This is how I'm running

I get it in good.  it turns out bad.

Begging Forgiveness to the Poker Gods

I write this post feeling very humble and wishing to express my reverance and admiration to the poker Gods.  Apparently, since I claimed "victory" a week ago and earned profit while clearing Take 2, I have angered the Gods in some fashion.  Their vengeance has been swift and certain.  I have experienced great difficulty catching a hand, and when I do, I cannot get action.  I have experienced great difficulty trying to exploit situations and often find myself on the receiving end of a string of c-bets or apparent "dog walking" by people with monsters.  And I have experienced great difficulty trying to win a race. 

 

I have also encountered my fair share of idiots in the past few days and their play has been, well, idiotic.  And yet I cannot successfully exploit it. 

 

Suffice it to say that anything I won during Take 2 (and much much more) has disappeared since.

 

So with all this in mind, I drop to a knee and express my sincere apologies to the poker Gods.  I have wronged you, but I want you to know that I have never disrespected your authority over the game.  I beg you for your forgiveness and ask you to show me a sign by letting me win my next race.  I'll take things from there. 

Bubble hand

4 players left in a SNG.  3 paid. 

 

I'm in the BB with ~2500 chips.

 

UTG (cutoff) shoves 1500 chips in.

Button calls.  he has about 6000 chips to start the hand.  He's been rather aggro, shoving his big stack in on numerous occasions.  The call here makes me think there's some weakness. 

SB overshoves for about 3500.

 

I look down at KK.

 

Call or Fold?

 

There are two hands I'd ever consider calling with here and I have one of them. 

Monday Ramblings

Last night I polished off the complete Take2 bonus on FullTilt.  Having started a couple of days late, I grinded my way to the finish line, not missing a day since I started.  This was a very clearable bonus, with minimum play required, though I would often go well past the limit when the time and or opportunity arose.  A nice move if you can pull it off is to play late at night/just past midnight - clearing both bonuses in a short amount of time.  More notably, it's the first time I've gone through a bonus-whoring process *and* made money beyond just the bonus itself.  No definitive stats available (yeah, I'm that guy who still doesn't have Poker Tracker or Hold'em Manager), but the bankroll is about where it was a month ago yet I've been in the shitter for certain with the few tourneys/SNGs I dove into during September.  Also, I feel like I'm at the point where I can now strike a balance between managing two 6-max cash tables, juggling various fantasy lineups, filtering through far too many podcasts, performing general web surfing duties, and attending to various wife/dog needs and wants.  Christ, you know it ain't easy.  You know how hard it can be. 

 

Special hats off to the idiot girl ('lthgirl' somethingorother) at my .10/.25 PLHE table on Friday night who ensured that I stayed in the black for Take2.  She was felted at least half a dozen times in a ~2 hr session, rebought for the max most of the time and probably dropped $200-$300 easily at this low stakes table.  I was the recipient of about $50 of it.  The guy to my immediate left made about $235 on the session.  She was the dream tablemate.  She'd continually bet pot, regardless of the holdings.  The strategy was just to sit, wait, find a hand and bet it big.  She did wake up with AQ on me once when I had JT and got excited about a QQJ flop.  Fortunately, she was short-stacked for that one and it only cost me $15 or so.  How crazy was she?  The average .10/.25 PLHE table has pot sizes averaging around $3.  We were north of $15.  An audible groan came up when she left the table.

 

I've tweeted enough about PSU already.  How can a "powerhouse" football program have such horrible OL play so often?  Sure there are down years, but when it's constantly the same achilles heel, can't you address it through strong recruiting?  One would think.

 

A perfect fantasy day yesterday.  I won my primary league big - everyone got me 13+ points except for my stupid kicker, and yet not one of my guys had one of those MJD-type banner days.  Just consistent performance throughout.  It's a PPR league and we've been doing it that way for about 5 years now.  You would think people would latch on to the concept that receptions count, but they don't. I just nabbed all the Ray Rice, Steve Slaton, Derrick Mason types to complement the studs and even when those guys don't score or rack up much yardage, they do get you 3-6 receptions and 10-12 points. 

 

Lost late last night in my other league, in which my draft thoroughly sucked and old man Tomlinson's ankle is just killing me.  The best news of all is that with the Take2 and fantasy out of the way, tonight is a night for pure R&R. 

 

Finally, when you slog through the rain and are -1 thru 6 holes, it's best not to finish with three straight bogeys.  Furthermore, when you make the turn and are then -1 on the back through 5 holes, it's best not to finish with three bogeys in the final four holes.  I can't figure out why this keeps happening, but it needs to stop.  I'd like to get in one more solid round before the snow flies to overcome this.  On the positive side, it was good to make four birdies yesterday.   

 

 

PLO Ring Hand

This happened last night and I'd be interested in any feedback.  I'll get this on a forum or two once I get out from behind the great Internet prison that is my office.

 

PLO 0.10/0.25  I selected this table because it had a very high % flop and very high average pot size.  Turns out the three people to my right clearly know each other and are making no attempt to hide this in the table chat.  One of them was discussing how he was winning $1k pots at some other table simultaneously - I didn't go to verify this at all, but thought it was a bit telling that they may just be joking around here - the action would back that view up.  I don't believe they're colluding, but they are playing pretty big pots with one another with sub-premium holdings.  So the strategy is simple - wait for a big one and play it big. 

 

I've lost a big pot played three-way against two of these clowns earlier.  I flop a pair and a draw, turn the nut straight and get it all in.  One guy calls with a set, the other guy calls with the flush draw and the flush gets there on the river.  They bantered back and forth about the hand in the chat, about how each of them had to do what they did, basically ignoring that I got it all in with the current nuts.  I was silent. 

 

OK, in the key hand, I'm in the BB with 458J.  Bleh.  It's a free flop for me though.  The flop is 445 with two spades.  I bet out and the villain on the button raises me.  I call it in the event he has the flush draw - I don't want to scare him away.  Plus given his play it's hard for me to necessarily put him on 55, though it's certainly a possibility. 

 

Turn is a J and we get it all in here.  Sure enough he has the 55.

 

Well the river is a J and I make Jacks full...I take the $45 pot down.  And then the expected chat box banter starts in.  "Fckn donk"  "f a g", etc. 

 

And my contention was this...neither one of us had the nuts.  44 is the nuts.  I knew he didn't have 44 because I had one of the fours.  Only one hand could beat me: 55.  BUT he couldn't contend that he had the nuts post-flop either because I could have had 44 there.  Each of us, essentially, got it all in with the second nuts - based on what each of us were holding.  I happened to be the one who was behind and I happened to be the one who sucked out. 

 

I told him that I couldn't put him on exactly 55 and 55 alone there, but of course this band of idiots didn't want to hear anything about it.

 

Questions:

* Am I looking at this right?  "Each of us got it in with the second nuts" is the correct view?

* Could you fold the under-full here?

* Should you fold the under-full here?

Another JoePa Presser Epic Moment

A gem from Tuesday's JoePa presser, courtesy of Black Shoe Diaries:

Another rookie reporter asked Joe how his team compared to the other teams ranked in the top five. Which prompted this hilarious monologue.

I imagine you don't pay attention to rankings too much, national rankings, but being No. 5 in the country do you ever compare your team's development to other teams?

Paterno: No, don't get me into that. I don't know what we are, for crying out loud. Geez, that's the same thing -- hey, I honest to God, are we No. 5 is that what you're telling me?

Yes.

Paterno: I don't know that we're No. 5. You guys don't seem to understand, I don't pay -- I don't read anything about us. I get the paper. I go to the bathroom. I take the paper in there and I scan it. I look at it. The first thing I do is look at who died. All right. Second thing I look at are headliners, something that says Paterno is the greatest, I read it. (Laughter) If it says I'm a bum, I don't even look at it.

Political Spectrum Quiz

This is a completely and totally non-surprising result for me. Nonetheless, a cool quiz to take.

My Political Views
I am a centrist moderate social libertarian
Left: 0.58, Libertarian: 1.52

Political Spectrum Quiz

How Not to Play a Rebuy Tourney

Step 1: Don't be in a pissy mood because you got soaked at the track earlier in the day.  Side note: The story goes that Razz was invented for people who bitched they never got cards in stud.  Someone should invent a wager that pays you off if you constantly narrowly miss exactas. 

 

Step 2: Don't overlook the rules.  Know that if you're at or below 1500 chips, you can rebuy.  I figured this out after winning a small pot and getting to like 1580 chips early on.  There was more than enough opportunity to get to 3000 in the first few hands - I never took advantage of it.

 

Step 3: Don't stack the same guy multiple times and get up to 8000 chips w/o a rebuy.  Sure, this sounds like a good thing, but it leads directly to Step 4.

 

Step 4: Don't give it all back to the same guy.  Short story, I stacked him once with the nut flush draw when I simply hit one of my overcards to his middle pair.  Then I gave it all back missing two subsequent nut draws.  This was particularly troublesome because...

 

Step 5: Don't go broke and need to rebuy with <10 minutes left in the rebuy period.  You'll never get that big stack back.

 

Step 6: Don't build a UI like PokerStars that makes you hunt for the Add-on Feature.  Shouldn't a button pop up for this - just like it does for the rebuy?  I finally found it, but it was 3 minutes of aggravation.

 

Step 7: Don't be card dead after the rebuy period.  That always helps.

 

Step 8: Don't get too happy when you get moved to a table full of average or below-average stacks like yourself.  Because sooner or later, the chip leader is going to be moved there.  And as sure as the sun will come up tomorrow, he'll be seated two to my left.  Happens.  Every.  Time.

 

Step 9: Don't run KK into AK because we know how that ends.  I did it to myself - the donk led out after the A flopped, and I had to choose between short-stack ninja mode or the slight chance that he was bluffing or the slighter chance I could draw out.  I chose the latter, which was probably a wise choice given that I was falling asleep in my chair, but wasn't a wise choice at all in the strictest sense of playing the game.

Graduation (So to speak)

For the last few months, I've focused almost exclusively on NLHE Sit n Gos.  I've been strictly following the rule that I will not play a SNG for more than 5% of my online bankroll.  So when the roll got to $400, I started playing $20 events.  In the early part of this year, the roll kept dancing around $400-$600 and I occasionally dabbled in $30 SNGs.  About a week ago, a boost sent me somewhat comfortably over $600 and I've graduated to the $30 level since then. So it's time for some observations.

 

1) Stronger Opponents.  There's a noticeable difference in the quality of play for *most* players from $20 to $30 SNGs.  Much more TAGgy play.  Few (if any) abandoned pots.  If nobody wants to go after a pot, these guys will.  It's absolutely in your best interest to figure out who these people are up front - with hand history, betting patterns and just a little bit of observation, this is not hard to do.  Last Hand playbacks and note taking are your friends.

 

2) Plenty of clueless donks.  What's surprised me most is that there is still an abundance of clueless idiots - LAGs who will raise every hand; calling stations who can't get rid of J3c to a 5x raise; players who tilt after a lost pot.  Probably one or two of these at a full table.  There are also people who have no clue how to play short-handed or heads-up.  I simply ran over someone a few nights back, starting heads-up with a slight chip disadvantage.  I raised every hand on the button, took down tons of pots uncontested, and won it with very little risk. 

 

3) The trend in my chipstack throughout the event is still typically the same.  Rarely am I out early.  Usually I chip down slightly, remain at or below average for most of the proceedings, and find myself under pressure as the bubble rolls around.  That said, I can usually make hey around bubble time as most people still are trying to ensure the cash first and foremost.  I do, however, need to figure out a way to accumulate a few more chips early on without taking on too much risk.  Really need to read up and focus on this. 

 

4) I still can't control myself against wicked LAGs and calling stations.  They're oh so easy to spot and oh so tempting to try and double through.  The problem is that I'm too eager to achieve this and I'll put myself in a bad situation against them.  The other night, I have AQo in the BB.  Folds around to the LAG on the button who just limps this time.  I raise it 5x and he calls.  The flop completely misses me, but he calls my c-bet.  Turn is another blank and I get it all in against the guy. He calls...he has nothing but a gutter and two live cards and, well, enough said there.  I need to pay special attention to this next point:

 

5) The correct approach is still to "out patience" the field.  In SNGs, I've had my best runs of positive results when I take the approach of just trying to be more patient than the rest of the field.  Yeah, you have to get aggressive in certain situations, but you get nowhere when you are playing speculative and often dominated hands like QJs, AT, etc.  And you have to be willing to lay some hands down - especially those where you are trying to preflop raise just to take it down.  As it gets closer to the bubble, I'll raise with any pair and most big to moderate aces, but if I'm played back at in these spots, it's often worth laying it down.  You simply don't have the utility to call here with your stack in most situations. 

 

6) Aggression on the bubble.  Probably the best piece of advice I got out of Fischman's book a couple years back was that you can be aggressive on the bubble and build or repair a stack because so many people are overly cautious.  Yes, if your stack is short and you get too frisky, you can get looked up, and you can always run into a monster.  But simple 2.5x raises can often be good enough here - enabling you to steal the blinds without risking much of what you've got left.  And if you're short, you often still have enough utility to shove - your 1200 chip stack can still be scary enough to someone with 3000 chips to deter them from coming along. 

 

Rambling.  Probably incoherent in spots.  But this is what I'm experiencing.  It's a noticeable shift from $10 and $20 events, in terms of the level of the opposition.  The strategy and approach is still the same, though. 

 

 

Bubble Dilemma

$30 Sit-n-Go.  After flopping a set early, running into a flush and getting away as cheaply as possible (villain checked the river, holding the nuts, and I checked behind), I'm shortstacked and card dead for most of this event.  Player to my immediate right has built a stack and is playing aggressively, raising whenever he's first to the pot and in mid-to-late position.  The times he's been looked up, his holdings have been, well, fair at best.

 

Down to ~350 chips at 50/100, I double up three times and get back into things.  When we get to the bubble and the hand in question, here are the stack sizes. 

 

UTG:  95 (yes, ninety-five)

Button: ~3000

SB: ~ 6900

BB (me): ~3500

 

UTG and Button fold.  SB shoves.  I look down at QQ. 

 

In a normal situation, this is a super-easy call.  He's overshoved several times already, and I feel it's quite likely I'm ahead here. 

 

Shove or Fold?

 

Isn't this just a question of your goals - i.e. are you trying to cash first, then trying to win, or are you trying to win and willing to take this opportunity to double up and take the chip lead?