that has me madder than hell is that this deal will put the seperatist traitors of this country in charge of my government and really shows what kind of power hungry maniacs we have working the opposition benches. They'll do whatever it takes to get that power including aligning themselves with the people who's purpose in life is to destroy this country.

The sole purpose of this party is to seperate the province of Quebec from Canada and now they want to run the country? They haven't been able to seperate yet so they have been intent on sucking every tax penny they can get and morsel of political power away from the rest of us that live in this country. This must be the only country in the world where we would even hesitate to throw treasonous POSs in front of the firing squad nevermind allow them to be voted into government.

Enough is enough. It's time to decide Canada. Are we going to keep putting up with this blackmail and hostage taking that these traitors have put us through for decades? Are we now going to allow this group to control our country? We've put up with "gimmegimmegimme or else" since 1982 and now they are going to be able to give themselves whatever they want. How is this in Canada's best interest?

I for one would be in favor of having our own Canada-wide referendum asking if we want to kick Quebec out of the country - and I do realize the severe economic consequences if that were to actually happen. It would still be better than having these guys run my country. I don't know why we all worked so hard to stop them from seperating last time they voted on it.

The 62% of Quebecors that did not vote Bloc in the last election would be more than welcome in the rest of this country. Let them have their Quebecois Nation as long as I don't have to kowtow to whatever they want anymore.

If we put up with this, we might as well refer to ourselves as the Banana Republic of Canada from now on.

Political Rant Imminent

Warning: Canadian Political Rant will be incoming in the next few hours. I will gather my thoughts on this "coalition" government and will be posting when I get home.

On a poker related note: 100NL is off to a good start for the month with 4 buyins.

November Results

My goals for November were simple: Have fun, Stay motivated, and Move up... in that order. I accomplished all 3 of those and had my best month ever. So my December goals are going to be the same - well, I probably won't be moving to 200NL this month or any time soon. I want to put in a good 100k to 200k hands of 100NL first.

And I'm adding a goal of getting Supernova. I have 29,703 points to go. That's approximately 2.5 hours of 100NL per day. It's going to be awfully close, but I am off of work from the 24th until the end of the year and should be able to put in the extra volume.

I haven't posted a graph in a while, so here's November: