uFR Challenge III: Day 4 + 5

Day 4. I unfortunately only managed to put in 500 hands yesterday but the games were super fishy and I was up a quick 2 buyins before quitting for the day. It should be July 4th every Saturday of the year.

Day 5. Got off to a slow start today and finished the first session down a buyin after spewing my last hand. I was probably a little tilty at breaking even for 1200 hands with flopping absolutely nothing worth valuebetting. I did a little session review and picked out the biggest fish and the biggest pots I'd seen today and made notes on which ones were stacking off super light.

Then I fired up some more tables and got into some good spots where 2 or 3 regs were constantly 3betting me and I recognized the situation as a good squeeze spot for them and 4bet light successfully a number of times and played back at the right flops and came out ahead in the 3bet/4bet light game.

My favorite hand for this month so far. I loled when I saw the nitty SB fire $1 into $1.50 and thought lol he has Asx. Calling is pretty much a 0EV play since I'm about 25:1 to hit and that's 1/2 his stack, plus I have to have his hand exactly right and I don't think my straight draw outs are good since I'm either crushed or don't get paid off anyways - but hitting straight flushes for stacks is so much fun so I have to call. Fortunately the fish on my left came along for a couple bets to add some value.

Poker Stars $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players - View hand 174086
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

UTG+1: $56.25
UTG+2: $50.00
MP1: $52.00
MP2: $74.20
CO: $50.00
BTN: $50.00
SB: $50.00
Hero (BB): $111.70
UTG: $52.70

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is BB with T 6
UTG calls $0.50, 6 folds, SB calls $0.25, Hero checks

Flop: ($1.50) 5 3 4 (3 players)
SB bets $1, Hero calls $1, UTG calls $1

Turn: ($4.50) 7 (3 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $4, UTG calls $4, SB raises to $16, Hero calls $12, UTG folds

River: ($40.50) 8 (2 players)
SB bets $32.50 all in, Hero calls $32.50

Final Pot: $105.50
SB shows A Q (a flush, Ace high)
Hero shows T 6 (a straight flush, Three to Seven)
Hero wins $102.50
(Rake: $3.00)

Winrate is rising again.
3.12 ptBB/100 over 21k hands.

uFR Challenge III: Day 2 + 3

Day 2 was pretty rough. I got off to a really good start and put up 2.5 buyins in 1500 hands. The session I played later in the evening just coolered those away but I did manage to vindicate myself somewhat on my last hand for the day. I need to start shoving rivers more often again:

Poker Stars $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 8 players - View hand 171246
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

SB: $59.45
BB: $51.30
UTG: $48.70
UTG+1: $56.50
Hero (MP1): $50.00
MP2: $50.00
CO: $39.80
BTN: $55.65

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is MP1 with 3 3
2 folds, Hero raises to $1.50, 4 folds, BB calls $1

Flop: ($3.25) 9 J 3 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $2, BB calls $2

Turn: ($7.25) 9 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $5, BB calls $5

River: ($17.25) A (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $41.50 all in, BB says "why so much" and tanks his entire timebank, BB calls $41.50

Final Pot: $100.25
BB mucks J 7
Hero shows 3 3 (a full house, Threes full of Nines)
Hero wins $97.25
(Rake: $3.00)

More updates in this post to follow as I play today...

Day 3 got off to a nice start. I forgot that it's Friday since I'm on holidays and was wondering why the games were sooooo fishy this morning. I played 18 tables and at least 5 of them had a 60/20 that managed to rack up 4 buyins. Good times!

This was the biggest winner so far today, villain is 53/29 and running hotter than the sun so I decided to put a stop to that:

Poker Stars $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players - View hand 171437
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

CO: $50.95
Hero (BTN): $50.00
SB: $50.00
BB: $57.30
UTG: $49.50
UTG+1: $50.50
UTG+2: $49.25
MP1: $50.75
MP2: $188.80

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is BTN with A A
4 folds, MP2 calls $0.50, CO calls $0.50, Hero raises to $3, 2 folds, MP2 calls $2.50, 1 fold

Flop: ($7.25) 7 Q 9 (2 players)
MP2 bets $3, Hero raises to $9, MP2 calls $6

Turn: ($25.25) 6 (2 players)
MP2 bets $10, Hero raises to $38 all in, MP2 calls $28

River: ($101.25) 6 (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $101.25
Hero shows A A (two pair, Aces and Sixes)
MP2 shows J 8 (a pair of Sixes)
Hero wins $98.25
(Rake: $3.00)

The biggest loser was against another of these guys. I was hoping to get him to spazz out with his top pair on the flop here. Didn't realize his hand might actually be that strong otherwise I might have bet the flop bigger but, whatever I'm probably still ahead enough of the time on a seemingly blank turn:

Poker Stars $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 8 players - View hand 171438
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BB: $53.95
UTG: $51.40
UTG+1: $40.35
Hero (MP1): $73.75
MP2: $39.75
CO: $52.95
BTN: $43.30
SB: $57.60

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is MP1 with K K
2 folds, Hero raises to $1.50, 4 folds, BB calls $1

Flop: ($3.25) J 7 3 (2 players)
BB bets $1, Hero raises to $4, BB raises to $10, Hero raises to $20, BB calls $10

Turn: ($43.25) 8 (2 players)
BB bets $32.45 all in, Hero calls $32.45

River: ($108.15) 5 (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $108.15
BB shows J 8 (two pair, Jacks and Eights)
Hero mucks K K
BB wins $105.15
(Rake: $3.00)

Winrate is starting to climb out of the BE stretch induced mean average of 0 from the first 10k hands
15k hands
1.5 ptBB/100
$222.20

I thought I was up more than this but HEM had my sessions messed up and I was in for a dissappointing look at results when the HUD said +$130 on the day and HEM actually says $65.

Tables were quite nice this afternoon I'm assuming due to July 4th weekend. Finished the afternoon up 5 BI and quite happy. Then got sucked out and coolered 3x in my evening session within the first 15 minutes:

AA to KK AIPF 4 flush boards are the bane of my existance.*
99 to 55 on 5569x
88 to QQ on Q8xxx

*I officially request a rule change that one card flushes do not count, you don't deserve to draw to a one card flush and throw the rest of the hand ranking chart out the window with your 7 high no draw, unless the flop is mono, cause if you are drawing to a 1 card flush then you are terribad.

Winrate currently stands at 2.0. I win the interwebz.

uFR Challenge III: Day 1

Happy Canada Day everybody!

Today was the 1st day of the challenge. I wanted to make sure I got off to a good headstart on the volume to increase my winrate multiplier and last night was the best time to do it for me. I have played A LOT of poker in the last 21 hours.

Unfortunately I ran absolutely terrible in the cooler department overnight and quickly found myself down 7 buyins. This one was my last dropped buyin as was playing very poorly on top of that as you can tell by my horrible line in the hand history and I thought it was a good time to take a break:

Poker Stars $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players - View hand 169945
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

CO: $50.00
BTN: $65.00
SB: $54.85
BB: $50.00
Hero (UTG): $50.00
UTG+1: $38.00
UTG+2: $28.45
MP1: $45.60
MP2: $32.40

CO posts a big blind ($0.50)

Pre Flop: ($1.25) Hero is UTG with 9 9
Hero raises to $2.50, 1 fold, UTG+2 calls $2.50, 4 folds, SB calls $2.25, 1 fold

Flop: ($8.50) 9 6 6 (3 players)
SB checks, Hero checks, UTG+2 bets $5, SB calls $5, Hero calls $5

Turn: ($23.50) 5 (3 players)
SB checks, Hero checks, UTG+2 checks

River: ($23.50) 5 (3 players)
SB bets $7, Hero raises to $42.50 all in, UTG+2 calls $20.95 all in, SB calls $35.50

Final Pot: $129.45
SB shows 6 6 (four of a kind, Sixes)
Hero shows 9 9 (a full house, Nines full of Sixes)
UTG+2 mucks Q Q
SB wins $43.10
SB wins $83.35
(Rake: $3.00)

Went and got myself a Tim Horton's coffee and fired up different tables. I told myself to just play solid ABC poker and win those buyins back. My goal was to win back at least 5 of those in the next several thousand hands. The coolers didn't stop, but the rest of my game improved, I played relatively tilt-free, and I slowly won 2 buyins for every 1 I continued to lose back. It was pretty gruelling to say the least but I am actually glad that I had the experience of just pure grinding for hours on end to see what that's like, especially in a losing situation.

A little later in the afternoon I put in about 4 more hours and started to show some profit for the month and I'm starting to feel really good about July and it's potential.

So I played a lot of hands for the first day of the challenge. Actually this is the most hands I've ever played in a single day.

uFR Challenge III: Starts Tonight

I got drafted by Greg. /competition.

But seriously, we have a sick team and this is really going to motivate me to keep up with these guys' winrates. Pretty sure I'm going to learn a lot too.

Bought in for 50NL (1 buyin buyin) and there's something like 72 people in so this should be good.

TEAM BREAKEVEN 4 LYFE!!!!

Online Poker Documentary

I watched Krantz and 918 Films' colaboration documenting the professional online poker life of Greg Lavery, aka Captain Zeebo. I won't say a whole lot about it since you'll want to watch it for yourself, except to say that it is very professionally put together in HD.

The character study they did on Greg is an absolutely amazing story and I could relate to a lot of it myself as I'm sure most of you out there can. I also think that this paints such an accurate picture of the life of the online (semi)-professional player that it would give a lot of insight into our world for friends and family who are non-poker players. It explains a lot of things that I know that a lot of us have trouble explaining to people that are not familiar with what we do.

So go check it out: Busto to Robusto, Episode One: Zeebo

5 Stars imo

Article: Why do people do -EV things?

There are things that are inherently +EV and pretty much all of them are necessities: eating, sleeping, making money, wearing clothes. Without these we would die of starvation or embarrassment.

-EV things are almost always non-necessities: luxury and entertainment. But are they really -EV? From an economical standpoint in real $, yes. From a quality of life standpoint in entertainment dollars (E$), no. We would die of boredom without entertainment. Dying is generally a -EV proposition.

The only logical conclusion then is that people actually never choose actions that they calculate to be -EV. People always choose the best option available in their opinion and in some way or another try to accomplish their goals. Because of this and for the purposes of this article, accomplishing goals, whatever they are, is always +EV for the person trying to accomplish them. At least at the time the decision was made in their own mind.

Everyone is free to miscalculate expected value by overestimating, underestimating or excluding any and all variables in any decision they make. This is why some people choose illogical or irrational actions that end up being massively -EV for them. All the stupid things we have done in life probably seemed like a good idea at the time.

One entertainment example is buying a ticket to a hockey game. It is a -EV economical decision. You watch the game, spend a bunch more on overpriced drinks and souvenirs and come home with nothing to show for it but the experience and memories and worthless artifacts. But these experiences and memories are what make life interesting and therefore it is very difficult to determine what an entertainment dollar is actually worth.

Even more so, when coupled with the fact that people have different reasons for undertaking the same economical -EV decision. Some people go to the game because they are fans of the team or players, some like the social atmosphere, some just like the idea of excessive drinking and screaming. I decide that the entertainment value for a mid-level ticket is E$40 and I'll spend $15 on concessions. My breakeven point for deciding to buy a ticket or not is $55 total for the event. I manage to get a ticket for $30 and they are having ½ price concessions, therefore I am left with a pretty big +EV decision when balancing E$ with real $ and decide to go. This is why the closer to the action you get in the arena, the higher the ticket price is as being closer to the action is more entertaining and therefore E$ value goes up.

The overall EV of any activity whether it be economical value, entertainment value or a combination of both, needs to be +EV for everyone involved for it to continue and survive. If any one group of participants become -EV in the activity, the activity ceases to exist because it requires the participation of all groups to function.

Gambling is a form of unnecessary entertainment, an apparently -EV decision, for most people. Yet they continue to deposit one quarter after another into that slot machine for a variety of reasons. Some people like to go to the casino to hang out with friends, some need something to do to kill an hour before work, some are in search of that elusive jackpot. These all have E$ value.

And what happens when they hit their one in a million shot? Bells and sirens go off in celebration and the casino manager comes out all smiles with a monster check and congratulates the lucky winner despite losing a ton of money. He doesn’t inform the winner that a one in a million shot at a $50k jackpot in quarter slots should cost him about $250k to win on average. The fact is that the player has determined that the enjoyment of the anticipation of a jackpot win plus a $50k overlay outweighs losing $250k one quarter at a time.

What would happen if the monster check was written out to “LOL Fish” and the staff came out and ridiculed the winner? One of two options: he either quits gambling or takes his winnings across the street to the next casino and proceeds to dump his entire jackpot in the next few months.

So how does this translate to the poker table? Poker clients do their part to bring fish in by literally giving away millions of dollars in sign up and reload bonuses as overlay on their entertainment value. At the table, we need to act like casino managers and make sure that the entire poker system remains +EV overall to everyone involved. If people become -EV overall at the table, they will either quit or switch tables, the same way the slot winner will quit or change casinos.

Fred is a 20-something and enjoys gambling with online poker. More accurately, Fred enjoys the rush of winning a big pot more than anything. Fred just sat down on your right at a 100NL table for 100BB and plays in a peculiar fashion. He limps in with 100% of his hands and calls a postflop shove 100% of the time with any pair or any draw because of his love of winning big pots.

You pick up pocket 2's in the BB. Everyone folds to Fred who completes in the SB and you check. The flop is A74. Fred checks, you check behind. The turn is the marvelous 2. Fred checks, and you shove for obvious reasons. Fred snap calls and flips over 74o for 2 pair with 10% equity and yells "One Time!" The dealer burns and Fred does bink a 4 one time.

Now before you go and type LOL Fish into the chat box think about what exactly it is that you are saying. In your opinion, Fred made a -EV decision because according to your motives for playing the game, real $ equity is all that counts. However, if the -$80 real EV plus the enjoyment and rush aquired through anticipation of winning $100 (E$) outweighs the direct odds he needed to make the "correct" economical play, he absolutely made the correct +EV play according to his motives for playing.

Telling him that he played incorrectly is just as absurd as him telling you that you're a boring person that doesn't know how to have fun based on the fact that you've folded every hand for the past hour while you were card dead. Your motives, and therefore your decisions, are completely different and neither of you are ever making -EV plays according to your goals.

But we have a reg with a tilt issue sitting across the table and he starts berating Fred. Now we don't really know much about Fred but we do know that embarrassment is a horrible thing to experience and greatly reduces E$. Fred could just be an idiot and he'll quit playing because he is now -EV in the game due to his E$ value being reduced. Or, Fred could be an Ivy league student who plays because it's what the cool kids do and figures he's going to become good at this game now and starts crushing it within months

Either result is detrimental to the ultimate goal (making money) of the reg, who finds berating to be a +EV decision for the purposes of blowing off steam but mistakenly excludes the variables that lead to him accomplishing his ultimate goal from this calculation.

So whenever Fred binks a 4 on you, just smile and say NH. As long as he's having a good time, you'll continue to have a good time, too.

Just consider it your turn to feed the fish.