Equals...
I'm a bit tired today.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Thursday, August 14, 2008
I'm a wuss.
Clearly, I'm a wuss. Why? Because I'm considering ditching my self-inflicted Betway challenge. For two good reasons. Maybe three. We'll see if I come up with a third one after I write about the two big ones.
1. I'm not a professional poker player. I'm a recreational poker player who likes making a little bit of extra money off of poker. I work full time and I have quite a few other social activities that I like to keep outside of poker. Setting a goal of playing a large volume of hands has effectively made me feel stressed whenever I'm not playing poker and the whole point with being a recreational poker player is that I'm supposed to be able to not play poker at all and not even think about it, and this has certainly not been the case in the last week. See, I'm a bit obsessive about efficiency. I get restless when just sitting about doing nothing. If I'm at an airport, I get very very bothered by not having a book to read, because I feel like hours of my life are just draining away and I'm not spending them wisely. If we're watching a TV show and there's a commercial break I start to look around the room for stuff to do. Like watering plants. Maybe tidying up a bit. Or playing with the cat. Or anything. Because even a few minutes not spent doing something means I'm wasting my life.
That's the kind of mentality my poor wife has to live with.
So, throw an artificial goal of playing "as many hands of poker as possible in the next three months" into the mix, and you have a very stressed individual. Every time I'm at home and technically have some spare time, I feel like I have to play poker. Yes, have to. Not a healthy attitude. Not a social attitude.
Not a good attitude.
And it's self-inflicted, and I knew it would be this way. I knew this, because I essentially made the same mistake last year when I was going for Supernova status at Stars. And it's dumb, dumb, dumb. Like, really dumb.
So, to sum up reason #1: The way my brain works means that taking on any task that makes my time efficiency obsession go into manic Gremlin mode is a bad idea.
2. Game selection isn't that great at Betway.
It's just that easy. I play chiefly $100NL, and some $200NL when I find good tables. And while there's no doubt that there are bad players at Betway, and I believe I have an edge on most of my opponents and can mostly avoid the ones I don't have an edge on, the truth of it is that there are better games on other sites. There are typically 6 $200NL games going, usually with 4-5 people in line, and most of them are regulars of varying skill. And even if I have an edge on a regular player, I'd rather play someone clueless.
I've yet to make a definitive decision, but I've taken a poker timeout for two days now (and I won't play tonight either because of a party that my company is throwing) and I guess I'll see how I feel about it after that. No matter what happens, I've cleared $1,000 of the deposit bonus, so there's always that boon.
I want to take this opportunity to reiterate what I've said many times before: Thank god I'm not an online pro.
That is all.
PS.
Reason #3: I don't like their software. It's not "bad" per se, it just doesn't stand up to Stars. Why can't all sites be like Stars? *cries a bitter tear*
1. I'm not a professional poker player. I'm a recreational poker player who likes making a little bit of extra money off of poker. I work full time and I have quite a few other social activities that I like to keep outside of poker. Setting a goal of playing a large volume of hands has effectively made me feel stressed whenever I'm not playing poker and the whole point with being a recreational poker player is that I'm supposed to be able to not play poker at all and not even think about it, and this has certainly not been the case in the last week. See, I'm a bit obsessive about efficiency. I get restless when just sitting about doing nothing. If I'm at an airport, I get very very bothered by not having a book to read, because I feel like hours of my life are just draining away and I'm not spending them wisely. If we're watching a TV show and there's a commercial break I start to look around the room for stuff to do. Like watering plants. Maybe tidying up a bit. Or playing with the cat. Or anything. Because even a few minutes not spent doing something means I'm wasting my life.
That's the kind of mentality my poor wife has to live with.
So, throw an artificial goal of playing "as many hands of poker as possible in the next three months" into the mix, and you have a very stressed individual. Every time I'm at home and technically have some spare time, I feel like I have to play poker. Yes, have to. Not a healthy attitude. Not a social attitude.
Not a good attitude.
And it's self-inflicted, and I knew it would be this way. I knew this, because I essentially made the same mistake last year when I was going for Supernova status at Stars. And it's dumb, dumb, dumb. Like, really dumb.
So, to sum up reason #1: The way my brain works means that taking on any task that makes my time efficiency obsession go into manic Gremlin mode is a bad idea.
2. Game selection isn't that great at Betway.
It's just that easy. I play chiefly $100NL, and some $200NL when I find good tables. And while there's no doubt that there are bad players at Betway, and I believe I have an edge on most of my opponents and can mostly avoid the ones I don't have an edge on, the truth of it is that there are better games on other sites. There are typically 6 $200NL games going, usually with 4-5 people in line, and most of them are regulars of varying skill. And even if I have an edge on a regular player, I'd rather play someone clueless.
I've yet to make a definitive decision, but I've taken a poker timeout for two days now (and I won't play tonight either because of a party that my company is throwing) and I guess I'll see how I feel about it after that. No matter what happens, I've cleared $1,000 of the deposit bonus, so there's always that boon.
I want to take this opportunity to reiterate what I've said many times before: Thank god I'm not an online pro.
That is all.
PS.
Reason #3: I don't like their software. It's not "bad" per se, it just doesn't stand up to Stars. Why can't all sites be like Stars? *cries a bitter tear*
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Published Article at BillRini.com
Bill Rini made a post yesterday offering to spread the love for potentially unknown poker bloggers by accepting articles that he could publish on his site and link back to the author. Being the shameless attention whore that I am, I put in some effort and this was the result. It touches on a topic I've written about before (in the blog post "Reaching Enough"). Right now, it's me and Tommy Angelo who have had stuff put up there. A tough act to follow, but I feel honored for even being considered. Thanks, Bill.
If you're one of my regular readers (I think we've established that there are at least four of you now), please go to Bill's site and read the article. If you're new here because of the article over there, welcome - comments are enabled and I'd be happy to hear from you.
Also, I guess this firmly cements this as a poker blog... I had some initial idea that I'd write about other stuff, but I suppose I should stick with what I know. Ah, well.
If you're one of my regular readers (I think we've established that there are at least four of you now), please go to Bill's site and read the article. If you're new here because of the article over there, welcome - comments are enabled and I'd be happy to hear from you.
Also, I guess this firmly cements this as a poker blog... I had some initial idea that I'd write about other stuff, but I suppose I should stick with what I know. Ah, well.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Last Night's Crazy Game
Last night, a private cash game for some of the regulars of Cardschat was planned. The idea was that everyone save their PokerStars hand histories and send them to the organizer (Zachvac) so that he can compile it, and then have someone - I don't think it's been decided on who, yet - make a video commentary using a hand replayer and all hole cards shown.
I wasn't really sure I could make it originally, but there were some last minute drop-outs so I joined in for a little while. Given that that the stakes were pretty low for all of us, that it was a game where everyone at the table knew that everyone were pretty solid players, and last but not least that there would be a video made out of the resulting hands, the game was sure to be wild. I fully expected it to be.
I was not disappointed.
The pedagogical value of this video might be, ehm, questionable, but it should be amusing. Light 3-bets? I think Zach was running at 20%. Limper? Raise any-two to "punish the limper." Raiser and a cold-caller? Squeeze with any-two.
Given that I expected the game to be this way, I actually had time to device a game plan before even sitting down. I was going to play tight poker and just set a trap for the spewiness that was bound to ensue. I didn't need a monster to stack someone, but I wasn't going to get involved in trying to out-level my opponent's (on the 7th or so level of I-know-that-you-know-that-I-know...), either.
I spent a lot of the first few pots I was involved in just folding to raises and bets. If they were paying attention - and I have reason to believe that they did - I must have seemed weak-tight. Not a bad image to have in a game where people are hell-bent to bluff at every opportunity, let me tell you.
So I pick up AQo, open from the cut-off and Zach unsurprisingly 3-bets from the small blind. His range here is, to say the least, "wide." Everyone else has folded and it's a really easy call for me with 100BB effective stacks and 8 more BB to call. The flop comes 7-7-6, two-tone, and Zach leads out for $4.50 in a $6 pot. Now, I don't exactly have the monster I was looking for, but my hand is better than his average hand at this point, for sure. The only hands I expect him to check are monsters, so it's a bit of a relief that he bets.
I call, keeping the option to raise/shove any turn open. My range (if my weak-tight image actually held true) should be pretty strong here given the preflop call of a 3-bet and now calling the flop, also. The turn is an ace, the pot is $15, and Zach shoves for his remaining $17, and I snap-call. He turns over K-9, and I'm not the least bit surprised, heh. He figured it was a good card to bluff, which I suppose might be true.
I didn't stick around for very long, maybe 35 minutes or so, but it was a wild and fun game. I did make some lay-downs that I don't necessarily think were appropriate... I think a good argument for shoving 6-6 after what seems like an obvious squeeze could be made. And, uncharacteristically for this game, I opted against raising a flush draw on the flop (the horror!). But when you have four out of six people trying to push the entire table around, adopting a careful but maybe weak approach is never going to be a losing style, unless you completely overdo it.
If you had wanted to find the table at PokerStars, it would have been easy. All you had to do was bring up the $25NL 6-max tables and sort by average pot-size. Our table was at $15. Yep, the average pot-size was 60BB.
Fun game.
Will be interesting to see how the video turns out. And if I get berated for my weak-tight style.
I wasn't really sure I could make it originally, but there were some last minute drop-outs so I joined in for a little while. Given that that the stakes were pretty low for all of us, that it was a game where everyone at the table knew that everyone were pretty solid players, and last but not least that there would be a video made out of the resulting hands, the game was sure to be wild. I fully expected it to be.
I was not disappointed.
The pedagogical value of this video might be, ehm, questionable, but it should be amusing. Light 3-bets? I think Zach was running at 20%. Limper? Raise any-two to "punish the limper." Raiser and a cold-caller? Squeeze with any-two.
Given that I expected the game to be this way, I actually had time to device a game plan before even sitting down. I was going to play tight poker and just set a trap for the spewiness that was bound to ensue. I didn't need a monster to stack someone, but I wasn't going to get involved in trying to out-level my opponent's (on the 7th or so level of I-know-that-you-know-that-I-know...), either.
I spent a lot of the first few pots I was involved in just folding to raises and bets. If they were paying attention - and I have reason to believe that they did - I must have seemed weak-tight. Not a bad image to have in a game where people are hell-bent to bluff at every opportunity, let me tell you.
So I pick up AQo, open from the cut-off and Zach unsurprisingly 3-bets from the small blind. His range here is, to say the least, "wide." Everyone else has folded and it's a really easy call for me with 100BB effective stacks and 8 more BB to call. The flop comes 7-7-6, two-tone, and Zach leads out for $4.50 in a $6 pot. Now, I don't exactly have the monster I was looking for, but my hand is better than his average hand at this point, for sure. The only hands I expect him to check are monsters, so it's a bit of a relief that he bets.
I call, keeping the option to raise/shove any turn open. My range (if my weak-tight image actually held true) should be pretty strong here given the preflop call of a 3-bet and now calling the flop, also. The turn is an ace, the pot is $15, and Zach shoves for his remaining $17, and I snap-call. He turns over K-9, and I'm not the least bit surprised, heh. He figured it was a good card to bluff, which I suppose might be true.
I didn't stick around for very long, maybe 35 minutes or so, but it was a wild and fun game. I did make some lay-downs that I don't necessarily think were appropriate... I think a good argument for shoving 6-6 after what seems like an obvious squeeze could be made. And, uncharacteristically for this game, I opted against raising a flush draw on the flop (the horror!). But when you have four out of six people trying to push the entire table around, adopting a careful but maybe weak approach is never going to be a losing style, unless you completely overdo it.
If you had wanted to find the table at PokerStars, it would have been easy. All you had to do was bring up the $25NL 6-max tables and sort by average pot-size. Our table was at $15. Yep, the average pot-size was 60BB.
Fun game.
Will be interesting to see how the video turns out. And if I get berated for my weak-tight style.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Sunday Nights...
... carry with them this unfortunate property of being the last thing I'm consciously aware of before it's Monday morning. Now, I have it better than most people - I really like my job. But getting up in the mornings sure isn't the part about it that I enjoy.
This week has been a little "meh" in some aspects. The garden desperately needs some attention, but it seems that whenever I have the energy to give it the attention it so desperately craves, the weather gods have deemed it appropriate to let it rain. Often a lot. Then, when there's no chance in hell I'm getting out to mow the lawn (like Saturday morning, hopelessly hungover) it's nice and sunny. The afternoon approaches, and voíla! Rain.
Kein regen, bitte.
The reason I was hungover on Saturday morning was because we went over to R & J's on Friday night, for dinner and board games. There's a group of us who play a lot of board games together. In my opinion, real board games are terribly underappreciated. I mean, step away from Monopoly and Risk, people. There are many much more interesting games around. Some of my favorites include Alhambra
, Thurn & Taxis
and - recently - Rio Grande Games Carcassonne The Count Board Game
. I helpfully include the Amazon links here in case you want to buy them immediately. Please do, I think I get a percentage somehow, although I'm not sure how that works. They require a bit more strategy than monopoly does, but they make for great fun. Especially coupled with drinking but that goes with almost all activities, and given who my readers are likely to be, I'm probably preaching to the choire.
The funniest part of the evening for me happened when we were playing a game called Alias, which is not really a board game per se, but more of a pictionary-but-with-synonyms-instead-of-drawings type game. The idea is that you have 30 seconds to try to get your partner to get as many words as possible correct on the cards you have in front of you. The word was "crawl" and the dialogue between two of our contestants went like this (and I remind you there had been drinking):
"Okay, how babies get around."
"Walking."
"No, using both hands and feet."
"Cartwheels."
... and the image of an infant cartwheeling itself around the house got stuck in my head.
As for poker, I'm running pretty hot, which is awesome. It's a bit annoying that I almost never get any action with my big hands (and when I do, it seems it's more often than not when I'm holding KK vs. AA) but today alone I've gotten it all-in on the flop with the nut flush draw four times, and got there every time. That makes for a pretty good result at the end of the day, and I'm up $1,200 this weekend. I'd play more $200NL, but the game selection at those stakes just don't compare to the $100NL tables. Usually six regulars sitting around paying rake, which just isn't for me. I think I may have an edge on some of those regulars, but the tiny edge I have there vs. sitting at a table with a couple of 45+% VPIP players at the lower stakes just doesn't compare. I don't mind grinding it a bit in situations like that. I'm going to make a point of checking the $200NL tables for fish in the future though, and try to sit at them if I can find some juicy tables.
This week has been a little "meh" in some aspects. The garden desperately needs some attention, but it seems that whenever I have the energy to give it the attention it so desperately craves, the weather gods have deemed it appropriate to let it rain. Often a lot. Then, when there's no chance in hell I'm getting out to mow the lawn (like Saturday morning, hopelessly hungover) it's nice and sunny. The afternoon approaches, and voíla! Rain.
Kein regen, bitte.
The reason I was hungover on Saturday morning was because we went over to R & J's on Friday night, for dinner and board games. There's a group of us who play a lot of board games together. In my opinion, real board games are terribly underappreciated. I mean, step away from Monopoly and Risk, people. There are many much more interesting games around. Some of my favorites include Alhambra
, Thurn & Taxis and - recently - Rio Grande Games Carcassonne The Count Board Game. I helpfully include the Amazon links here in case you want to buy them immediately. Please do, I think I get a percentage somehow, although I'm not sure how that works. They require a bit more strategy than monopoly does, but they make for great fun. Especially coupled with drinking but that goes with almost all activities, and given who my readers are likely to be, I'm probably preaching to the choire.The funniest part of the evening for me happened when we were playing a game called Alias, which is not really a board game per se, but more of a pictionary-but-with-synonyms-instead-of-drawings type game. The idea is that you have 30 seconds to try to get your partner to get as many words as possible correct on the cards you have in front of you. The word was "crawl" and the dialogue between two of our contestants went like this (and I remind you there had been drinking):
"Okay, how babies get around."
"Walking."
"No, using both hands and feet."
"Cartwheels."
... and the image of an infant cartwheeling itself around the house got stuck in my head.
As for poker, I'm running pretty hot, which is awesome. It's a bit annoying that I almost never get any action with my big hands (and when I do, it seems it's more often than not when I'm holding KK vs. AA) but today alone I've gotten it all-in on the flop with the nut flush draw four times, and got there every time. That makes for a pretty good result at the end of the day, and I'm up $1,200 this weekend. I'd play more $200NL, but the game selection at those stakes just don't compare to the $100NL tables. Usually six regulars sitting around paying rake, which just isn't for me. I think I may have an edge on some of those regulars, but the tiny edge I have there vs. sitting at a table with a couple of 45+% VPIP players at the lower stakes just doesn't compare. I don't mind grinding it a bit in situations like that. I'm going to make a point of checking the $200NL tables for fish in the future though, and try to sit at them if I can find some juicy tables.
Friday, August 8, 2008
The Origo-based Win-rate Fallacy
There's a silent misconception that I see implied in poker posts here and there around the intertubes. It's very subtle, but I definitely think it's there. The reasoning goes something like this:
"I'm a 4 ptbb/100 winning player while playing 4 tables. If I try to play 8 tables instead, my win-rate will probably go down a little, but assuming it stays more than half what it is now, I'm still making more money."
Do you see the danger in that paragraph? Like I said, it's subtle. Arguably semantic. But I think it's more than just semantics.
The potential fallacy lies in the word "half." Many people argue over their win-rates as if the lower boundary of their win-rate is zero, implying that if they play half as well, they win half as much. When I put it like this, it's fairly obvious that this isn't the case; if I play half as well as I do now (make twice as many mistakes or make twice as costly ones) my win-rate isn't going to be half of what it is now. It's very likely to be negative.
So while adding another table may indeed be profitable, there's certainly nothing guaranteeing this just because you're winning at the number of tables you're playing now. I make this post to serve as a reminder to all (three) of my readers that our edge in these games is much, much smaller than we think. If we compromise that edge in one way or another, we may no longer be winning players at all.
It doesn't take much for a winning 4-tabling player to become a losing 8-tabler ("tabler?" is that a word? really? Ok.) All it may take is an extra distraction here and there, because our edge isn't that big. That's not to say that we shouldn't play more tables, it's just that we must not dismiss the effect of those extra dollars that we miss here and there. They may constitute our entire win-rate, and more.
"I'm a 4 ptbb/100 winning player while playing 4 tables. If I try to play 8 tables instead, my win-rate will probably go down a little, but assuming it stays more than half what it is now, I'm still making more money."
Do you see the danger in that paragraph? Like I said, it's subtle. Arguably semantic. But I think it's more than just semantics.
The potential fallacy lies in the word "half." Many people argue over their win-rates as if the lower boundary of their win-rate is zero, implying that if they play half as well, they win half as much. When I put it like this, it's fairly obvious that this isn't the case; if I play half as well as I do now (make twice as many mistakes or make twice as costly ones) my win-rate isn't going to be half of what it is now. It's very likely to be negative.
So while adding another table may indeed be profitable, there's certainly nothing guaranteeing this just because you're winning at the number of tables you're playing now. I make this post to serve as a reminder to all (three) of my readers that our edge in these games is much, much smaller than we think. If we compromise that edge in one way or another, we may no longer be winning players at all.
It doesn't take much for a winning 4-tabling player to become a losing 8-tabler ("tabler?" is that a word? really? Ok.) All it may take is an extra distraction here and there, because our edge isn't that big. That's not to say that we shouldn't play more tables, it's just that we must not dismiss the effect of those extra dollars that we miss here and there. They may constitute our entire win-rate, and more.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Regarding Asshats.
The Up For Poker Blog reports that they, like many other blogs and poker related websites (including CardsChat) have been banned from Google. Apparently, one theory now circulating is that this is because Focus on the Family - from here on out known as the Asshats - have been targetting poker related sites and reporting them to Google.
This is because they're asshats.
I don't know if it's true. But even if it isn't, they're still asshats. This would just make them the crême de la crême of asshats.
By the way, visit Up For Poker if you haven't. It's a good blog. Also check out the other links to the right; I really do read all of them. And if I can, you can too.
/FP
This is because they're asshats.
I don't know if it's true. But even if it isn't, they're still asshats. This would just make them the crême de la crême of asshats.
By the way, visit Up For Poker if you haven't. It's a good blog. Also check out the other links to the right; I really do read all of them. And if I can, you can too.
/FP
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