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.

Burn Your Calendars! (plz)

So May is just about over (cry). That's too bad since this has turned out to be by far the best month of poker I have ever had. I got off to a rediculously good start running about 5 to 6 ptBB/100 at 50NL and 100NL over the first 40k hands. I really have to credit the Coaching Tree videos from BalugaWhale on DC (ty Greg for telling me to watch that series!!!1!) along with some coaching and all the hand history discussion I've done with people lately for the massive increase in winrate.

At some point I was starting to wonder if this was just the biggest heater ever or if I was really playing that well, but after going through my database and analyzing a lot of stuff I have to say that I played way better than I have in the past.

Then I went and messed it up for the next 20k hands. I took my crazy LAGtard image and pushed it to the edge of what I thought I was capable of. In the process I learned a ton about postflop play, equity and aggression, but I stayed at about +/- $300 for a week straight which was a little draining and made it tough to put in the hours. I did run quite bad (5% flopped sets and 42% W$SD) but I'm happy to breakeven during those stretches. I'm convinced I am on permanent donk/buddy lists and regs pay me off nicely now.

I decided to tone it down just a bit again and got back on track yesterday. Today just put me over the top again with an hour long session resulting in +5 buyins. Yay!

So if I add up profits + rakeback x exchange rate, I'm looking at more than 2x what I made at my fulltime job this month and I've still got tonight and tomorrow to go. This obviously makes me a very happy poker player! This came in very handy while I'm finishing up my house. Fences are wicked expensive. This is why you all need to burn your calendars and make it May forever :)

I'm pretty stoked to say that I did not fire up a single 25NL table this month and put in 30% of my volume at 100NL and also put in a tiny bit of 200NL which I run insanely good at (16 ptBB/100 over 1000 hands lol). The plan is to up that 100NL volume and start to play a bit more 200NL by the end of next month or so. I really think I'm going to enjoy 200NL - from what I can see there's an attempt at metagame, people are always in 4bet/fold or squeeze mode and just like 100NL, the only thing that changes is preflop gets harder. Postflop is still the same 25NL game with varrying degrees of stackability at different stakes ime.

I need some suggestions for what to watch next on Deuces Cracked. I'm obviously playing fullring but I have no issues with watching 6max videos. I absolutely loved the stop the video and discuss theory format that Andrew used in Coaching Tree so anything similar would be perfect. I haven't watched anything else there except for some Pr1nnyraiding but I'm not that interested in head-up right now.

<3 this game...

... both poker and the game posted below. I've put in 40 hours already this month which is great and I'm gradually moving into more 100NL when the games are good and beating 50NL for 5ptBB/100 vs all the morning regs when they're not so I'm super happy with everything right now.

I'm really hoping that I can put in more volume and at higher stakes. I would love to get to 200k VPPs for a milestone so that's something to work for.

This game is so addicting, I've probably played through it 4-5 times in the past few days while taking a break:

Update and biggest pot ever!

Thought I'd post an update seeing as how I don't get around to posting that much anymore. I've been watching a lot of videos lately on DC. Most notably the Coaching Tree videos with BalugaWhale and his team. Incredibly awesome stuff!

I try to watch one every day or so and have noticed myself progressively playing a lot more spots comfortably. It kind of feels like everything is starting to click. When I previously tried to loosen up my game, I think I went about it the wrong way. I was basically just trying to play more hands. That's going to result in disaster (or at least no improvement in winrate).

But now, I'm finding I'm playing all sorts of hands without even realizing that I'm running super loose until I check my HEM stats after a session. I think that tells me that I'm doing it right now.

It's not a matter of playing more hands for the sake of playing more hands. It's a matter of seeing more and more profitable spots and pushing my skill edge in those spots. I totally understand the framework behind what's going on when I see high stakes players on edited poker TV shows or at the online nosebleeds pushing garbage around in what looks like donk-on-donk violence sessions.

I'm also starting to make the move up to 100NL permanent. I've put in about 30-40% of my volume there this month with fantastic results along with a lot of hours at 50NL grinding out buyins, experimenting and really focussing on improving my game. I like to use a 3 stake system where I can play low if I am not on my A game but want a poker fix, play my A game and grind in my "home" level, and take shots at the next.

So far this has been 25NL/50NL/100NL for the past few months for me. I've started to put in a little bit of time at 200NL although hardly anything yet as I'm trying to make 100NL home and 50NL the low end. I have not opened a single 25NL table this month.

Also really liking the HEM Scanner. I kind of sucked at table selection prior to this but apparently I have a good scoring system since the tables with the highest scores usually have a monster waiting list. I'm not sure if I'm going to just buy the client side for a one time payment or pick the subscription for server side. Server side is so much faster and a lot of fish are long gone by the time it's finished scanning in client side.

Anyways, BIGGEST HAND EVER in my life happened this week:

UTG+1 is 8/6. MP2 is a squeeze-happy supernova elite.

I had a mini-heart attack on the turn.

Poker Stars $1/$2 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players - View hand 119198
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (MP1): $203.00
MP2: $200.00
CO: $216.20
BTN: $336.00
SB: $214.50
BB: $41.80
UTG: $59.15
UTG+1: $200.00
UTG+2: $200.00

Pre Flop: ($3.00) Hero is MP1 with K K
1 fold, UTG+1 raises to $6, 1 fold, Hero calls $6, MP2 raises to $24, 4 folds, UTG+1 calls $18, Hero raises to $72, 1 fold, UTG+1 raises to $200 all in, Hero calls $128

Flop: ($427.00) K 4 4 (2 players - 1 is all in)

Turn: ($427.00) A (2 players - 1 is all in)

River: ($427.00) 5 (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $427.00
Hero shows K K (a full house, Kings full of Fours)
UTG+1 shows Q Q (two pair, Queens and Fours)
Hero wins $424.00
(Rake: $3.00)

Retooling Your HUD

I read a great poohbah post by RapidEvolution the other day about loosening up your game. It made me think about what I've done since loosening up my game and the big thing that stood out for me was that I failed to effectively use my HUD. I was using it as a crutch and looking at useless stats at the same time - a disaster for decision making.

So I thought about this for a few days and decided to go through all the stats available and think "how would this stat help me?" "What situations do I find myself in a lot and which stats do I need to help me in those spots?" Some stats are going to be more important than others for you depending on your style.

And then I did something I should have done long ago that I didn't. I put in minimum number of samples for the stat to be displayed. Without doing this you are essentially using a faulty crutch. Displaying fold to cbet when you have 100 hands on someone doesn't really tell you much. How many cbets has he faced? 2 or 3 if he's a nit for 0%, 33%, 50%, 67%, or 100%? That's a pretty big range that tells you nothing so just put it out of site and out of mind. On the other hand, you might have a LAG that has a decent sample to go off of much sooner than the nit and you need to clarify when a stat becomes suitable for use.

The resulting HUD looked somewhat bleak at first glance - it was more than 1/2 empty for most players. Some players that I have more than 2k hands on still only have 3/4 of their stats displayed. But after thinking about it, this is going to improve my game tremendously. It is going to stop me from making decisions based on stats that are not accurate, plus it is going to force me to do my own hand reading and pay more attention to the line they are taking.

Stats should take a big back seat to reads, lines and hand reading to begin with. Using a faulty HUD is a recipe for disaster, so figure out what you need out of it and when you can start using it.

ez game

raise > fold > call

except where fold > raise > call

however in some cases call > raise > fold

but definitely sometimes fold > call > raise

it depends