Hellmuth and home games

[Please note: If you are bored by the logging of poker sessions, there is some wider-ranging stuff following the breakdown of last night’s play. ]

I got back on track. Four hours of poker for a profit of eighty-five bucks, which is fine by me. If I averaged out at that win-rate over a long period, then my ‘real’ job would not see me for dust.

It was a mixed bag of a session. First I played a little micro-limit five card stud, out of curiosity and while waiting for my PLO seat. I lost a couple of dollars, purely and simply because I called some hands deliberately with no hope whatever of winning, for information. Not information on specific players, but just to get a bead on what kinds of hands people in this game will play and bet. Conclusion: 50 cent/1 dollar five card stud looks like a monumentally easy game to beat, so if those are your sort of stakes then I suggest you take a break from the variance of Hold ‘Em and make some easy dollars.

Got my Omaha seat, and couldn’t get anywhere. I lost about half my buyin when I made top two on the flop, with second-nut flush draw also, and got check-called by a guy with bottom set. I checked the river through, and overall this fella failed to make as much money as he might out of me, while allowing me every chance to hit the quarter of the deck that would have seen me bust him.

During the PLO game I began a $10 multitable tourney with 383 runners. I quit the Omaha (seven bucks down) at the second break to focus on the tourney, with 150 players left and a reasonable stack.

I ended up cashing in 37th spot. (Yes, paying 40 players out of 383 seems too many to me as well!) I was very happy with my game, given that I saw AK once to win a coin-flip, AQ a couple of times, and no pocket pair higher than 6’s in the entire event. However, I cracked up in the end in almost the same way I wrote about yesterday.

The excuse, not that I am allowing myself one, is that I got a horrible beat. I managed to get A6 all-in versus my AT, and was looking good for a genuinely threatening stack, until a 6 came on the river. Even so, I absolutely did not need to make the same mistake as the previous day, trying a foolhardy blind-steal from early position with a dreadful hand, which resulted in the A6 guy busting me with AJ versus my K8.

Once again I went blind-stealing, unarmed, when I still had enough of a stack to wait for a real double through opportunity.

Never mind, back to PLO despite encroaching tiredness, where a couple of nut flushes enabled me to quit nearly ninety bucks winners and go to bed a happy poker player.

So, wider ranging poker talk now ensues as promised.

I bought Phil Hellmuth’s book last night after work. I was waiting for the bus and suddenly had a strong urge to have a quarterpounder and a read. One of my favourite pastimes, as it feels like everything else melts away and world stops for the period while I eat salty, addictive fast food and pore over a book or magazine or Spiderman comic.

So Phil’s book was there in ‘Borders’ and I just couldn’t resist. Earliest impressions were along the usual lines of ‘wow, this guy really doesn’t believe in under-selling himself’, and I was similarly amused by the way the usually low-key Andy Glazer really self-hyped the book in his introduction. For example, Glazer advises reading the book section by section as you work on your game, even though ‘you might enjoy ‘Play Poker Like the Pros’ so much that you want to read it cover to cover from the first moment you pick it up’. Well gee-whiz Andy, I might also want to shave off your horrible little beard, who knows?

Anyways, reading the book so far has been good for me. Somehow it has enthused me to get back into playing other games from time to time; maybe a little short-handed limit Hold ‘Em, a dash of stud, a sprinkling of split games. I play one game so much that I know a lot of the situations inside out and know the correct move a lot of the time.

In fact, I think the biggest thing the book awoke in me was a realisation of how little hand-reading I do. PLO doesn’t always require a lot of that, not at the level I play. If you flop something like top set with a flush draw or the nut straight plus two pair or any other such multi-angle hand… well, you really don’t care what cards your opponent is holding.

Playing something else, like the little jaunt into five card Stud last night, got me thinking again, got me trying to remember exposed cards, got me thinking about position in a different type of game, got me trying to add up betting actions on multiple streets, just made me feel a lot more awake in the game. All of those things must be good for the brain, for the card-sense, for profitability in more games over time and so on. And just as importantly, it was fun.

Frankly, a large number of my PLO opponents never really give me a tough decision - and while this is why I am able to win pretty consistently, it probably also makes me a little ‘flabby’. I’m like a big, blubbery, lazy frog sitting on its fat arse while insects fly happily into its open mouth. Its sometimes more fun to be a crouching tiger hidden dragon type of animal, making darting moves and using stealthy cunning to capture the prey. Uh, like, whatever…

So, that’s the Hellmuth book so far. Its cool how a poker book (or blog) can affect your game in the most unintentional ways. I haven’t gotten to the pot limit Omaha section yet, but it would be nice to find one real gold nugget in there.

In other news, my old home-game buddy popped up in the chatbox last night and should be back in town soon. Hopefully we will get the game going again. It is always just a £5 or £10 one-table NLHE tournament, with six to eight players. I always enjoyed it immensely, as playing face to face is always a pleasant change from the online game. Lots of banter, smoking, hilariously bad play, arguing and fun. Plus, now I no longer have to leave early to keep a girl happy!

Finally, I still keep trawling the blogs and enjoying it. Matt is a first-year pro who certainly doesn’t lack confidence in his game, nor contempt for many of his opponents! I don’t entirely like his trash-talking approach. In fact I hate it. Not for strategic reasons, but simply because I don’t believe in treating people that way. I’m not sure its consistent to lambast people in your blog because they reply with homophobic insults, if you think it is okay to make jibes about their mother as part of a cynical gameplan.

Still, it’s an excellent read and included one line about hand-reading that went ‘ping!’ inside my head. Well worth a look.

I'm off to the seaside for the weekend with two old mates. Mucho fun but - gnash! - no poker. When will I next get to take on a load of weekend players?

Getting cocky

Advance warning: this promises to be a rather mundane, poker-content type of post. Basically, I got murdered last night, for a total of $130.

In the PLO game I think I fell foul of over-confidence. I have had a pattern in the past of winning hand-over-fist for several weeks, then starting to believe that I was good enough to play all sorts of stupid cards and push edges that didn’t exist. Result: blowback of most (sometimes all) the carefully accrued profits.

I cannot afford to let last night signal the beginning of another period like that. Instead I must ensure that it serves as a warning sign.

At the same time, the stats last night showed only 6% hands won, where I usually show 10% or more, so it was not a good session for cards. My bluffs and semi-bluffs weren't taking down as many pots as usual, and I wasn't hitting my rivers.

But I made a lot of mistakes, including a very stupid $35 all-in which was simply doomed to failure. Essentially, I felt the table boasted a number of poor opponents so I could outplay them, and I got a bit carried away with this idea. I called a few too many raises for a start, and played mediocre hands out of position. In fact, the way I ‘outplay’ my opponents is usually simply by playing tighter both preflop and post-flop, overall. Yes I will frequently play goofy hands with raises in late position for various reasons. But generally I play fewer hands than my opponents, and am more circumspect with them post-flop, eg. I don’t get wedded to a non-nut flush draw, or bottom end of a straight, or bottom set, or bottom two pair, and so on.

So, I must nip this in the bud and get back on track. I had a tendency last night to feel that I had been winning hand over fist for the last few sessions, and tried to recreate that rather than letting it happen naturally through good solid play. In fact, a gentle, unspectacular win of, say, thirty dollars, would (a) have been perfectly acceptable and in line with my longer term expectations and (b) have been a damn f***ing sight better than losing well over a hundred!

Anyways, I also played a $15 multi-table tourney. I cashed (just about) in two of these in a row recently and intend to write about my views on ‘em at some point. But last night was a 201-runner affair, paying 20, and I went out 28th. It was a peculiar ride, which is the only reason I will bother writing about it.

My first table had more than one all-in merchant, one of whom went all-in with KQd on the very first hand, got called by A9o and won. I’m not entirely sure who made the worse move there. I got fed up with that guy and called him with AQs. He flipped pocket Queens and I rivered an Ace. Not too long later I got a bit cute/stupid. Noting that he would not generally re-raise from his blinds, I raised with …er… 47c. By the turn I had an open-ender and four-flush, called his all-in bet because I couldn’t necessarily put him on even a pair, and rivered the club flush.

Reasonably healthy in chips, I was pleased to get moved to a table with smaller stacks on it at the break, where I could probably make some moves without risking my whole stack. Sadly I was card-dead and could only stay at more or less the same level of chips, while failing to get any action when I did receive Aces up front.

Then I got caught trying to steal the blinds with A9o. Although every preflop raise was taking the pot at this stage, I was probably in too early a position for it. Got called by a guy with JJ, which left me crippled. He then chose to mock my play, which is not something I am accustomed to.

Now I was crippled with 55 chips, blinds of 300-600 and about four hands until my blind. JQ , one fold, and QQ later and I had 2600 and was sticking it all-in with Q9. The only caller had J8c and suddenly I have a 60 percent shot at owning a moderate stack that should see me cruise into the money. But he made his flush, aimed a verbal dig at me, and I shook my head in bemusement all the way to bed.

Frankly,at that stage of the tournament (30 left with 20 paid) I was in a quandary. My stack was around 23rd in size, but under no immediate blinds pressure, and only one double-through from being genuinely workable. I go along with all the accepted tournament wisdom of going for the big win, so I wanted to get chips and not get blinded down to a genuinely small stack. I also figured that with the bubble approaching it was a good time to attempt steals.

On the OTHER hand, I was in a position where I could most likely have folded my way into the money whilst waiting for a genuine double-through opportunity: the fact that I got QQ within a couple of hands of my ill-fated Ace-Nine underlines that feeling.

I think with hindsight that I had enjoyed my share of luck getting that far, and should have been happy to get into the money before starting to throw my chips in. I was on the last three tables from 200 players, having seen AQ twice and only one pocket pair, albeit a pair of rockets. Given the poor evening of Omaha, another cash, even a small one, would have done wonders for my confidence and my mood, and I believe that is important.

Instead, I have been dwelling quite a bit today on last night’s losses. I will be going home later, intent on a long session, but without the inner feeling of confidence and invincibility that has warmed me lately. However, given that my cash-game loss was borne partly from overconfidence, that may not be a bad thing.

I’ll be tightening up tonight, without losing the ability to raise some deceptive hands, and I will accept a win no matter how small.

Smoking, booze and shagging

One thing that has surprised me, as I have waded through a multitude of poker blogs over the past fortnight, is how many of the writers drink and smoke. The only reason this surprises me is that on this little island we tend to think of Americans as teetotal non-smokers. (Overweight teetotal non-smokers, natch!)

I’m not sure why, but perhaps its because of the USA’s public smoking bans (starting to hit the UK), over 21 years old drinking laws, puritan work ethic and suchlike. And also because the English drink so much that we view almost everyone else as booze pussies.

So, it has been nice to read the blogging of other intelligent but indulgent guys with their Guinness, smokes, cigars and whatnot. I like a drink and a cigarette too, although I’m pretty sure that smoking is highly ‘negative EV’.

Anyways, the other thing that has struck me is how many of my fellow poker obsessives have wives or live-in girlfriends. Its not that I imagine poker players can’t get girlfriends, rather that I wonder how on earth they manage to maintain the relationship.

The likes of Iggy, Decker, Hdouble and MeanGene all have full-time jobs, play a ton of poker, write lengthy and frequent blog posts – AND have wives or partners. I don’t know how they square their poker-playing with their loved ones, or when they find time to spend with their loved ones, or when they sleep.

My interest isn’t entirely academic. In my past life (seven months ago) I was in the same situation; living with my long-term partner and playing into the bleary early hours, then sliding carefully into bed at 1am, 2am, 3am and trying not to wake her. Partly because I didn’t want to disturb her sleep and partly ‘cause I didn’t want her to know how late I was actually playing. Then an intense struggle the next morning to get out of bed for work.

All of this left very little time and energy for sex or intimacy, so although there were far bigger issues in that area than my poker, I guess you could argue that the game contributed in a small way to the end of that relationship.

Now, as it happens, I have come out of that situation with some firm opinions on long-term, live-in, monogamous relationships. Simply: they are not for me. I am too private, too selfish, too immature, too irresponsible and too lazy for all that. In short, the game is too big for my emotional bankroll.

I also see few things in life that cause more frustration, thwarted ambition, stress, exhaustion and downright unhappiness than being shackled to one person. And further than that, I simply don’t think there is a human being on this earth (including me) who is fascinating enough to stay interesting for twenty, thirty, forty years of co-habitation and forsaking all others. I have resolved, very firmly, that I will never live with a girl again. I don’t want a significant other – just a series of insignificant others. I recently read a wonderful novel, ‘The Dying Animal’ by Philip Roth, that captured a lot of my feelings.

So to get back to poker, the point is that I am just wishing all you ‘partnered’ pokerbloggers all the luck in the world keeping it all together – although you likely don’t need it as you’re probably better men than me!

The ironic twist to all this is that I am currently simply not playing enough hours - because of a girl. (Jaw drops in amazement).

I’m now seeing a lovely girl who lives about an hour’s drive or train away. We see each other only at weekends, on the whole, which suits me fine. The trouble is that with my weekends invariably booked up, I have to squeeze all my normal socialising into the weeknights. Four or five nights get filled pretty quickly between boozing, playing snooker, occasionally seeing my brother or Dad, and so on. Before you know it, I have either one night or no nights when I just go home from work and sit on my arse and play a decent session. So I’m typically playing just an hour or two either side of midnight – not enough hours when you are playing well and running good – and possibly missing out on a lot of the more recreational players in the early evenings and at weekends.

Right now I have no easy answer to this. I really don’t have much of an emotional investment in the girl I am seeing, and I have no idea how long it will last. I know that if and when it ends, my main feeling (besides guilt if I end up hurting her) will be ‘Cool, now I can put some more hours in’.

I probably ought to force myself to have a week where I don’t go out in the evening at all, or maybe just once. I might simply take a day off work to get me a nice big Omaha ovadose.

Whatever. I did get nearly six hours in on Monday, a public holiday, after packing the girl off home and thereby declining the opportunity to go with her, laze by the pool and have sex. (Not bragging, just indicating where poker fits in my priorities).

It was an okay five and a half hours, split more or less in half around dinner. In the first I finished down one dollar thanks to a chump mistake. A $45 chump mistake. Not the biggest deal in the world, but too big considering the size of game I play, my goals, and the fact that – did I mention? – it was a CHUMP MISTAKE! Getting wedded to the ‘under-full’ on the flop is exactly what my opponents do, thereby handing me their money on a velvet cushion. It is not supposed to be what I do. It happened because I was annoyed at having just blown back an early profit. Get over it, dickhead!

I clawed back the deficit, before eating and having an internal coaching session. Then had an $81 win thanks to somebody handing me their money in a similar fashion. Now that’s what IS supposed to happen, and is how I make my money in these games. The guy raised me all-in with the Queen high flush when I had the suited Ace. I encourage this sort of thing with my frequent pre-flop raising; sooner or later somebody thinks ‘Well he can’t have really hit this flop/turn/river’. I seized a few other pots, missed a few cheap draws, and generally bobbled along at break-even level for the remainder of the time, underlining the nature of big-bet play. You gotta be on the right side of the big confrontations.

Finally, a question. What does ‘IGHN’ mean? I see it in blogs after somebody busts out of a tournament. So far my best guess is ‘I Go Home Naked’, and that can’t be right. Somebody please let me know.

I did go home naked once (not from a poker game) but that’s a different story.

I exist - official!

Reader, I am stoked! (My American English is pretty good, no?) When I started this blog on Friday, I wondered how and if I might ever get any readers, and whether I might ever get linked by anybody. Then I check out the king of pokerblogs this morning to find he has reviewed and linked me inside three days! I am quite pathetically flattered and now feel like a proper poker blogger - although I swear that contrary to Iggy’s comments, I haven’t yet used the words ‘git’ or ‘wanker’ in here. Still, it can only be a matter of time.

I would love to repay Iggy for the enormous pleasure I have gleaned from his blog, by signing up at Party using his bonus code. The reason I haven’t/won’t/can’t is fairly simple, so let’s deal with the promised ‘Why aren’t I playing at Party?’ topic

In a nutshell, it is a banking issue. I have heard enticing tales about Party for a long time, but I am hampered by a severe lack of available funds to put into a new site, and by a lack of a VISA credit card (Mastercard have become an arse when it comes to gambling transactions, even – and this is pathetic - here in the UK where betting on or offline is one hundred percent legal), and by an aversion to jumping through the hoops of services like Neteller or Firepay.

The site where I play is so wonderfully simple in terms of banking that it almost makes me cry. I can even withdraw winnings IN CASH at their betting shops, which is a major bonus because it stops withdrawals disappearing, horribly intangible, into the black hole of my overdrawn bank account.

As it happens, I will end up trying out Party sometime soon, but it will be through a relatively new skin here in the UK, run by a British bookmaking firm who offer simple banking via my debit card. I don’t know whether Party offers PLO games that are as juicy and piscatorial as their Hold ‘Em tables, but I will take a look eventually.

Hell, I hope I never write a post as dull as this ever again. I will be back later, when I will be writing about that tricky poker/girls interface.