Mirage

The past two days have been hell, in regard to poker at least. I’ve actually managed to take it somewhat in stride as things are otherwise pretty good in my life at the moment, so that’s the silver lining. I am down in the neighborhood of 19 buy-ins in the last 2 days, 10.5 coming on Monday, 8.5 on Tuesday. Monday evening I pretty much lost my mind and was playing badly, but that tilt probably only accounts for about 3 buy-ins. According to PokerEV, Monday I ran 7.5 buy-in’s below equity on Full Tilt alone, and I had some gross hands on Cake that probably account for another buy-in. Most of the tilt involved combating persistent 3-bettors with 4-bet all-in bluffs that nearly always ran into QQ+. More of my tilt involved spewing at in opportune times as opposed to making bad calls and such. I’ve been coolered with overpairs and TPTK so many times it’s entirely expected now. However, I was feeling better by yesterday, eager to play again just to prove to myself that I was still sane. Three more buy-ins below equity, overpairs running into sets, missing all draws, light reraisers always showing down the goods against me in reraised pots; it was a continuation of the same nightmare from the day before and I just never woke up. It didn’t wind up affecting my play, but I forced myself to stop because I didn’t want to snap.

So, here I am today, in a similar situation as I was in yesterday. I want to play! I can’t decide if I should or will. I honestly feel like I can play well and be as profitable as ever right at this very second. Also, I don’t want to give up on making Iron level Ironman when this is the best start I’ve had towards that end for months. I think I’ll put a tight stop-loss on and go for it; I have no illusions of making of what I’ve lost in any big hurry, I just want to get the ball rolling in the right direction again.

Truth be told, things went pretty lukewarm with the 6-tabling, and I was trying to get that to pan out. I couldn’t put my finger on why my winrate was dwindling so much; it was very frustrating. I guess I just wasn’t as focused or wasn’t table selecting as much. But finally, after a horrible Thursday last week, I watched a bunch of videos and tweaked my game quite a bit. The main tangible differences are ratcheting up my postflop aggression, value betting thinner, throwing in more double/triple barrels and bluffs, opening up my reraising range. More than that, the videos I watched taught me the value of table image, which I had hardly been giving any attention to. It is your table image and the game flow that tell you when to pick spots to double barrel, bluff, 3-bet light and what have you, not stats from HUDs alone. I guess because for so long I have more or less played robotically according to HUD stats, I lost whatever feel for game flow and table image I had before I added tables. So now, I honestly think I’m better than I was before when I was 4-tabling. I am regaining my confidence, and with any luck, I’ll be ready to take my 200NL shot within the next month. I finally feel like I got the missing pieces to the puzzle that will allow me to succeed at 200NL (and hopefully beyond!)

Coming into January, I hoped for 35k hands, $3000, plus rakeback and bonuses. The way I was playing, I would have had to run pretty white hot for that to happen with my ABC weak-tight game. However, I think it’s definitely attainable next month. Still, my wake up call last week that turned things around for the better did somewhat salvage this month, and the Full Tilt Ironman bonus, which didn’t affect rakeback, was a nice boost as well.

So, $2185 in winnings, $425 Ironman bonus, $40 Cake deposit bonus, and $780 rakeback bring the total to $3430. Not bad at all. considering that downswing in the middle!

All-in Luck (only for Full Tilt play, Cake hands not supported):

February goals: 35k hands, $3000 + rakeback (hopefully $3500 which is 5ptbb/100, I think if I continue to play well and improve it’s easily attainable.) Move up to 200nl when, after withdrawal, my bankroll is 8k.

Please ’scuse the messy desk

It got here Christmas Eve, and I got to put in a couple of quick sessions the day after Christmas while the wife was running around. I like it better already:

Eric, a.k.a. MewsicLovr on the Felt Poker forum, is coming through town with his family and is going to stay with us tonight. We’ll be hitting up the local cardroom today and tomorrow… I’m really looking forward to it! More to come…

I didn’t really feel like I was bragging in my last post; in fact, I thought I was humbly admitting that I played pretty bad and was lucky to run hot. But whether it was a brag curse or just a regression to the mean, I sure hit a bad streak after I made that last blog post!

Before:

After:

Of course, this also somewhat coincided with going from 4-tabling to 6-tabling on the 10th. I ran bad, that I know, but I do wonder if the extra tables were causing me to make some poor decisions I might have otherwise avoided. So, for now I am back to 4-tabling. I went ahead and ordered a second monitor to match this one and make a better attempt at 6-tabling; the tinier tables didn’t bother me much, but the software didn’t seem to like them, and it was slowing me down.

I did of course make 20k hands already, and Silver level Ironman on Full Tilt, but my winrate is pretty paltry so I’ll no doubt be on the lookout for good games to pad my winnings a bit and regain my confidence.

I am pleased to report that so far, I am comfortably on pace to meet my goals for December. However, I don’t feel I’ve been playing really well, I’ve just been getting lucky enough to compensate. I decided early on to add in some more hands to my preflop 3-betting range and to try to take a more head-on approach to dealing with other regulars in anticipation of moving up to 200NL. I have had mixed results with this strategy; I have to get a better handle on postflop play with more marginal holdings. I have stacked off light a few times more than I ought to have, and I have run into some coolers, but somehow I am having a pretty good month due to running hot on all-in luck.

On the 10th I decided that rather than wait for a second monitor, I would try 6-tabling on the one monitor. It was a pretty big adjustment for me, not least because of the tables winding up so tiny. I made a couple of bad crying calls on the first day that, had I taken the time to think through, I would not have made. However, I ran better in general as the week wore on and became more accustomed to the faster pace. Still, cramming the tables onto one monitor is not the way to go; I am hunting an identical monitor on eBay to see if I can get a good deal on a used one. I will say that deciding to by the Full Tilt Shortcuts script was a great decision as it has helped immensely.

The month is just flying by so far; I can’t believe it’s halfway through. I’m looking forward to having Eric (MewsicLovr on the forums) and his family over after Christmas and hitting up a cardroom with him; hard to believe that’s less than 2 weeks away now. Hopefully I can get all my grinding done next week and be comfortable taking some time away from the computer in the meantime. I’m sure the games will be good approaching New Year’s, however, so that will be tough to pass up.

Since moving up to 100NL 6-max for good August 24th, I have played 100,000+ hands at 5.7 ptbb/100. It’s a nice brag for me, since I basically broke even so many hands before this summer I began to wonder if I would ever be a winner. Now I have the confidence that I am, and it’s a good feeling! (P.S. Yes, I’m a bankroll nit, but I haven’t moved up yet because I have been cashing out most of this, heh.)

I don’t have too much in the way of lofty goals for the month, mainly because I’m a family man and it’s Christmas time. I still hope to have a good month, but there’s no way I’ll get as many hands as I might like to get in. So, I’m going to go with 20k hands, and try to make Silver level Ironman on Full Tilt. That should be pretty easily done. If I manage to do more, that’s great too. As always, I will strive not to tilt and not to play if I do tilt as historically that is when my biggest losses occur.

Long-term I am beginning to think February is the month I will move up to 1/2 NL. I want to go ahead and get a second monitor and get accustomed to 5-6 tabling before moving up. Besides, I have been withdrawing the bulk of my profits each month so I want to build up my bankroll some more to absorb the draw-downs even if I don’t run well up there at first. I think a lot of players let pride get in the way of making good decisions in regard to bankroll management and game selection. I could continue playing at the stakes I’m at making what I do in an hour and still be happy, so when I move up it will be because I think it is the best decision to maximize my hourly return, not because I am too cocky or what have you to play 100NL.

My goals coming into the month were:

-25k Hands 100NL without tilt or HU play
-Gold level Ironman

I achieved both, just barely; I got Gold Iron today and 25014 hands. Had to force myself to play today because I was already pretty happy with my results; man am I glad I played anyway as I made $515 through 768 hands today. Wowza!

Since I played on Cake some as well as Full Tilt, I’ll just put the results first and then the Full Tilt graph (boy, did I run hot this month on FT.) This is 99% 100NL with a failed shot at 200NL on Cake accounting for about a $300 loss but I can’t really account for that so I’ll just figure it in to the winrate.

Total hands: 25014
Total earnings before deposit bonus and rakeback: 3963.56
Overall PTBB/100 before bonus/rb: 7.9

Dep bonus: 260
Cake rb: 183.55
FT rb: 383.81

Total Profit: 4789.92 New record woo-hoo!

Graph of Full Tilt for November:

I played about 600 hands today, just trying to keep pace up for the Gold Ironman on Full Tilt. After being up about 3100 + rakeback for the month in only ~18k hands, I was due for a bad session. I got lit up like a Christmas tree, pretty appropriate it being the holiday season now and all. Still, losing a buck a hand on the session is a bit of a tough pill to swallow at 100NL. Even so, I’m feeling pretty good about the month. The only questionable hand of the session in my mind was a 4-bet push all-in vs. a maniac who happened to have KK. Highlights included AK<KJ all-in for stacks; 99<JJ on a 952r flop (nice smoothcall pre, oh well here’s a turn J for ya), most of the others were pretty standard coolers and getting outdrawn in mid-sized pots.

Hopefully that will be the bottom of the downswing, but I’ll probably hold off ’til Monday to find out. I am hoping to attempt to move up to 200NL in January so it would be nice to continue running decently in the meantime so that I can go forward with that as planned. If I can make my December withdrawal and have what I do now at the end of the year then I will go for it in ‘08; if I have a monster December I might try it earlier.

I got a bit of a late start this month, which is not something I’m accustomed to. My wife’s grandfather passed away, not unexpectedly, but still very sadly. He was a great man; he will be missed. We spent those first few days of the month through the weekend with family and in out of services to pay our respects. So, no time for poker, but plenty of time to think about how much I love my family, and and about how trivial the rest really is. I came off October break-even for the month and a bit frustrated. The experience of losing a loved one completely put into perspective how little that mattered. I really need to make sure I keep my priorities straight!

On to poker. I was thinking of making a run at the Iron level of the Ironman promotion on Full Tilt, but by the time I was able to play that was already out the window. No big deal really, I wasn’t doing it for any reason other than for kicks. MewsicLovr, one of my buddies on the Felt Poker Forum, convinced me to put some money on Cake Poker last week to take advantage of the deposit bonus and soft games. I was running pretty well on Full Tilt at the time, up about 8 buy-ins, but I got the itch and put some money on Cake anyway, and immediately I ran hot at very juicy 100NL games. Meanwhile I ran badly at Full Tilt. The net result was a small win. Then, over the weekend, I ran the 500 I put on Cake up further, all the way to 1600+ in the span of a few days, not bad for a few thousand hands of 100NL. Early Monday morning I played some more Full Tilt and made 3.5 buy-ins in a very short time, about $1 a hand for a few hundred hands, which was a great way to start the day.

Having fulfilled my daily 200 FTP points requirement for the Ironman promotion, I decided to play on Cake for my afternoon session. There weren’t a lot of 100NL tables running, so I decided that I would mix in some good 200NL tables as well. I was feeling good, playing good, and figured the soft games on Cake were a good way to crack into 200NL, so I took a “shot.” I ran pretty bad and butchered one hand for stacks and got knocked down to near even on the day. Then, in the evening, I lost another 200. I can’t complain too much because I was due to have some of the fish cashing in on their gutshot and flush draw equities before long, but it was disappointing to finish the day down 200 after starting off so well that morning. I think I’ll hold off on the 200NL shots for now. If I weren’t making regular withdrawals I’d take a real 5 buy-in shot or so, but I know I am going to have make some adjustments, and there are going to be some growing pains unless I happen to run hot at the start.

So, at about the midway point of November I’m up around $1500 through 11k hands, not including any rakeback. I’m pretty happy about that. I’m not thrilled about that Cake balance being just over $900 after having had it up to $1600, but hopefully it’s nothing to be concerned about. If I stay down at 100NL I hope I will have no problem growing that account, it’s a nice change of pace to play there.

And now, without further adieu, the hand I butchered, so that I may embarrass myself and never ever play this badly again. I should have folded flop. The turn giving me top 2 changes nothing because the board is sooooooo dry but for some reason I just can’t think logically, I just think “sweet, top 2″ and stack off to his obvious set. I seem to realize that the only thing I beat is a bluff because I’m not raising him, yet I know he’s never bluffing. So I just put all the money in and cross my fingers, I’m such a fish sometimes. MAN this was bad. I’ll convert it by hand to increase my pain so that I may never do this again. (Cake HH’s aren’t supported by converters.)

Cake Poker 200NL (6max) 5-handed

Hero (197.00 in chips)
CO (220.00 in chips)
BTN (216.15 in chips)
SB (304.95 in chips) <— donkfish
BB (250.55 in chips) <— nit

Preflop: J A dealt to Hero (MP)
Hero raises to $7, 2 folds, SB calls, BB calls

Flop: ($21) J 6 3
SB bets $12, BB raises to $32, Hero calls, SB calls

Turn: ($117) A
SB checks, BB bets $72.50, Hero calls, SB folds

River: ($262) 7
BB bets $139.05 (all-in), Hero calls $85.50 (all-in)
Uncalled bet of $53.55 returned to BB

Results: $434 pot ($3 rake)

BB: shows [ 3h, 3c ] (Three of a Kind, Threes )
Hero: mucks
BB wins $431 with Three of a Kind, Threes