(almost) Every Hand Revealed

I played the $50k guarantee ($75 buyin) on Pacific this morning (3:30am), courtesy of a free ticket. I managed a pretty deep run, and was actually chipleader at a few points. Sadly I made a few bad errors and had a difficult run towards the end, and ended up with a min cash of $140. This was sadly a long way short of the $12.5k 1st prize that I was aiming for.

I suspect my lack of NL tournament experience showed at times, and in general I did run good in the early to middle stages. I'd be interested in some expert comments.

Here is pretty much the whole tournament laid bare. These are the key pots (all pots where I won or lost 10 or more big blinds). Starting stack was 5000, 10/20 blinds, 20 minute levels.




Individual hand comments:

35: This was the first hand of the tournament. Gotta love flopping two pair and turning a boat. The river bet was an attempt to look bluffy by overbetting the pot. It's tough to get good value so early.
JTdd: Getting busy in late position here. As you can see, the play was pretty retarded for a $75 tournament. Incredible that he can go bust with a single pair here.
54o: Another two pair. This time I am probably giving the flush draw too good a price, but I wanted to keep the pot under control with such a vulnerable hand. The donk bet on the river was a dead giveaway - I probably would have value bet significantly more if he checked to me.
TT: This is probably my limit play getting the better of me. When an overcard flops my pair, I like to raise the flop and see a cheap showdown. I think this early I should probably give the flop donk bet respect, as the players are generally pretty obvious. Dropping so much on the hand was pretty poor, but I was suspiscious of the small bets.
QTo: Getting busy on the button again, and again it works out well. I probably could have got better value out here. Turn check was an attempt to get him to lead the river, but maybe I just need to play straightforwardly and extract maximum value from his K or A.
35hh: Middle pair on the flop, plus a gutshot on the turn. I thought the combination of the turned ace and the rivered pair and flush made it a good spot to bluff, but it didn't come off. I think he folds without an ace.
J9cc: Pretty straightforward. Is there any point in value betting this river? I suspect not.
QQ: Another nice hand. Should I bet the turn? I figured the pot was big enough to get a decent value bet in on the river anyway.
TT: A monster hand, which basically set up my run. It's a cooler for AA, but A2dd got what he deserved.
KQdd: A bit cheeky to fire the second barrel here, but it worked out ok. I shutdown if he calls, obviously.
JJ: Always getting it in versus the shortstack here, and run good enough to river my two outer.
J6dd: Just got drawn into this hand, and hit the wrong outs on the river. I don't really think I could have played it differently.
A8o: Weird hand. Scary board, but the minbets on flop and turn made it pretty clear that he had nothing. I might have folded a bigger river bet, gutshot being the only real possibility for a good hand.
TT: A lot of limping on this table. I liked to punish this tendency from late position. Villain was short, so race was inevitable.
JQss: I should explain that asbo was the megafish on this table. He open limped any two cards, and liked to donk any flop and often followed up on the turn and/or river. But he often folded when put under pressure. After the turn raise, I have to credit him for a hand, and just call for my double belly outs.
AJcc: Overcards plus flushdraw I figure good enough for this allin checkraise. My equity was certainly enough unless he has a set or big pair. I saw a lot of light calls during this tournament.
KQo: Did I mention that asbo was retarded? He claimed this was a bluff gone wrong, but that does not explain his final call on the river. He copped a lot of shit from the table after this.
AQdd: Huge, huge hand. Flop and turn were obviously semibluffs. The river 2.5x pot bluff was just completely inexplicable. I just couldn't put him on the backdoor flush, and surely sets would have done something smaller sooner? Whatever, it was a big call and put me into the tournament chiplead. The guy gave me shit about it for ages, basically calling me a fish for calling his retarded bluff, but whatever.
AQo: Did I mention that asbo was retarded? Yeah, I guess I did. I'll isoraise him all day, and float his inevitable donk bets liberally. Amazingly, he was still building a big stack by pushing the rest of the table around with these obvious and repeated bluffs.
A7o: Isoraising the fish again (the rest of the table were pretty weak, notably the BB here). My top pair is good 90% of the time here. Turn raise, because my kicker problem went away. Unfortunately it came back on the river. Cest la vie.
AQcc: Muppet from previous hand. Shortstack shove is quite likely to be air, but if not my pair outs ought to be good.
JQo: Detecting a pattern here? I like this button raise, especially when it folds out the other limper and leaves me with asbo once again. I had seen this river bluff so often, this was an instacall. After this hand, I hit my peak of 80k in chips which put me comfortably chipleader, with maybe 150 players left.
88: To be honest, I should find a fold here after the limp-reraise from the very tight player. But I figured he might have AK often enough that it was worth calling the short shove.
AJcc: Should probably fold the flop checkraise here. This guy hadn't got too out of line. Turn bet was obviously too big to go fishing for a flush. But part of me still thought that he had air and was just making a play against my presumed blind steal.

After that hand, there was a hell of a long time where I picked up nothing. Very little preflop, and nothing at all to play beyond the flop. Few opportunities to steal (or none). Worse however, I was moved tables leaving my megafish and assorted weak tighties behind.

KQdd: Preflop is fine. On the flop I just need to fold with the guy behind me. Raising was asking for trouble, and I got it. Shut down once he called my raise.
72o: Nice hand to bust out on eh? Flopping top pair is all very nice, but I probably shouldn't push it with four players seeing the flop. The raise is questionable to say the least. Once AAMERICK shoved over the top, I recalled the KQdd hand and figured he could be making a play recalling the same hand. The bet size certainly looked like it didn't want to see a call. Daft way to play a set, but perhaps an even dafter way to play 72o. Note in my defence: I had been playing for over five hours by this stage, having woken at 3:30am to play.

It's notable that I went from 200/400 to 800/1600 (6 levels) winning only one hand of note. So if my early tournament was a heater (you bet), then my late tournament was probably a cooler.

A punch in the guts

45 minutes, $400 down the toilet. It happened so fast I want to punch someone.

Here are the highlights from one table:

Reevaluating opening range

Looking at the stats for my last post made me have a little think about whether I am playing a little too laggy, so I thought I would go back to basics and have a look at my opening ranges.

To keep things simple, I am looking at 6max fixed limit games from 1/2 up. Initially, I am simply looking at my opening range UTG or UTG+1. This opening range more or less calibrates my range in other positions and with other action (limpers, raises in front etc).

Using Holdem Manager's filters, I selected for these conditions and came up with about 11000 hands which is not a bad sample (about 100 of each offsuit hand, 30 of each suited and 50 of each pair). Then I can see what I normally do with each hand in these positions, and what the average result is.

My current opening range is something along these lines: 22+, A7o+, A5s+, K9o+, K7s+, QTs+, QJo, suited connectors down to 87. Sometimes I also play the other suited aces, QTo, Q9s, J9s and a few other marginal hands.

This is a fair bit laggier than the Stox recommendation, which is roughly: 55+, A7s+, A9o+, K9s+, KQo, QTs+, J9s+, T9s, 98s.

Looking at my database, I discovered the following interesting facts:

• All the pocket pairs are profitable
  
• Almost all the suited aces are profitable, except A2s.
• Suited kings are profitable down to K9 (with the exception of an unusually bad KQ). Lower kings are marginal but not bad.
• Suited connectors and 1 gappers are basically marginal all the way down. Everything else is not worth worrying about.
  
• A8o and lower are pretty clearly unprofitable.
• KTo is one of my most profitable unsuited hands (weird, must be an outlier I guess). KJo and KQo are also pretty solid winners.
• All the other unsuited hands are marginal at best. QJ is maybe the only one that is playable.

The conclusion I draw from this is that it is pretty clear that I need to tighten up all around, except for perhaps loosening the small suited aces.

The opening range I come up with is this:

33+, A2s+, ATo+, K9s+, KTo+, QTs+, QJo, JTs.

If I'm at a tight table I can add the following: 22, A8o+, K5s+, K9o, Q9s, QTo, suited connectors and gappers down to 54 and 64. But in general all these hands will do nothing except for increase variance.

Note that this analysis is based on my stats, which means it is heavily influenced by the way I have played these hands postflop. Obviously, the better you play postflop, the more hands you can play pre. I suspect I don't play all that well out of position, hence the need to tighten up in these early spots.

Am I a winning player?

A couple of days of run good does wonders for the confidence. Yesterday was a pretty solid $300 winner. Some of it was running good, but I also made some good plays like carefully calculating my outs to call two cold on the turn with bottom pair and a gutshot (catching the gutshot to win a huge pot). I also made a good call with king high to a weird donk bet on the river.

For a long time I have been wondering if I am actually a winning player or not. Obviously I am if you include rakeback and bonuses and all the rest, but I'd really like to think I am winning at the table as well. For a long time my winnings were almost excusively down to bonuses, and I was actually a significant loser at 1/2. At 2/4, initial success succumbed to a massive downswing to take me into negative territory there as well.

Looking afresh at my results over the last six months, I think I can say with moderate confidence that I am a winning fixed limit player at the tables as well now.


A few things to note:

• I am definitely a LAG. Much looser than bort for example. I am probably verging on Loose/bad at 1/2, perhaps because I am not playing "properly" due to the money being small.
• 3/6 seems to be a sweet spot, but in general it is interesting that I don't win any more at lower stakes than at those higher stakes.
• 0.5/1 is down to a huge cooler while trying to qualify for a freeroll ticket on Titan with a very small roll. Why I was playing 0.25/0.50 I have no idea :)
• HEM only imports Cake hands after May 5th (new file format), and therefore my massive April heater on RedStar isn't included. That should boost the 3/6 stats a bit further when they eventually support the old hand histories.
  
• Despite playing quite a lot of hours, I actually play relatively few hands. Many grinders would play this many hands in one month. My preference is to play no more than 3 tables, or 4 at a stretch. I will never comprehend the 12 table grinders.
• I think it's a fairly representative sample, since it includes the tail end of the huge downswing at the start of the year and the recent downswing as well as the April-May heater.
  
• My stats over "all hands" is not nearly as good as these for the last six months. But that just means I'm getting better, right?
  

Downswing officially over

My last peak prior to the big downswing was June 7th, and I am very happy to have eclipsed that mark. One month in the doldrums I can handle - it's when it stretches out to two and three that it drives you up the wall.

Bad news this month though in that RTR have dropped the RedStar rake race, which is very bad news. Choosing a Cake room seems to be a bit of a lottery, since you can only have one room with rakeback and the promotions change so much from month to month. I have a deposit bonus to finish, but once that's done I may need to find another room or two.

June summary: rakeback FTW!

In something of a miracle, I have ended June in (marginal) profit. I started the month with a BR of $7909 and finished with $7964 for a princely profit of $45. I actually owe myself some dividend from last month so that will probably drop a little bit.

That result is actually pretty good, considering that I found myself in a $1500 hole at one point. It was, of course, rakeback that saved me - I have a policy of only adding rakeback to my account at the end of each month. I made about $470 in rakeback and another $400 in rake races, along with $100 of the RedStar signup bonus. That means that I lost over ($900) on the tables, which is not a very marvellous result.

I had a nice short shot at 5/10Euro the other night with one of my favourite fish which provided something of a boost. I resisted the temptation to join a very juicy looking 10/20Euro table yesterday. I think I want to get the BR to $10k before I get too deep in those kinds of games.

By the way, my Eurolinx withdrawal finally came through after nearly a month of waiting. I'm really hoping they have sorted out their problems, because it is still one of my favourite sites to play with some great races and promotions. I've just requested another withdrawal to keep a minimum bankroll on the site, and am hoping this one comes through much more quickly.

PLOtastic

I rocked up for a $100 PLO donkament at Burswood on Tuesday with a pretty solid understanding that I suck at PLO. I was joined by none other than TiocfaidhArLa from "Poker Career Downunder", who flew in - scheduled to arrive at the airport at 6:35, made it to the casino by about 6:55 (tourney started at 6:30) and got to his stack only 150 down. It was a pleasure to finally catch up, and we managed to have a good chat over a beer as well as playing a bit of (lol)limitaments afterwards. He busted out of the PLO shortly before me.

Played pretty tight for quite a while and found no playable hands. My first raggy AA hand I limped in EP intending to RR if the opportunity arose. Alas, it was called in about 5 places and I had to release it on the flop. The second AA hand I raised in MP, called from the button. Flop top set, but don't get paid. Maybe I could have checked it since the board was raggy but NM.

First really big hand was AKQ9, maybe double suited, maybe button. I Raised, flop goes 3 way. Flop KK9. Checked to me, I bet out nearly pot. One caller on my left (has me covered). Turn A (oh yes), I bet, he calls, river rags out and we get it all in. MHIG: he says he had K9. A couple more small pots and I am up to nearly 11k in chips with average still at 3.5k.

Then I lose a bit to a short stack, my KK53hhcc against his KQQxss when he makes a spade flush on the river. Move to a new table and the next big hand (cooler): I have AKJJss, pot it, flop goes 3 ways. Flop is JT6dd. I pot, call, guy on my right with Tourettes (but seemed like a really good bloke) raises AI, I call, other player folds. He has TT with the diamond draw. Diamond comes on the turn, river does not fill my boat. After that, I wasn't quite crippled but pretty badly damaged. I lost another AIPF against a dominated short stack with something like AKKJ to his KQTx with him making some stupid straight or something. My really bad hand (getting a bit short) was to raise KJT9cc, flop comes ATxhh, and I pot in an attempt to take it down. He RR me all-in, and I fold (he showed AQTx no hearts). I probably had the odds to call for the gutshot, but elected to limp on with my remaining pittance. It didn't last too long - I got it in good heads up once again but got drawn out on the turn.

Not too unhappy with how I played. If my top set of jacks had held up, I would have been in pretty good position to final table and maybe cash. And of course it was about 100 times better than the last rebuy PLO where i didn't win a single pot.

After that, I played 90 minutes or so of limit. Had pretty good position on two truly awful players. One middle aged lady (regular) who limp calls almost any cards preflop and cold calls most raises, and plays cards virtually face up postflop. The other was a chubby guy from Victoria who sounded like he plays a lot but just played so bad, calling down bottom pair to bets and raises multi-way etc. Anyway I started by losing nearly 100 when I raise JJ in MP, and get called by the usual suspects. I bet all the way on a board of tiny cards, and get raised on the end with the board reading something like 23459. I can probably fold easily here, but the pot was huge so I called to see not one but two players catching 6 high gutshots on the end (to be fair, one of them had a small pair to go with it, but still).

After that I won a decent pot with 77ui on a K25Tx board. I Cbet the flop (3 way), and the turn went check-check, so I value bet the river. I got raised and nearly folded since chubby was AI and the sidepot was tiny, but I call and he can't beat chubby's pair of 2s so MHIG. After that I won another decent hand and left exactly even to the dollar. But wow, the standard of play on that table was terrible. There were a couple of regs at the other end of the table who were decent, everyone else (except for TFAL sitting in the Jesus seat on my right) was either a passive calling station or a rock.

footnote:

Playing poker with Tourettes must be a particular challenge. The guy in the tournament was twitching constantly, occasionally shaking his head dramatically, and sometimes letting out an unintentional expletive. I didn't really try too hard to get a read on his tics, but I'm sure they must be readable.