Dirty Laundry

Bunch of things I've been meaning to get written down.

Soap residual

First, our three-year-old washer put a bad beat on us. Last week it started leaving soap in the load and we tracked it down to the drum not spinning up during the rinse. So, my wife and I figured it was a belt or something like that and had a guy from Sears come and look at it. Well, it turns out the washer lacks belts because it is direct drive (duh -- says it right on the control panel) and the guy charged us $115 to tell us we needed to buy a new washer. Apparently when one part of the main drive goes, the whole thing needs to be replaced for about $300 (we paid $400 for the thing). Or, to put it another way, our washer is totaled.

Now, I know this isn't that interesting, but I realized that the washer repair industry probably is in a state of decline. Essentially, washers used to cost a lot more vs. the cost of a repair guy's time and gas. Now, with washers cheaper but more complex, the repair guys have so much overhead it isn't worth fixing unless it is a minor problem or a very expensive washer. Oh well.

The first step to fixing a problem is admitting it...

A few days ago I dumped 16 BB at 2/4 on Eurobet. I was two-tabling for over two and a half hours and pretty much stuck the whole time. Now, normally this isn't a big deal (just normal variance) but in this case I know I played like crap and screwed a number of things up. What is amazing to me is, given the effort I've put into plugging my leaks, I still haven't fixed them. The old "what the hell was I thinking" right after I play a hand.

My solution is to periodically write out a 'cheat sheet' listing the leaks I am working on. I'm going to keep a copy near my computer so I can review it before I play (because usually I dump the most money and make the most mistakes right after I sit down).

So, here is my first cheat sheet:

1. If I think I'm beat, stop, compute odds, then decide whether I should call down.
   
2. Avoid playing pots out of position without a strong hand.
   
3. Stealing is not +EV in a loose game (most of the time).

Actually, maybe I'll add one more point which encompasses the more specific things above:

Preflop and flop mistakes are generally less costly than turn and river mistakes.

What I'm finding is that I'm a shade on the tight side pre-flop, but then I loosen up a lot once I've put money in. This encompasses being over aggressive and bluffing too much on later streets and calling down too much when I think I have the worst hand on the turn and river. I'm pretty sure this is common -- first you learn to tighten up, then you learn to be aggressive, then you learn when to be aggressive and when to let the hand go. Kind of a "I've waited this long to play a hand, so I'm going to play it damn it!" thing. Hand selection only gets you so far -- most of the money is won and lost on the turn and the river and that is where I will focus my effort.

Each of the specifics I put above are symptoms of the overall problem. I keep calling down and losing two big bets when someone raises me on the turn and I know I am beat. I keep getting stuck out of position with a marginal hand that I try to blow through people or call down hoping my hand is good. I attempt a steal, then try to make my non-existent hand a winner through aggression. The end result is I usually have an edge early in the hand, but put too many bets in when I've lost that edge late in the hand. Arguably, limit is most profitable the other way around -- where you are early matters less than your hand when most of the money goes in on later streets. I knew that principle for NL, but I'm realizing that it applies to limit too.

Honestly, I think I am too tight pre-flop. Ideally, I'd like to start loosening my hand selection, but I have to firm up my turn and river play before I can comfortably play more hands. Its funny, I'm just realizing how poor I am at limit play.

I still have a lot of limit to play to earn a bunch of bonuses, so it is worth really putting in the time and effort to fix my fundamental leaks.

Master of my domain, err... library.

HighOnPoker just made the best analogy:

"Blogs are like literary masturbation."

Blogs are mostly just to please the writer -- I'm the first to admit that. There's a reason I haven't worked to publicize this blog by posting on forums, shilling it in comments on other blogs, etc. This blog is mostly for myself, and I enjoy the writing of it. Part of me also wants others to read it, but I just haven't been able to bring myself to work at getting lots of readers.

I think there is just too much writing out there now that the electronic revolution allows everyone to publish, and most of it is just noise (this blog included). Poker, in particular, has had billions of words written about it. My friend Rob wrote a scathing article that really brings poker articles into focus. As harsh as he was, it is completely true -- most poker articles just rehash the same stuff. Ultimately, the stuff written here is really only important to me, since similar stuff is written billions of other places.

I've also been hesitant to get involved with the poker blogosphere in general -- honestly, reading blogs, commenting, chatting, and playing poker with bloggers takes a lot of time, and I've already been wasting too much time lately. In a sense, I've been laying low, seeing if anybody discovers this blog on their own (the short answer: no).

I still am undecided if I want to start spreading the word or not. While having readers and interaction with others is nice, I've been hearing about a lot of other bloggers shutting down temporarily or permanently, because the time commitment is too much. I definitely don't want to feel like writing is a chore, like so many other things in my life right now.

So, for now, I'm going to just keep doing what I'm doing... literary masturbation. Don't tell my wife!

PS My spellchecker informed me that masturbation has a 'u' in it, not an 'e' (HighOnPoker made the same mistake). Yet another example of people being able to do something they can't spell.

The joys of LHE...

In my last post I mentioned how well I was doing. Well, last night I erased a lot of those winnings with two hours of 6-max 1/2 on Stars while I was trying to burn off the bonus. I lost about $70, up from my low point of $-100, but it wasn't all due to the cards. Same old, same old...

I'm learning though. I caught myself doing a strange thing tonight (when I made $20 back and finished off the bonus):

10 player table, I'm UTG w/ KQs. Relatively tight table but not super tight (~30% VPIP). I come in for a raise like usual, and it folds to the SB who three-bets. BB gets out, and I call. Flop was Q72, nothing to my suit, and he leads out, I raise, and he three-bets. I call, and call his turn and river bet. I'm sure you know what he had: AA.

Notice that I played the hand 'aggressively' (you know, because that's how you play limit, tight and aggressive). Notably, raising first in narrows the field to help my KQ (an argument could be made for limping KQs in that situation) but that was my strategy. The flop raise clarified his hand (and mine). But... Pay attention to this... I played the hand in the way that lost the most money.

When I hit top pair, second kicker on a non-scary board, I have two tacts against someone who has represented a huge hand pre-flop:

1. Plan to go to the river because my hand is too big to fold and hope to hit one of my 5 outs if I am against the aces he's representing. This means call down unless my hand improves, including the flop, and only lose the minimum (2.5 BB). The disadvantage is, if I have him beat and he has Ax he could hit an ace along the way or draw out in another fashion. He wouldn't have many outs if I had him though, and it is also worth pointing out I might pick up some bets if he continued firing with a hand I beat like JJ or TT (those holdings are less likely in this situation though). An interesting thing to note is this is the approach many fish would take (loose-passive) -- and they would lose the minimum or win a big pot if they were up against AA and cracked it.
2. Raise the flop to clarify the hand and see if he three-bets (essentially ruling out AK). This is obviously what I did and my usual move when I want to get a better read. When he three-bets, calling the third bet is pretty much mandatory even though I now put him on AA (or possibly KK or AQ). The odds are definitely there to hit my 9:1 shot (12 small bets in the pot). But... If I don't improve on the turn, I no longer have odds to chase (7.5 BB in the pot), and I should fold to his bet. Plus, if I call the turn, I should call the river, and my reverse implied odds are pretty poor. If I fold on the turn, this will cost me one less BB than calling him down, but reduces the chance of catching him bluffing and I see one less card. In addition, it sets me up to extract more money if I do have him beat (and he three-bet preflop with AK, JJ, or TT).

Seems pretty obvious when laid out like that. So, then, why did I raise him on the flop yet still call him down, essentially putting in one more big bet? This hand, I believe, demonstrates why I've been losing money (or rather not earning a lot of money) at limit play. I am being aggressive which gets more money in the pot when I am ahead and clarifies hands, but then I'm not folding when information shows me I am beat. That, coupled with overplaying of small pairs and second or third pair, causes me to put a lot of money into the pot when I don't have the best hand.

[Edit] After we finished our movie last night I logged onto FCP last night to play some .25/.5 heads up. I promptly gave back all my winnings, losing $20 over about an hour. Essentially three guys sat down, took $6-8 from my stack, then left. The first two I think I could have won some money back if they hadn't hit and run -- the third guy had a good mix of bluffing, tightness, and mixing up his play that I'm not sure I can beat in the long run. Oh well.

One thing I've noticed in these heads-up matches is that I tend to get down about 10 BB early, but usually I can battle back and figure them out. Last night, I wasn't able to do that since they pulled hit and runs. Furthermore, the real question is why do I get down 10 BB almost everytime I play? I must be leaking or playing too loose or something.

Yay, more charts!

Bunch of poker odds and ends I want to talk about. I haven't updated lately because of holiday business (not to be a grinch, but I'm pretty sick of Christmas) and I decided to spend my free time watching the fifth season of the Sopranos and actually playing poker instead of writing about it.

First, why don't I start with the Artichoke Joe's tourney a week ago. Not really much to report -- I played quite tight, got very few premium hands, but won my critical short-stacked all-ins to make it to about 18th place out of 96ish. The blinds move up very fast in that tourney including some shocking jumps between levels where the ante tripled and the blinds doubled. Surprisingly, Wade, Thuan and I all made it to the final two tables but we busted out one after another in the high teens. With all the money was at the final table, we were pretty forlorn as we looked back at the tourney on our way out. Probably not a tourney I'll play a lot because there isn't a lot of play for the money you put in.

On the topic of tourneys, yesterday at noon FCP had a $30+3 tourney where the top 3 got seats into the 36 player qualifier to the protege contest final table. Wasn't really considering playing it until I saw that there were only 25 people signed up for it. After all, value of the package is $50Kish, value of the final table seat is $5Kish, value in the 36 player tourney is about $140, so it was like $500 was added to the tourney. So, I played, was pleasantly surprised at the relatively low quality of play, and managed to get 4th for a bankroll boost but no seat. Damn, I really wanted a seat. Maybe I'll try it again next week before it starts getting more popular. Making it to the final table of the Protege contest is a bit of a long shot anyway, but sometimes it is fun to try.

Its funny, but I was going through my PokerDominator stats today and I realized that I only played 5 tournaments over the past month! Seriously, that's only the AJs tourney, FCP yesterday, two Wednesday games, and one Stars $10+1. No wonder I'm starting to feel burned out on ring games. But online, the tourneys just don't burn off the bonuses, so I'm better off playing the ring games money wise. Although... my results have been pretty good in tournaments in the past few months, so maybe they would be a profitable thing to do. Since my kids (and wife) get up late over the break, maybe I'll enter one or two large tourneys this week and see if I can hit a decent sum of money. Along those lines, here is a chart of my tourney results over the past six months:


and my ring game results over the same period:

I've earned about the same amount in both tournament and ring play (with 204 hours in ring play vs 149 hours in tourney play) but there is a lot more variance in the tournament play. In fact, 75% of my profit came from that one good run (including the 180 player SnG). No wonder tourneys frustrate people. What's not shown is the bonuses I've earned -- I haven't tallied it up, but I'm sure I've cleared at least $500 in bonuses over the same period (edit: I've got $~520 recorded), meaning my poker playing has yielded about $2,000 over the last six months -- not too shabby...

As I mentioned, lately I've been a bit burned out on full-table ring games. Waiting around for good hands or draws makes you feel pretty powerless. Did I mention the waiting? So, I decided to try something new and I've been playing heads-up hold'em on FCP. The bonus (effectively 50% rakeback) makes it quite profitable and I've yet to have a losing session after four-five hours. Granted, I'm not making a lot and it is a small sample size, but I still feel like I'm pretty good at the game. I may take my 100 big bets at 0.5/1 and see how far I can go with it, moving up whenever I have 100 BB or more. Dangerous, yes, but worth the experience I expect. I've definitely learned a lot about focusing on beating a single opponent and exploiting weaknesses.

Problem is, I still have about $45 to clear at Stars and $190 to clear on Eurobet, and I just can't seem to motivate myself to two-table 1/2 or 2/4. Stars I may try to do the shorthanded limit since the double points thing is in effect until the end of the month and that should take care of it quickly. But Eurobet will be a grind, and the swings really hurt at 2/4. Honestly, most of it is mental -- I just have to convince myself to play.

I tend to have periods where I'm a bit, ahem, fragile. Basically, I'm more worried about protecting my earnings than increasing my hourly rate. Now, logically I know this is stupid and I should do what it takes to maximize my winnings while playing within my bankroll (generally, that would be two-tabling 2/4). But my recent plateau has felt a lot like a losing streak, and it has been nice to book some consecutive wins even if they aren't huge. Although... Sometimes I wonder if my earn rate is higher at short-handed tables even if I drop down a few levels.

And, on top of it all, I'm just getting a bit burned out. I probably ought to take a few days off and just play when and what I want to play. After all, if I'm not comfortable playing a game, that will definitely hurt my EV anyway. Once January hits I'll start grinding again to earn the family some bonus money.

Another fork...

I've decided to change my poker focus once again. To be honest, LHE has not been treating me very nice and it definitely isn't my best game. In fact, check out my earnings over the last month on the right. This represents 60 hours of poker, probably 40 of that being limit play. The variance sucks, and I think I'll have a much better earn rate at something else.

You know that big run I had on Thursday? Well, I gave it all back and was down $90 before I caught some cards and got $30 back. My cards weren't great and they definitely weren't holding up, but going back to the old post, I was still overplaying unpaired cards and small pairs, plus I had one case where I paid off a flush draw big time. I expect I could have avoided losing $30-$40 of the $60 that I dropped. Oh well.

So, I've decided to switch back to NL for a little while, primarily on Stars or possibly on FCP. The bonus earn rate is low (maybe $2/hr) but I have a much bigger edge at 6-max NL than two tables of limit. I'm not going to abandon limit -- I'll also start up a $200 bonus on Eurobet and two-table $2-$4 to clear it. That's about 20 hours of play, but it expires after 90 days so I can always do it in small chunks if I like. And, of course, if Party has another bonus, I can do limit or NL there to clear it within the week.

Wade, Thuan, and I are heading to Artichoke Joe's tomorrow night for the Sunday rebuy tournament -- unlimited rebuys, but I'm going play relatively tight and only allow myself one rebuy -- so my maximum buy-in should be $150. Yes, that's more than 10% of my bankroll, but I figure its a one-time thing until my bankroll gets larger. I'm really looking forward to it.

In preparation I played a 45 player $10+1 SNG on Stars and took 4th. I didn't suffer any bad beats or cold decks until we were in the money, so I'll be the first to say I was pretty lucky. Probably the hand of the tourney (other than flopping a set and doubling up early after his straight and flush draw bricked out) was with 7 players left right after we got in the money. I had about 2400 after posting the 800 big blind. Button doubled the big blind, and I pushed with 23 of diamonds. My thinking at the time was the huge pot odds (~1600 from blinds and antes + his 2400 = a little less than 2:1) I was getting, and I knew my short stack would get no respect for an all-in raise later. Well, the flop gave me a gutshot straight flush draw, and the turn gave me a straight leaving him drawing dead with A9o. I think he was a little suprised, but I believe I made the right move. Actually, in hindsight, I was probably about even with odds vs pot odds if he didn't have a pair, but the value from almost tripling up was worth it. After that, I didn't get too many hands but stole enough to get fourth when my A5s on the button ran into pocket rockets in the small blind.

It was definitely nice to get back to NLHE and tournaments. It was also nice to have an easy tournament with no bad beats knocking me out :) After tomorrow night I might take a few days off (or play triple-draw or something) and get back to NLHE next week -- I'm actually kinda excited!