Cogs turning

I didn’t make a fortune last night. A mere 25 bucks in more than three hours, in fact. But I was satisfied overall.

That was because the session (one table of PLO and one table of $1-$2 seven card stud) had begun badly, necessitating semi-reloads on each table. I was over $60 behind inside an hour. I have had an issue with tilting a little in such circumstances, even when the losses are not from horrible beats, so I am always pleased when I avoid that state and just keep on playin’. I’m grateful to an opponent I chatted with over a year ago, with whom I agreed to swap ‘notes’ on one another. His notes described me as a strong player ‘but can tilt badly when losing’. That was an eye-opener for me, and in fact I was slightly affronted – I expected his notes to read ‘Future world series of poker winner’ or something. But it was almost certainly the most helpful thing an opponent has ever said to me.

So last night I made sure to just keep playing well, making good decisions, playing the game not the results, and all that jazz. PLO turned around with a top set that filled up and still got two callers, and my opponents’ poor play at the 7-stud table gradually caught up with them. I made 7 big bets there in two hours, but I have no idea what kind of expectation is considered reasonable or desirable in stud. Frankly, I don’t care. I just want to make my best decisions.

I took a break at this point, to do some personal stuff, and returned later just to play around a bit in a couple of cheap tournaments before bed.

That proved to be a break-even waste of time. I played a headsup PLHE tournament first, and got beat by a poor player. Somehow I never expect to suffer bad beats in headsup play - which makes no sense, since the game demands that people play all sorts of toiletpaper hands and don’t fold too often.

Anyway, this particular weak opponent didn’t raise enough, didn’t appear to make any ‘moves’ (he never once showed down a bluff or even semi-bluff) but got me stuck badly early when he called flop and turn on a board of 278x. I was pushing my 8J hard. I caught a Jack for two pair on the river only for him to show 9T catching a straight. This left me outchipped 4-1, but I got back in front relatively quickly, as he had no idea how to finish me off. Then I called his button raise with my A6 and saw a flop of A94. He called my pot bet, then another pot bet on the turn, which paired the 4. I was a little concerned he had a bigger Ace or even a 4, but he tended to raise when he did hit cards. On the whole I felt very confident I was ahead. I didn’t entirely appreciate the King on the river, but figured if he did have an Ace with a better kicker than mine then we should now split the pot. I tried to get max value anyway by betting, and he called and showed a horribly played KK for a two-outer. That effectively ended the game.

After that I played another PLO 'sit and go'. I cruised into third place, where I exited by trying to take out my fellow small stack in order to have any chance in a showdown with the massive chip leader.

I’m enjoying my poker at the moment. Playing a variety of games has got the cogs spinning in my head, improving my ‘card-sense’ and making me feel like a poker player rather than a guy who just sits at a Pot Limit Omaha table waiting for the clueless to wire their money.

The only thing that has phased me slightly is that when playing stud and Omaha at the same time, I have fleetingly found myself thinking that I have some upcards in my Omaha hand. Not that it would matter against some of the players…

Quads and champagne

Mammoth session yesterday evening. Five and a half hours, for a total of $63.

I would really anticipate making more than that over a long session of pretty focussed poker (with some interludes of simultaneous instant messaging plus a half-bottle of champagne, which had sat on the shelf failing to be licked off a girl’s breasts for far too long) but after a lovely start in the Omaha game I could never kick on to make a big stack.

I had a nice start when I raised a hand with a 4 in it and saw a 444 flop. A lovely opponent proceeded to bet all the way and call my river reraise. Hell, it’s a tough game sometimes! I also managed to bust the Swedish guy who vexed me the previous day. However, after that my stack just oscillated endlessly around that mark, with just one near-miss on really pumping it up.

That occurred when I made a $46 pot-size bet on the turn with the nut straight and top two pair Kings and Jacks.. I was surprised to get a call, and delighted when the river King made me the nut full house. Sadly, my opponent also had KJ and after the river action we split the $176 pot. He had called the turn with top two , a gutshot, and the third-nut flush draw. That might make his call sound good, but in fact he was drawing to 7 wins (the spades) and 4 ties and it was a Big Loser Call. (The turn action makes me over $50 every spin and loses him $11, in that virtual currency mentioned yesterday. At this rate I will soon be able to afford a nice virtual holiday).

His action started to make sense as he established himself in the game - he was the table maniac/bully. He did pretty well for a while; because the nuts is such a genuine threat in Omaha, it can be very hard to call such a player’s bets and raises without holding the mortal lock yourself.

Frankly, I struggle against opponents like him myself. I like raising pre-flop in PLO as I have mentioned before. But I dislike facing large reraises, whereupon half a stack goes in the pot pre-flop if you want to stay involved. Omaha hands run so close before the flop that I have a strong aversion to such situations. I ended up battening down the hatches and focussing on my second table (which I will mention later).

Still, such one-dimensional players often come unstuck in the end. After his stack swung violently for a while he ultimately busted out, leaving the table in the blink of an eye to avoid the jibes of the opponents he had made so uncomfortable during his stay. I wouldn’t mind adding a little of his game to mine, but it wouldn’t hurt him to turn down the aggression a touch either.

Anyways, I mentioned I was two-tabling a bit. Sadly, once again I could not find a game of five card stud, my new favourite. Instead I played a pot-limit Hold ‘Em headsup tourney, which I lost. I trapped the fella three times preflop but he flopped trips each time, finishing me off with A7 versus my KK when the flop came 77x.

After that I played my first PLO ‘sit and go’ in a while. Those are good fun and easy to place in, because so many people play them all wrong. I came third, and followed up by playing and winning another, before it was (past) time for bed

Hyperspace

On Monday night I played two of my favourite games - snooker first, followed by poker when I got home. For uninitiated American readers, snooker is to pool what No Limit Hold ‘Em against Doyle Brunson is to nickel-and-dime five card draw against your granny. Its bigger, harder and more frustrating.

During the course of the evening I also had a somewhat testy conversation with the girl I am seeing, via text messages. Technology has come on in leaps and bounds - there are now far more ways to argue than there used to be. The result was that it looks like that relationship is over. Cool, now I can put some more hours in! (A little in-joke there for anyone who has read previous posts).

The hours I put in last night were frustrating. I went about $60 up pretty smoothly, playing with the focus I discussed in the previous post. But I finished the session, of a little under three hours, only EIGHT bucks ahead thanks to losing two decent pots to the same guy in fairly quick succession.

First, I had top set and a flush draw on a flop of 89T. I bet about half the pot on flop and turn, and was delighted to see the river pair the board. However, this Swede raised my river bet. I noted that a possible runner-runner straight flush had appeared, but called, and that’s what he showed. I was absolutely gutted. He had actually flopped the non-nut straight, so it was very nice for me to get to draw to my full house (and flush) by making cheap bets. Not a strong opponent.

Mere minutes later he played another hand very poorly but took the money. I flopped nut flush and straight draws on a KJ5 flop. I turned the flush, bet virtually the pot of $19, and he called. The river paired the 5 to my anguish, and he bet the pot. I folded in the certainty that I was beaten, and for some reason he did show his quad 5’s .

Its hard to think of a worse way to play the hand. If the river had paired any of the other boardcards then he would have to fear that my strong betting indicated a bigger set. There is nothing like bottom set if you want to go broke. In the end, the hand played out such that he called a 2/1 bet on the turn as a 7/3 underdog, and gave himself no way to get any more chips on the end. I make a $20 theoretical profit every time the turn is played like that, whilst he loses a theoretical $1.

Of course, the exchange rate on those theoretical dollars is terrible.

So I was suddenly only a few bucks up and I tilted for about three hands, before regaining my composure and quitting a bit later with my tiny profit. I hadn’t exactly suffered a bad beat, but to lose my winnings to such poor play really hurt me. On the positive side, I learned about the player in question, who is a fairly regular opponent. Whilst it could take a very long time to get your money back from a bad player in limit poker, PLO will likely give me an opportunity very soon to exploit his weaknesses for a large pot.

In general, I was happy with my play. I suspect I got mugged once or twice, when my frequent raising caused one or two decent players to take shots at me on the flop, but I can live with that.

My quest to play different games continued as well. Sadly there was no five card stud game, although I waited for ages, so I ended up playing a heads-up pot limit Hold ‘Em tournament (tiny buy-in). I won it, to make a total profit for the night of - sigh - thirteen dollars.

It’s a while since I played one of these headsup games, but it is something I intend to explore. Clearly, facing just one inferior player at a table is a lovely edge to have. I just need to find out how high up the food chain (eg stake size) I can go before I become that inferior player.

I think the tournament format is a good way to do it, too, since the rake will usually work out cheaper than playing out a lengthy, bruising cash-battle. Further, neither party can hit and run.

The reasons I chose to play pot-limit rather than no-limit are two-fold. One is sneaky, the other perhaps more interesting. First, the sneaky reason, I am certain that most of the people I play in these heads-up pot limit games don’t actually realise it is pot limit! You have to look quite close at the lobby list, since the PLHE is hidden amidst a ton of NLHE tables. So I immediately have a strong chance of playing somebody at a game they don’t know or like - and a game in which, if they are worse than me, they can’t get lucky to win it with one all-in gamble.

In fact, that last bit is the second reason I choose pot-limit over no limit. There’s always plenty of discussion over which is the more skillful game, which will probably be intensified by the debate du jour over the huge fields in today’s big tournaments and the so-called new breed of competitors raised in the online game.

I suspect that between two comparable opponents, no-limit may be more skillful. But there is surely little doubt that a weak player has more chance to beat a more skilled opponent in the no-limit game, where he/she can push all-in frequently to limit the expert’s edge.

This has come to remind me of the ‘Hyperspace’ button. If you’re around my age you will probably remember the videogames ‘Asteroids’ and ‘Defender’. (Sigh, if only I could somehow play these two awesome games on my laptop through some kind of, gosh I don’t know, illegal emulator program…) Well, besides being two of the all-time classics of videogame design, beautifully simply and complex at the same time, ‘Asteroids’ and ‘Defender’ also shared the feature of a button marked ‘Hyperspace’.

If you were in trouble, hemmed in on all sides by rocks or swarming mutants, you could press hyperspace and instantly disappear to be rematerialized in another location. It was like a panic button for when you were outnumbered, overmatched, in over your head. Well, using the all-in tactic reminds me of the hyperspace button. Outgunned by a superior opponent? Go all-in to hyperspace and you will often escape. Now, if I am the swarm of mutants pounding away at a weak opponent, I certainly don’t want him to have a hyperspace button handy.

Still, the designers of those old videogames added a neat twist. Hyperspace was an unpredictable dimension, and sometimes your ship would simply explode on re-entry. A bit like getting your third or fourth all-in called by a big pocket pair - but in poker it costs a lot more than a quarter to play again, and you don’t get three lives.

Two out of three ain't good

There was no golden nugget in Hellmuth’s book section on pot limit Omaha. A shame, since I could have done with it last night.

I dropped over a hundred dollars at PLO for the second time in my last three sessions, which is dreadful. The only golden nugget of advice I actually needed last night was:

‘Fold!’

True, I suffered with poor cards and can only recall showing down one winner in three and a half hours, which shows that my bluffs weren’t working, my rivers weren’t hitting and I wasn’t getting called when I did make a hand. Well, that happens from time to time, but I simply tossed about $50 of my loss with poor calls. Twice I talked myself into fairly large losing calls on the river, which is not normally one of my errors. I have to remember that for the vast majority of my opponents, being ‘tricky’ or skilful only means one thing – slow-playing. If they check-call the scary turn and then bet the river they are not making a brave and elaborate bluff, they simply have the nuts.

I also called large pre-flop raises or reraises– blatantly from AAxx – twice, with the wrong sort of hands. KKxx, even nicely co-ordinated, is not an Aces-cracking hand. When you toss in a hefty and ridiculous call on the flop as well, then you’re looking at a major money-loser.

So, two lumpy losing sessions out of three is a strong warning signal that I am getting sloppy. I have therefore written myself a prescription for tonight, which consists of tightening my calling of raises (although not tightening my own raises) and being highly focussed on position. Position, position , position. I find that when I start playing poorly nothing helps more than focussing on playing only with position.

The plus point from last night’s debacle was a session of $1/$2 five card stud. I played for under an hour and made $33, which kept the evening’s total losses to two digits. I must admit I hit some cards. Trip 9’s versus trip 8’s, and then a king-high straight, are about as good as it gets in short-handed five card stud don’t you think? But even without those monsters I would have been a couple of bets in front, and I really don’t know how you could lose money if you play this game with any concentration.

As I wrote on Friday, I enjoyed it immensely – working out hand values and strategy on the fly, as opposed to PLO where I generally know the right thing to do and just have to drum up the discipline to actually do it.

I think I will be using stud as a second table for a little while, alongside whatever is the best PLO game. I am not a great one for multi-tabling. I read these bloggers who play three or even four tables at once and I get a headache just thinking about it. I guess it is far more viable playing limit than pot or no limit poker, where one good or bad read can make an enormous difference.

Still, I have lately been running the multi-table tournaments as a second table until/unless I get deep into the field, while the stud last night was a life-saver and possibly stopped me going on genuine Omaha tilt.

I probably should play two tables regularly, in fact, because even playing one table I am still invariably doing some surfing or downloading a bit of music or chatting to one or more friends or whatever… Two tables may well reduce the attention I give to all that unprofitable stuff, and make for a proper head-screwed-on session of pokerpokerpoker.

I am really psyched up to play some good poker tonight. I need to, and the pressure is on somewhat, because my bankroll has been seriously thinned down in the past few days. I withdrew a small chunk on Friday to help fund my weekend away, lost a similar chunk last night, and today have bitten the bullet and withdrawn enough to send my ex-girlfriend some money I owe her.

In case I gave the impression (with the ‘Smoking, Booze and Shagging’ post) that I am utterly shallow, I should state that I love and care about my ex so deeply that words don’t suffice, and I sometimes well up a bit when I think about her. Actually I don’t truly think I owe her the money (complicated story). but I’m not prepared to argue about it and spoil the way that we feel about one another now.

Anyways, the bankroll is supposed to grow such that I can pay for a bargain bucket Greek holiday in July while still keeping it above my designated minimum. The last few days have set that aim back a little, but I am not too worried. Especially since I often play somewhat better when the bankroll is slightly pressured, compared to when I can afford to be a little more blasé.

That’s all for today. Just let me at the tables…