2012 1st Quarter Plan

A few general thoughts first:

• The state of online poker seems to be on a gradually worsening downward slope since BF and throughout 2011. Game quality is rapidly deteriorating.
• 2012 has started off with a vitriolic bang and the community as a whole seems even more venemous than during the Fullstack-Shortstack Wars. Hard to believe.
• I do want to say that there are still some very good people in the community. But 2011 was the year I grew up and realized that poker players are humans. It was kind of the same feeling you get when you're mid-teens and people start to talk to you like an adult and you realize that society isn't this wonderful world of heroes that you thought it was. It's just a bunch of people looking out for number one. I do realize how naiive that sounds when applying it to the poker community, but that was my pre-2011 mindset. And I'm fine with people looking out for number one, that's what the game is about, until people come to the illogical conclusion that it's better to have their cookie taken away if it means someone they hate has two cookies taken away rather than to let everyone keep their cookies.
• I know that this sounds fairly cynical, but I also think cynicism is fairly realistic at this point in time.

Coming to and admitting realizations:

• I'm a winning recreational player. The adage that you can't be a pro until you're a pro -- or however that goes -- is very true. I'm a busy person with a full time job and family with very little time to study and even less time to review. I can't pick when I play, so I play when I'm tired, hungry and life tilted. This is not going to change. This year I have to admit to myself that it's just not going to happen in the foreseeable future and stop being disappointed when it doesn't.
• As a winning player you have to choose between one of two evils. You're either going to be a hated mass-tabler who's killing the games or you're going to be a greedy, talentless bumhunter who's killing the games. I believe the latter is the going term for table selection, once deemed a skillset in itself. I suppose you could be a real ego-driven poker player and just close your eyes while clicking on the lobby and play whatever pops up but that just seems, well, stupid.

2012 -- Quarter 1 Plan

My original plan pre-January 1st was to amp up the volume and hit 300k VPP for the year. But now, based on my outlook outlined above and due to a significantly smaller component for rakeback, I'm going to be taking the bumhunter approach for the first quarter of the year. I'll re-evaluate after a few months to see where this is going. I'm going to do my best to lower tables to the point where I'll just barely be maintaining Supernova status. I believe I can get that done with ~12 tables of 50NL given the number of hours I play.

I'm not quite committed to it yet, but ideally I'd almost like to set a volume ceiling target rather than a minimum volume target. I think that may just push me over the edge into making sure I once and for all play for quality over quantity. Needing to cut tables and increase winrate has been a long time goal of mine but  it inevitably falls by the wayside in the quest to stay in the VIP prison system (metaphorical prison, before the analogy police show up with a relevance related bone to pick). Now that they've blown the walls out of the prison, I'm finally free to do it. Of course I could have done it before, but the appeal of regularly scheduled prison food always outweighed the appeal of the unknown.

I'm going to be playing on Stars while I research the software, rb/vip and cash out efficiency of a few other sites. I'll re-evaluate everything once FTP is up and running again and will likely make a committment to one site after that.

Good luck to everyone in 2012.

Poker Decision 2012

So it's that time of year again. Doing the research, figuring out where to play, what to play, if to play for the next year.

I've basically been playing exclusively (99%) on Stars for the past 4 years.
A few of the 'positives':

• Traffic - no one comes anywhere close.
• VIP program - Pretty much the best VIP program out there when you consider the % you get if you are able to maintain Supernova+ combined with one of the lowest rakes* in the industry (this might be the result of a problem rather than a positive feature). Generally speaking if you can put in 60+ hours a month mass tabling, you're going to get 40%+ effective rakeback. And there's a few other ways to maximize your FPPs further through satellites as well if you're into that sort of thing.
• Software - So far it's the only software I've been able to look at that doesn't make me want to smash my monitor. Constant player-specific positive improvements as well, although again this might might be leading to a problem. I didn't mind FTP since it was pretty easy to multi-table but it still seemed kind of clunky. Every other sites' software that I've tried is complete shit.

Problems

• Full disclosure: I am part of the problem, sort of.
• A ton of the cash game traffic is due to mass tabling grinders.
• imo part of the reason the rake is so low is because there's so many nitty mass tabling grinders not seeing flops.
• Kudos to Stars for being extremely effective and efficient at upgrading their software according to the wishes and requests of the mass tabling community. They've used a ton of my and others ideas in the official software thread recently and it's easier than ever to play tons of tables.
• All of the above inevitably leads to the site being a magnet for mass tabling grinders like myself.'
• The vast majority of these players are either Russian/Chinese 40bb 11/9's with 20% 3bet making a good living for where they live off of FPPs, or 12/10 fullstacked regs who you aren't really going to win a ton of money off of, relatively speaking. There's a few of the laggier 19/15 regs out there like myself that I really enjoy playing with from a learning perspective but there's really not that many.

Simple fish:shark ratio experiment:

• 100 player pool 12 tables, 90% fish, 10% sharks
• 90 fish seats, 120 shark seats = 1 : 1.33
• 100 player pool 24 tables, 90% fish, 10% sharks
• 90 fish seats, 240 shark seats = 1 : 2.66
• 100 player pool 24 tables after successful marketing campaign where you bring in 33% more fish
• 120 fish seats, 240 shark seats = 1 : 2.00

People always said FTP was softer and I'm a firm believer that it wasn't because they were actively doing anything to attract fish. It was simply that they had a 12 table limit with 16 table limit available by request. As you can see, the number of tables you allow regs to play has a way bigger affect on the fishiness of the games than how many fish you actually have. And doubly so, the higher percentage of regs to fish you have in the pool in the first place -- this becomes grossly magnified at a 75/25 split. That's why everyone says the Euro sites are super soft despite the lot of them combined not having 25% of the advertising dollars that Stars has.

Essentially, Stars' games are getting tough. Really tough. And from the looks of the small and midstakes lobby, full ring is dying too. Yeah yeah, people have been saying that for years. But it's become increasingly and obviously so when you have midstakes players dropping to smallstakes and smallstakes dropping to microstakes and it makes me a little bit sick having to deal with and think about proper 3bet polarized vs wide value ranges and appropriate 4bet range responses at 25NL and 50NL. We need a poker boom infusion. Soon.

My best alternative is Party Poker, but based on my current rake/month assuming I could come anywhere close with their software and traffic, I'd only be making 20% rakeback there. So as of now I remain a slave to the Stars VIP machine. I really really want to become one of those 6 tabling phenoms that doesn't care about rakeback and learns quick and moves up and logically it makes a ton of sense but there's just something in me that can not stand sitting there waiting for people taking 3 seconds to decide call or fold preflop and I inevitably go back to mass tabling.

So it's a choice between whether poker should be a passion or a means to an end...

[to be continued]

Point Form Ramblings. Check.

POKER

• Started upswinging again after my last rant.
• Trying to stay calm.
• Remember to valuebet.
• 2.5x multiplier sucks. I can see why recreational players that are smart irl but are just bad at poker think this is a bad deal when they're capable of shopping around.
• 4 days ahead of pace to get Supernova back by end of the year.

HOCKEY

• Jets get blown out in home opener. 5-1. Ewww.
• First goal against them within 3 minutes.
• Byfuglien needs to step it up. Or fight someone.
• Fantasy hockey league HUD-matrix = Great Success!
• 102 points out of a max possible 120 so far. 2nd place has 77 points. Easy Game.
• 2% of the season is complete so my sample size is obviously large enough.

POLITICS

• Updated the straw poll results chart again.
• Herman Cain is scooping polls left and right and is now 1st Tier right behind or tied with Ron Paul imo.
• Front-runner Rick Perry has a total of 6 Top 3 finishes to tie Gingrich's 6 and has yet to win a straw poll.
• Front-runner Perry has been relegated to 2nd Tier with Bachman and Huckabee.
• Front-runner Perry is somehow still regarded as Front-runner Perry.
• Ron Paul remains 1st Tier with little change to his numbers other than winning yet another poll for a leading 8.

Standard GOP Skype Group Session:
Paul: Well, the Federal Reserve...
Gingrich: You're alllll nuts...
Palin: Wait for it... WAIT FOR IT...
Bachman: : menacing stare :
Perry: Hey guys watch this: [quote] CNN: Front-runner Perry | click | FOX: Front-runner Perry | click | CBS: Front-runner Perry [/quote] Neat trick huh?
Romney: attentionwhore.jpg
Paul: and the IRS... nation building... bail outs and moral hazard...
Gingrich: I'm surrounded by morons...
Palin: WAIT FOR IT!
Romney: : rolleyes :
Perry: Ok Ok I'll tell you how it's done, see if I change my first name to "Front-runner... "
Palin: Just kidding!
Paul: : tap : : tap: Is this thing on?





BOOK

I've also been reading Mark Steyn's After America. Amazingly good book and to paraphrase one of the Amazon reviews: Mark Steyn is incapable of writing a dull sentence. Concise, witty breakdown of the breakdown in society, economics and politics.

Some gems:

As Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado fumed to a room of voters in 2010, "We have managed to acquire $13 trillion of debt on our balance sheet. In my view, we have nothing to show for it."

If something cannot go on forever, it will stop. - Herbert Stein.

If you're careening along a road toward a collapsed bridge, you'll certainly stop, one way or the other. But it makes a difference, at least to you, whether you skid to a halt four yards before the cliff edge or whether you come to rest at the bottom of the ravine.

According to CBO projections, by 2055 interest payments on the debt will exceed federal revenues. But I don't think we'll need to worry about a "Government of the United States" at that stage. By 1788, Louis XVI's government in France was spending a mere 60 percent of revenues on debt service, and we know how that worked out for the House of Bourbon shortly thereafter... So take your eye off the far prospect, and instead look about fourteen inches in front of your toecap. Within a decade, the United States will be spending more of the federal budget on its interest payments than on it's military... by 2020 the government will be paying between 15 and 20 percent of it's revenues in debt interest. Whereas defense spending will be down to between 14 and 16 percent. Just to clarify: we're not talking about paying down the federal debt, just keeping up with the annual interest charges on it... The superpower will have evolved from a nation of aircraft carriers to a nation of debt carriers... If that trajectory holds, we'll be spending more than the planet's entire military budget on debt interest [by 2050].

We've spent too much of tomorrow today - to the point where we've run out of tomorrow.

There's nothing virtuous about "caring" "compassionate" "progressives" demonstrating how caring and compassionate and progressive they are by spending money yet to be earned by generations yet to be born... It's not just about balancing the books, but balancing the most basic impulses of society. These are structural and, ultimately, moral questions. Credit depends on trust, and trust pre-supposes responsibility. So, if you have a credit boom in an age that has all but abolished personal responsibility, it's not hard to figure how it's going to end.

China is dangerous not because of its strength but because of its weakness... the People's Republic has a crude structural flaw: thanks to its disastrous one-child policy, it will get old before it gets rich... That's actually worse news than if China was cruising to uncontested global hegemony - because it means that Beijing's calculations on how the Sino-American relationship evolves are even less likely to align with ours. China has to maximize its power before demographic decay sets in. In other words, it has strong incentives to be bold and to push, hard and fast.

Industrial power [which Steyn compares to today's government power] should be decentralized. It should be scattered into many hands so that the fortunes of the people will not be dependent on the whim or caprice, the political prejudices, the emotional stability of a few self-appointed men. The fact that they are not vicious men but respectable and social minded is irrelevant. - Justice Marshall, 1948.

In Europe, there are no kids or grandkids to screw over. In the end the entitlement state disincentives everything from wealth creation to self-reliance to the survival instinct, as represented by the fertility rate. If the problem with socialism, as Mrs. Thatcher famously said, "is that eventually you run out of other people's money," the problem with Greece and much of Europe is that they've advanced to the next stage: they've run out of other people, period.

Steyn goes on to detail a lot of issues in society and how they affect the economy. One that really struck me as profound was the technology issue. If you took someone from 1890 and transported him to 1950, he would be blown away by the advances of the past 60 years. Leaps and bounds in the fields of transportation, medicine and communication. Transport him another 60 years in the future to 2011 and he's rather underwhelmed by how little has changed. Everything is slightly faster and the toys are a little more shiny but, aside from the advent of the Internet, that's it. We haven't cured anything despite the plethora of cure  _____ support bracelets. We haven't solved any energy dependencies. We're still using the same basic TV, radio and phone technologies. Where's my jet pack I was promised in the 80s?

He's a little on the liberal-bashing bias side of things but to be fair he gives it to the conservatives too since they haven't done anything to fix it when they've had the chance and he states quite frankly that government grows and grows regardless of who's in charge. If you're looking for a good read regarding today's economic and social issues this is definitely one you want to pick up.

At a loss for words...

In true blogger fashion, I'm going to write a post in stark contrast to my last. A flip-flop as they would say.

I was feeling the best about my game that I ever have as of last week. I still am, theoretically speaking, although numb would be more appropriate right now. In the time since then I have gone through yet another cruel stretch of attempting to navigate the random 2 pair / backdoor gutshot mine field and failed miserably.

• Preflop: find a target.
• Flop: aim.
• Turn go (all)-in for the kill.
• River: KABOOM!

The resulting carnage:

I'm really starting to question exactly how much of this game is luck and how much is skill and if anyone actually has any idea what their "longterm winrate" is or has even glimpsed the long term itself. I thought I had after my first 1.5 million hands. How wrong I was.

I am fairly confident that you can at least breakeven at a fairly high level if you're not a retard simply because there are so many complete retards playing still, and yeah games are getting stupidly difficult due to the dirt cheap dissemination of training videos and ebooks that should be running at $200+/month and $1k+ per book based on the value of the info (nevermind them being disseminated at no cost in some way or another over the internet), but  you should be able to theoretically make some money if you use half your brain. Thankfully this proves I'm at least not a retard.

But when you pit all of the theory that you have learned from forums, training videos, studying, coaching and high priced e-books against the amount of variance which is apparently possible over a million hands, it is starting to look to me like skill doesn't stand a chance.

You are at the mercy of the RNG.

Now I don't mean to say that online poker is rigged. My analytical 2+2 brainwashing has taught me that is a blasphemous statement unless we're being Cereus. But I think most people that have not been in a position to experience the extremes of the variance bell curve do not have a clue as to what is actually possible. Perhaps I'm just a ridiculously unlucky outlier in the grand scheme of things, but how do any of the top winners playing midstakes or higher after 500k lifetime hands know that they're actually winners and not just on a relatively short term massive heater -- ridiculously lucky outliers?

I know there's a ton of other variance not accounted for in AIEV such as hand stetups and coolers and the amount of the time you hit or dodge draws before getting all-in and how many sets you don't bink on the turn. But I still think AIEV is a fairly significant measure over very large sample sizes and it's certainly better than nothing.

I've used several different coping mechanisms over the past year+ to deal with this, the three most prominent being:

• My entire poker 'carreer' has been one massive freeroll off other peoples' money.
• I'm playing "correctly" enough to theoretically win Sklansky$.
• They say I'm going to wake up one day and this bad run will all be over (tick... day 428).

Those reasons are beginning to sound like some fairly weak sauce compared to the shitload of work I've put into improving. I don't really know where I'm going to go from here. I'm still putting in the volume and am going to try to grind out Supernova one more time by the end of December (barring ending up busto). Out of the three years that I will have made it, this has been by far the most difficult, including my first time which ended with me 24 tabling 100NL right through December to the 31st.

But if my stupid luck doesn't start to improve to somewhere near average over the next 250k hands, I think I'm going to say gg next year. I don't need the headaches and energy strain of putting in hours of study and analysis only to be led down the high stress path of demoralizing 80/20 loss one after another.

The Great Divergence

I've read a few other blogs from some well known players who have gone through 400k+ hand breakeven / downswings and have gone on to do very well once they snap out of it. That is my motivation right now. If it doesn't work out, I'm not going to sweat it.

This was a fairly long post so I guess I wasn't really out of words... more like almost out of rope.

Poker Update | Straw Polls Update

US GOP POLITICS

I've continued updating and tabulating the data provided for the 2012 Republican presidential primaries straw polls. One interesting note in the Wikipedia entry for the CNN Tea Party Debate:

"A straw poll was held at the September 12 Republican debate, to find out who the debate audience thought were the front runners, both before and after the debate. Before the debate, Ron Paul came first, Rick Perry came second, and Michele Bachmann came third. After the debate, Ron Paul was still first, Michele Bachmann came second, and Herman Cain came third^. CNN have not released the full results of this poll, instead holding an online poll which omitted Ron Paul from the choices^."

 Without counting that win, Ron Paul has won 4 consecutive straw polls (one of them being a first place tie) dating back to mid August, crushing the field in 2 of those and  only having Perry for competition in the latest California poll yesterday.

Now that there have been 17 polls, I added a Win statistic to the list alongside Top 3 Finishes. I split wins as 0.5 each for polls that were basically tied such as Georgia 04/16 and Georgia 08/27. The breakdown for top three frontrunners as of today:

Average vote %
Paul 20.7%
Perry 14.4%
Romney 14.4%

Top 3 Finishes
Paul 10
Romney 8
Cain 6

Wins
Paul 7
Cain 3
Romney 2

This chart has grown substantially since I last posted and it will update as I make changes, but I thought I'd post it again for convenience. 1st, 2nd and 3rd Tiers are based on my opinions of the overall results of the three statistics I posted above and can be found at the far right side. Scroll down for graphical representations of the data.





POKER

I think I posted a while ago that I was rebuilding my BR from basically nothing ($100 playing 5NL). It's been pretty rough at some points and I have really felt like just giving up some weeks. But my game seems to have restabilized after some extensive changes I made to my overall game strategy so I'm really hoping this lasts. I think I've pulled back ahead of the curve with a lot of study and out of the box thinking. Specifically thinking about what certain tendencies and actions really mean vs what seems standard.

I haven't really talked to any poker people or frequented the strategy forums of 2p2 lately. I just needed to get away from the way that those HH threads go down with all the "standard" vacuum answers. I'm kind of feeling like if you're trying to move beyond figuring out what standard is (and after a few million hands, you have seen everything standard), threads that disregard history and detailed table dynamics are rather counterproductive.

I've built back up to my usual 50NL bankroll and have been playing a mix of 25NL and 50NL full ring. I lost my Supernova status last month but I'm fairly confident I'll get it back by the end of the year now that I'm moving up again and have a lot of motivation to put in volume. Granted I have a relatively small sample of 30k hands where my thought process is firing on all cylinders and villain lines and actions are really making sense to me so this could still all go down in flames, but I'm more optimistic about my game right now than I have been in probably a year or more.

Stars: Run It Twice

No Stars does not have run it twice despite that sub-title. From what I understand they have been avoiding it because they don't want to have to charge extra rake for the extra time it takes to deal out the hand. I think the following would be a good option. I posted the following in the Official Software Improvement Thread in the zoo earlier this week:

This is how you add Run It Twice without requiring any extra time to deal the hand out and therefore not needing to add any extra rake.

• It doesn't affect Stars' profits based on rake/hand per hour/table
• It doesn't affect the hands/hour of players not involved.
• It evens out variance for people that agree they want to even out variance.

• Add the following: "Options > Run it Twice > All | Preflop | Flop | Turn"
• If all-in players preset settings match, the rest of the hand is dealt twice.
• Player A = Flop+Turn, Player B = Turn only, if all-in on flop, run once, if all-in on turn, run twice.
• When the hand is going to be run twice, split the pot and move it as indicated during the time between the closing action on that street and the next card being dealt.
• Ideally what you want is moving chips and dealing cards respectively in unison so that it's exactly the same amount of time as running it once.

Ignore stack sizes here ldo, illustration purposes:

From a grinder's perspective I would hope they implement this. On the other hand fish that get their money in consistently bad before the river and choose to run it twice would lose money significantly faster since they are shortening the long run.

Temporary Switch?

Jumping from game to game was absolutely killing my bankroll. I was getting extremely impatient with cash games. I decided that maybe I need to take a bit of a break from cash and instead of being a reg-fish donator I'm using that money to freeroll my property taxes. I cashed out everything but $100 and decided to start back at the bottom. The following sequence then occured:

• I freed myself from slaving away for VPPs. Yes I'm going to lose a ton of money in rakeback, but positive winrate + freedom > rakeback + negative winrate + misery. This is supposed to be a game. Games are supposed to be fun amiright?
• I started playing 1c/2c to rebuild. This went well at first winning about 20 buyins in the first 4k hands, but the impatience started to set in again and I somehow managed to lose half of it back in the next 2k hands.
• I switched to PLO for 10k hands because high variance is what's needed to rebuild a BR quickly - there's another impatient word.
• I decided I needed to play something structured with a clear beginning, end and goal. I went alllll the way back to the beginning of my poker 'career' and starting playing some SNGs on Stars. $1.50 Turbo 9 mans to be exact.

I don't know how long I'll play these or how high I'll try to climb the SNG ladder but it's going really well so far. You'll notice the spreadsheet I've added in my next post with a link in the sidebar since I made myself online busto and can't afford a sharkscope widget or whatever other people do. I started out 8 tabling and switched to 10 about a quarter way through the 147 games I've played so far. ROI dropped very slightly although I'm not really sure how fast the variance in these things evens out.  My HEM results trending tab is pretty much a horizontal ITM line with ROI slowly climbing as I get better and get more 1sts.

I pretty much know nothing about SNG strategy other than that aggression is good and people are bubble nits so I'm going to start looking into that. Moshman's book has been sitting on my desk collecting dust for a number of years and is only 10% read and my CR sub is almost up so I'll quickly download and watch as much as possible. I also have no idea what the comparative skill levels are to cash. $1.50 = 2NL , $3.50 = 10NL, $7 = 25NL ? If anyone knows the answer to this please post a comment.

I'm not ruling out re-depositing a good chunk of my BR if I get into a more permanent zen state of mind, going back to cash, or getting Supernova again but I'm not at all worried if I don't do any of that. If it happens it happens.

Need some advice

I keep skipping from plan A to B to C and back with ever increasing frequency. Jumping from game to game and limit to limit. I'm starting to feel a bit of desperation which is very unsettling. Almost like someone flipped a switch a million hands ago and left me hanging there and doesn't appear to be coming back. Lifetime graph so you have an idea what I'm talking about:

I really don't intend for this to be a whine post at all. I'm honestly just pulling my hair out at this point and need to figure out what to do with this game. I still really want to enjoy poker, but running and playing like shit really sucks the enjoyment out of the game after an extended period of time.

My current situation:

• Full time job + Family
• Have roughly 60 hours per month for poker and diminishing
• Removed most of my BR since BF and it typically doesn't go back online
• I (like most people) think I'm a relatively smart person

What I've done:

• Read basically every mainstream book there is
• Read every strategy post on the forum
• Can probably give you at least the gist of if not a theoretical guideline of most concepts
• Don't have time to watch videos because if I get a chance to sit down at my computer, I want to play
• edit: 14 coaching sessions with 5 different coaches
• Knowledge does not translate into results
• Built a BR from $0 to playing 200NL and all the way back down to playing 25NL
• Played weak-tight 11/9 and LAG 19/17 and everything in between
• Played + and - redline postflop styles
• Mass tabled and 6 tabled

Ultimately where I want to be:

• I want to be that small stakes 200NL / 400NL guy that can just make low 5 figures per month after rakeback seem easy
• Essentially make 2-3x my salary so I can quit my job.

I just don't know how to go from my current situation to where I want to be because I'm sure those guys that make it seem easy put in a ton of hard work. And I just do not have the time to commit to a lot of hard work but surely a part time player that puts in a medium amount of work should be able to survive at 100NL.

I've been falling way behind the curve and it kind of seems like the explosion in free or near free poker information in the past couple years has brought everyone up to speed very quickly. But it must be true that everyone playing micros and small stakes is still terrible if there are people making money at mid and high stakes, so there's still a lot of value in this game even though the migration of players to lower stakes seems to be increasing.

Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated in the comment section or email.

LOL CAP games

Thought I might grind out a few quick VPPs in some CAP games on Stars. LOL:

2000 hands
Steal success: 52%
3bet success: 42%
Flop cbet success: 26%
Turn cbet success: 0%
W$SD: 36%
Profit: negative 23 "buyins"
EV: negative 4 "buyins"
Standard deviation: normal NL FR
23 hands AIPF: 0/4 when dominated, 0/6 when dominating, 0/7 flips, 1/3 when crushed, 1 chop and 2 losses AK vs AK
 ??????
How is this freaking possible?
DIAGF

Favourite Hand

Poker Stars $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players - View hand 1370313
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

UTG: $22.35
UTG+1: $7.05
UTG+2: $29.85
MP1: $22.95
Hero (MP2): $25.00
CO: $10.35
BTN: $10.00
SB: $12.20
BB: $10.00

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is MP2 with K 9
1 fold, UTG+1 calls $0.50, 2 folds, Hero raises to $1.50, 4 folds, UTG+1 calls $1

Flop: ($3.75) K 9 7 (2 players)
UTG+1 bets $5.55 all in, Hero calls $5.55

Turn: ($14.85) T (2 players - 1 is all in)

River: ($14.85) 8 (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $14.85
UTG+1 shows J 3 (a straight, Seven to Jack)
Hero shows K 9 (two pair, Kings and Nines)
UTG+1 wins $14.15
(Rake: $0.70)

Rigged.

That is all.

Golf TR.

I actually managed to get out to a golf course this morning for the first time in 2 years. I used to golf fairly regularly back towards my high school days, probably twice per week but life has kind of just filled up with other things since then. 5am felt pretty early as I had a ~2 hour drive to meet my group for a 7am tee-time  at their local course but it was a really nice morning at 23 degrees already.

They decide they want to degen it up and play $1 per hole skins with one mulligan allowed on each 9 holes which I obviously oblige to even though I haven't picked up a club the past few seasons. Keep in mind these guys are even bigger nits than I am and prefer to play $0.10/$0.20 with 25bb at our home games. =)

The first two get off some decent drives and I set up my tee fully expecting my ball to get a bit of air time by being driven downwards off the tee, bouncing up 10 feet in the air and making off for the weeds on the right. To my surprise, my ball decides to take off 225 yards straight down the middle and I win the first 3 holes in similar fashion, knocking down 8 foot puts while everyone else was 2-putting.

After that things kind of evened out and I my forearms started to ache a bit once they had a chance to rest during the breakfast break. The skins started to carry over a lot and I ended up with the best overall score but just didn't win the right holes and finished at +$7. I got destroyed on the island green par 4, first nailing a rock, bouncing off the bridge and back into the water and then overshooting the green where I was able to take a drop on the fringe, as well as on a monster par 6 that was a chore to get to in 7 considering I wasn't hitting my irons that far by the 17th.

They use a weird rule with respect to lost balls penalties: +1 for literally lost ball and +1 for the drop resulting in +1 if it's out of bounds and you pick it up and +2 if it's in the water and unretrievable. Sounded kind of silly to me, but it added a bit of strategy in that it seemed better to take two safe shots than one risky shot that would cost you on average 50% more than normal if you mess up. Final tally was 104 which they of course counted as 108 considering I "lost" four. Not terrible considering the circumstances although I think I could have shot 97 if my short game wasn't completely out of whack on the back 9 on at least 8 of those causing a lot of chip shots to get on. Definitely going to try to get out there a bit more this year.

Poker

Every time I've sat down the past few days I start loading tables from the lobby, get to about 8 and then say eff this I don't feel like playing and insta-close them before I post blinds. Not that I haven't been winning, but I just plain haven't felt like it and have instead headed over to the 6max hyper-turbo shove fests with mediocre results after running super hot at 49% ITM one day followed by 8% ITM the next to even out at 33%. I think these are defintely profitable although I don't much care for the change to the 10/20 start for 25bb rather than the old 25/50 10bb start. I think I understand shovebot strategy a lot better than the average person that plays these and just end up bleeding off a couple blinds sitting around waiting to implement it because by the time you have unknowns' 25bb stackoff range figured out along with the nuances of what a minraise means, you're down to a formulaic 10-15 bb anyways.

In one of my last posts I said I was going to withdraw and move down to 10NL 6max. My plan seems to change every time I write up a new blog post as I'm feeling kind of wrestless and impatient with poker at the moment. Almost immediately after I wrote that, I did withdraw but kept playing 25NL Full Ring after a couple of sessions of 6max. I'm just at that point again where I'm torn between making easy money and getting tired of the same thing over and over again without seeing large improvements although I feel like I'm playing extremely well right now. Waiting for the next boom I guess.

Taking a few steps back

It kind of seems like you have to be really fluid in your approach to this game and I'm going to be taking what feel like a few more steps backwards in my poker life.

I was a little late to the Full Tilt Poker license gongshow boat, not having read any other blogs or the zoo or listened to podcasts for the past couple of weeks until yesterday and I also only play on Stars. I'm sure you've all read about this ad nauseum so I'll just post some cliffs for those that have been under a rock somewhere like me. As far as I can tell from skimming forum threads it kind of looks like it went:

• $1 in FTP$ != $1 in USD since there's not enough to go around after the DOJ seizure and the $60M shortfall in what is essentially player credit due to inability to process transactions coming in pre-BF.
• Not paying back players sufficiently is a violation of their license.
• License suspended / revoked by Alderney Gambling Control.
• FTP is completely shut down worldwide in the middle of regular play with no warning. Can not connect at all.
• FTP claims "maintenance" and to this day still say they are "updating" on their website.
• Hearing date set for July 26th.
• European investors to the rescue!
• Ivey drops his lawsuit against Tiltware.

To their credit, the Isle of Man put out a statement saying that Stars has continued to show that they are in full compliance with their license. That said, I think I'm going to take a step back and play on a much smaller bankroll for the time being as I really can't afford to see that amount *poof* into nothing no matter how unlikely it is on Stars with a rather large property tax bill coming up. FTP has shown their incompetence over and over pre and post BF, while Stars has shown the complete opposite, but everything still feels chaotic with new sky is falling here and there messages every other week. Online poker has taken a beating and a number of steps back in the past few months. I don't want to be left holding a bag of monopoly money if another random bombshell drops despite having very high confidence in the integrity of Stars.

So for now I'm going to take a step back as well and withdraw most of my BR, drop down to 10NL, try to learn 6max in a more serious and focused way, and practice some more aggressive bankroll management than I have in the past. Hopefully I'll feel like I'm on more of a freeroll once I build it back up. I've become way too comfortable in the past just sticking it out at whatever level I feel best at and that has led to a lot of burnout and de-motivation to learn. Tentatively, I plan to start with $500 and move up at 30 buyins giving myself 10 buyin shots and whatever happens with my VIP level happens, although I would be shocked if I don't reach Supernova again by the end of the year.

June Review

June started off with a huge rollercoaster over my first 10k hands winning and subsequently losing back 15 buyins. I then started the slow climb at a respectable 6 bb/100 over the next 3 weeks with a nice even graph. I was pretty much in the hand reading zone for the longest stretch that I can remember.

Hand reading is more important than every other skill set combined.

June ended off with another rollercoaster via taking a shot and running really well only to lose it all back the next day. Allan Boston says don't play the day after a huge win. It's too much of a careless freeroll.

I didn't quite hit my goals for the month as a few life projects came up.

• 80k hands, 72 hours
• Did not even look at the M100 program yet
• Spent the past 2 days outside in 32 degree heat / 90% humidity staining my deck
• Finished up my wife's online store

I think I would have likely accomplished 100k hands if I didn't have the other projects to work on so I feel pretty good about how much volume I did put in. This turned into the 2nd best month I've had so far this year overall, and best month in table winnings if you disregard rakeback.

I'm at 60k VPP and will lose Supernova if I don't finish the other 40k up by the end of September. This is going to be really dependent on if I move up or not since my current stakes makes 10k VPPs in a month a bit of a stretch with my schedule. Moving up a stake would make 15k per month pretty easy. Even if I drop back to Platinum for a month or two, I'm only going to lose between $150 and $300 in VIP value so it's not that terrible.

Hand of the Year

And the winner is... today's Royal Flush!

Poker Stars $0.10/$0.25 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players - View hand 1344825
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

BB: $25.00
UTG: $25.60
UTG+1: $25.17
UTG+2: $27.59
MP1: $8.65
MP2: $11.10
CO: $18.34
Hero (BTN): $25.00
SB: $69.69

Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is BTN with T Q
UTG raises to $0.75, 5 folds, Hero calls $0.75 and is in before "Fold Pre", SB calls $0.65, BB calls $0.50

Flop: ($3.00) A 5 K (4 players)
SB bets $1, BB folds, UTG raises to $2.75, Hero calls $2.75 thinking "Wouldn't Jc be so sick?" SB calls $1.75

Turn: ($11.25) J !!! (3 players)
SB bets $5, UTG calls $5, Hero deceptively calls $5 (plus he has all the cards that let anyone continue vs a raise)

River: ($26.25) K (3 players)
SB bets $25, UTG calls $17.10 all in, Hero takes a screenshot while trying to figure out if he's misread his hand and calls $16.50 all in

Final Pot: $76.95
UTG shows A A (a full house, Aces full of Kings)
Hero shows T Q (a Royal Flush)
SB shows K J (a full house, Kings full of Jacks)
UTG wins $1.20
Hero wins $73.75
(Rake: $2.00)

I'd like to thank all my fans, my mom, and especially PokerStars RNG for such a sick set up!

Other than that poker has been going relatively well again. I continue to get smacked around to the tune of -100bb / 1k hands in EV at 50NL in the few sessions I've put in there but have been consistently beating 25NL and will probably stick to my plan of playing there for the rest of this month. I'm a bit behind on the number of hours I wanted to put in with only 38 so far - on pace for 100 hours would be 56 so that's about an hour per day that I've been slacking off. I've been fairly busy with a ton of yard work, hauling in crushed rock for finishing up my landscaping and seeding some new grass. But I am keeping up much better in terms of actual volume at 45k hands so I'm pretty happy with that.

For anyone who doesn't have this poker news site bookmarked yet, check out Subject: Poker headed up by NoahSD and crew. The updates are little sparse but their reasons for that are pretty solid and I like their approach to covering poker news.

June Goals

A few thoughts about what I want to accomplish in June. I haven't been one for goals lately because they either don't get accomplished and the realistic ones that I do set and accomplish don't really give me any satisfaction in getting them done. So I've kind of taken a whatever happens, happens approach for the last while.

But this month I want to set goals for a different reason. I want to keep myself on track instead of just slacking off. I seem to be somewhat obsessed with spreadsheets and wanting to fill them in with new data as often as possible. Nerd, I know.

So here's my June plan:

100 hours and/or 100k hands at 25NL. I get these confidence boosts at lower stakes and then jump up to deposit money into regs accounts at 50NL and 100NL and I end up with lower confidence than I started with. If I can stick to something I know I can crush for a extended period of time, I'm going to be happy.

Try the M100 workout I've seen on a few other blogs. Apparently it's impossible.

Continue to lose weight. I'm only 5'11 and 5 months ago was a half pound short of 240 lbs. Contrast that to the healthy 175 lbs I was with daily high school basketball and soccer practices but this is what happens when you keep the eating routine and drop the exercise. Today I'm feeling much better and have a ton more energy at 209 lbs. I seem to get into these weird cliffs and plateaus where I'll lose 4 lbs in a week and then stay there for 2-3 weeks before the next big drop. I haven't exercised at all over that time period besides a 3 mile walk we've started doing with the kids every other night. I've cut fast food from 4 meals a week to 1.5 meals a week and eat chicken nearly every day. I also basically replaced my entire pop consumption (which was at least 1 can every 2 days) with Crystal Light singles packs and Tetley instant ice tea packs.

I've already got the poker spreadsheet going for the year so I'll have to make one up for the exercise thing if I decide the M100 program is for me.

Thoughts on 18% W$SD

I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to stop this cycle. I get on these really decent runs where I play awesome and feel confident and motivated and hands hold up for a couple of weeks as I steadily grind up a good nanonoko-style-graph profit thinking I've finally gotten out of this shit hole of the longest breakeven stretch ever.

Then I hit the odd day here and there every couple of weeks where I play a session or two and the RNG decides it wants to skydive off my graph at 15% to 30% W$SD with normal W$WSF and WtSD for 2k or 3k hands. I  feel like a massive underdog every hand unless I have 80%+ equity when all-in -- past 80% I assume I am ahead which is worth a little prayer to hold -- and completely destroy 2/3 of my monthly profits in a very short time frame. This results in me feeling dejected and unmotivated to play at all for at least the next week and is the main reason for my laughable volume over the past year.

I know that I could try to avoid playing when things are going this terrible but it's kind of hard to catch in a couple of thousand hands which is literally a few hours when you can brush off the first few coolers and suckouts and say "ok you're playing fine, nh" only to be smacked a few more times in a row before realizing it's going to be one of those -8 buyin sessions.

I'm just spinning my wheels in a rut trying to gain some momentum only to slide right back down every time.
Definition of insanity...

Example from today. I just start to feel like there's zero chance river is ever a brick here when I get into these shitty high variance spots during these sessions.

My thought process goes something like this:
I'm ahead of his stack off range. Quick estimation is 60-75%.
Drag the slider all-in.
FML here goes another buyin but it's the "correct" play.
Just fold just fold just fold just fold.
Click. Shove.
Villain snapcalls. Bink. Sometimes the nice ones at least say "ty."
Story of my life.

Poker Stars $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players - View hand 1315999
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

CO: $17.25
Hero (BTN): $50.00
SB: $48.75
BB: $25.00
UTG: $71.70
UTG+1: $25.10
UTG+2: $75.10
MP1: $50.30
MP2: $23.50

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is BTN with Q K
1 fold, UTG+1 raises to $1.50, 1 fold, MP1 calls $1.50, 2 folds, Hero calls $1.50, SB calls $1.25, BB calls $1

Flop: ($7.50) K J 7 (5 players)
SB checks, BB checks, UTG+1 checks, MP1 bets $5, Hero calls $5, SB folds, BB folds, UTG+1 folds

Turn: ($17.50) Q (2 players)
MP1 bets $10, Hero raises to $43.50 all in, MP1 calls $33.50

River: ($104.50) 9 (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $104.50
Hero shows Q K (two pair, Kings and Queens)
MP1 shows T 8 (a straight, Nine to King)
MP1 wins $101.50
(Rake: $3.00)

/whine

Recalibrated

I think I've decided what I want to do poker-wise for the rest of this year now that everything has pretty much shaken out.

The Plan
8 - 12 table 6 max cash
Focus on learning
Forget about VPPs goals
Take maney

I've changed my vpp goal progress bar to 100k to essentially forget about grinding out a larger number. I'm certain I'll earn more than that at this point since I'm going to be winning at 50NL+ and should play about another half million hands this year. This will result in about another 100k vpp from today forward. But I'm not going to kill myself trying to get the 200k milestone while breaking even mass tabling and if I don't feel like playing I'm just going to take a day off. If I move up and earn more vpp/hand and make it there then I will consider it a true bonus and good for me. Breaking even for another 8 months to earn a milestone is kind of a non-bonus and more of a stress inducing lifeline imo.

I've done the mass tabling micro stakes for marginal winrates thing long enough. It's time to become good at this game and put some real effort into it again. I've fallen way behind the curve, or at least everyone's started to pass me. I'm going to make some smart investments in my poker knowledge and have already re-sub'd my training site accounts and I'm watching videos like a mad man which I haven't done in well over a year. It's amazing how much the confidence and anti-tilt zen come roaring back when you actively focus even though I don't have any real results to show for it yet.

I'm already in the process of creating my own Poker Bible (ty King Spew for this wonderful idea) based on info I glean from those videos and insightful forum posts. Right now I'm basically taking 3-5 pages of notes on a video, similar to how I would take notes in a uni lecture breaking everything down. I then have a video summary page where I list point form the two or three things I learned and can try to implement. Once I start to build up a decent repository of video summaries I'm going to take those point form ideas and throw them into my Final Poker Bible classified by skill set and topic. Need to work on my blind stealing? Chapter 3. Need to work on when to barrel? Chapter 7. All backed up with references and links to where I got the info.

This will create my growing overall game strategy base. Two benefits to this. I have a default to go back to if I start getting off my game, like a system restore. Secondly, I can see how and when certain changes were made and hopefully can roll them back if they're not working out.

In a way this whole Black Friday thing has been good for me personally. I don't think I would have changed what I'm doing if I hadn't safety cashed out 1/2 of my BR and forced myself to rebuild. I've thought about joining a discussion group but I just don't think I have the time to make that work in addition to my poker hours, plus I find Skype and AIM really distracting while playing. I'm starting to gain a real appreciation for the work ethic and discipline the big winners must have and I think I'm finally going to do this right.

Confirmed: Saturdays Are Rigged

I don't know what it is about Saturdays but the RNG seems to get replaced by the unavoidable minefield that blows up in my face again before I get a chance to catch my breath from the last one. It's like I'm just sweating every hand I shove turn with a set on a 2 tone board and praying to dodge the 4:1 which everyone else apparently knows is coming when they're getting 1.7:1 on a call.

I mean, something is seriously effed up when I flop sets with 20% of my pocket pairs and still manage to finish the day in the negative. Maybe I should be raising to all-in minus 2bb or something to find a way around the doom button.

Still positive for the month and feeling awesome about my play but it just makes me want to puke when I put in 50k hands by the 3rd week of the month and see a 1.6 bb/100 beside my 4.1 EVbb/100.

Things are looking up!

Games have remained relatively good since the changes on Stars. Weekends have been incredibly good. It's nice to see the 60/5's coming out of the woodwork again at 50NL and 100NL. I'm back to my 3 stake range of what I consider to be my home stakes: 25NL to 100NL. I thought I'd give a quick update on each for this post.

25NL has become extremely easy and very transparent.
Nits and TAGs play their hand straightforwardly typically in a weak-tight or obviously strong way.
LAGs and maniacs over-do everything and c/c down 3 streets with 2nd pair is most likely profitable.
Everyone's showdown value+ range is extremely inelastic so go ahead and exploit the shit out of your bet sizing depending on what you want to accomplish. Note that SDV is overrated by most of 25NL.

50NL is back to not being a huge nitfest.
Nits are still set mining nits.
Some TAGs are somewhat more floaty and better postflop but they pick the most obvious spots to apply the latest epic strategy concept post.
Ranges are generally inelastic early in the hand or when the pot is small. Tops of absolute strength ranges are inelastic. Mid and bottoms of ranges are extremely elastic in large pots and on later streets.

100NL is much more of a gradual step up in terms of skill level from 50NL for the first time in recent memory. This is encouraging in that perhaps some new money is being deposited there from the former 20-50 players and hopefully money is already starting to move up.
Plays very similar to 50NL with two caveats: More preflop aggression in the obvious light 3bet and squeeze spots and regs playing stickier postflop and most likely outleveling themselves a ton.

I'm still pretty wary of the effects of the rampant preflop aggression going on even though games have improved a ton since the changes. I'm all too aware that I'm most likely wrecking the enjoyability of the game for that 30/15 20% fold to 3bet guy when I value 3bet wide with KQs and he would rather just see cheap flops to quad mine J6o and c/c down postflop to see what's going to happen with his sooted hand. I imagine this game is much more enjoyable if you can do all that fun stuff without having to stack off constantly and busto your account in a relatively small number of hands. There has to be some $/hour or $/hand value involved here and if I were them I'd be fealing kind of ripped off and frustrated in terms of entertainment value if I'm a standard fish.

In some awesome life-news, I am going to get to play pretty much full time poker for 9 months total this year. Stars is looking good again so I'm going to be putting in 95% volume there with Rush on the backburner when I want to change it up.

I'm fairly confident now that the disaster that was 2010 was:
a) instigated by the Stars changes.
b) my unwillingness to leave terrible games.
c) mounting frustration leading to perma-tilt and steady rate of spew.
d) eventually realize that in the 2010 state of the game and my 2010 progressing state of mind, I could not win at small stakes.
e) lesson: it's kind of silly to get upset and then attack people by throwing fistfuls of cash at them.

I'm back to 2 winning months in a row now. Note that before June 2010 when the Stars lobby settled down into it's rut, I had never had a losing month pre-rakeback. Between June and the end of the year, I had 4 small losing months and 2 breakeven months post-rakeback.

Taking a Break - Adventures in e-Commerce

I hadn't even realized this but I've been taking a break from playing. There isn't much poker content here but if you want to read about a day in the life of a website installation noob this is for you. I didn't really intend to not play, but I've been working on getting my wife's online store up and running for the past few days and really haven't put any hands in. I do have a bit of Photoshop and HTML / CSS coding experience but I just don't see how anyone that's not charging an outrageous fee -- and by outrageous I mean completely reasonable considering the amount of work -- could be bothered to make a site from scratch with all the cheap templates out there and the infinite possibilities of php includes.

So they obviously pick a nice template that runs on the open source Prestashop engine. By the way, I have  zero experience when it comes to setting up e-commerce. The engine is still fairly buggy in my opinion and working in the back office is not at all intuitive nevermind the structure making me say "huh?" more than enough times and the fact that my template of course uses undocumented workarounds for things as simple as changing the logo. Thankfully it's as simple as jumping over to the template site's live chat and having them think I'm a moron to get this figured out. By the time I'm done, I'm fairly sure they are going to be running close to 0EV on selling me this.

My current project is shipping. Their "stable" version does not have product specific shipping. lolwut? Yeah the engine will pick shipping rates for you based on weight or price ranges. Oh but product specific pricing is in version 1.4 beta! Download beta --> update --> template implosion --> delete --> re-install --> try again --> implosion. Note that each step here takes a good 30 minutes due to FTP moving like 5k files. So what to do? Workaround! I figure I can set a "weight" as shipping price indicator rather than actual weight. 1 kg = $1, 2kg = $2, 3kg =$3. Easy game.

FTP... ranges... things that make you shake your head in disbelief... maybe there is some poker content in there. That said, I am thoroughly enjoying it and having an "a ha!" moment for every few hours of hair pulling frustration makes me happy.

Poker

I've been messing around with some shortstacker maths trying to get inside their heads. I know I know. Why would I ever want to get inside their heads. Well in case Stars does something crazy like not change the structure and I in turn do something crazy like stay there, I want to know what makes these guys tick.

It's become abundantly apparent to me that good shortstackers' shove ranges are extremely tight some of the time while having ATC some of the time. My goal is to figure out when is when based on opener's range, calling range, dead money and shorty's stack size. It's starting to make a lot of sense to me and while they all vehemently deny playing off a hand chart, I think for the most part you could easily play off of a situation chart. Granted there are more situations than most people would realize and something as simple as having 5bb more in your stack can cut your shove range in half or more for some of them.

"Update: Changes to ring game min/max buy-ins, if any, will be announced and implemented by the end of January."

That's the word from Pokerstars Steve. Here's how I see this situation:


If they are not making changes, I would think the logical thing to do would be to announce that there's no changes rather than leading us on and on. We've gone from (paraphrase) "We're taking our time making important decisions,"  to "Changes (if any) by the end of January." That sounds like a decision. Cycle back to the first sentence of this paragraph.

So now that the speculation train is full speed ahead there's a few possible outcomes based on the most important issues people brought up. I'm leaving out deep games since they hardly run anyways:

1. 40-100 games are dead
2. 20-50 is a rake machine
3. 40-50 overlap is bad
4. SSers playing CAP in an NL game



Scenario 1: 20-100 only
Fixes problems 1, 2 and 3... sort of
Now we're all the way back in 2000-something before the introduction of 50bb min games. Let the rathole complaints resume. Note that games do improve from their current state -- until the army of SSers that have been banished from applying  their edge against 100bb-wider ranges everywhere else around the world descends on Stars like a flock of red-winged blackbirds.

Scenario 2: 40-100 and 20-50 with lower 20-50 rake
Fixes problem 2
This would most likely be feasible and the same complaints would continue but I think a lot of smart full stack regs would adapt to the much more beatable 20-50 depending on exactly how much they lower rake. Expect 40-100 regs to start new complaint that their rake should be lowered as well, which only makes sense given that in both cases it's skill edge that's declining but for different reasons.

Scenario 3: 35-100 and CAP
Fixes problems 1, 2, 3, and 4
This would be ideal -- or some variant of 30+ min to 70+ max. CAP players playing CAP. NL players playing NL. And like I said in the 2011 VIP Changes thread, after the fish fall where they may and if CAP becomes popular when it's labeled as CAP then I will say goodbye Stars, gg SSers, NL is no longer the game of choice. But at least I will know that CAP is what the fish actually wanted to play and that they weren't being tricked into playing CAP when they thought they were playing NL and I was wrong all along.

Scenario 4: 20-50 and 40-100 No Change
Cycle back to my migraine.

Scenario 4: 20-50 and 40-100 and CAP
Further segmentation.

Fingers crossed.