A fun hand

Capped three ways on all streets! Who says poker is dead?


Hand Information

Game:	Limit
Room:
Blind:	$1.50 / $3

Table Information

Seat 1:	cakeseat1	($156)
Seat 2:	cakeseat2	($256)	Dealer
Seat 3:	cakeseat3	($180.25)	Small Blind
Seat 8:	Hero	($84)	Big Blind
Seat 9:	cakeseat9	($63.25)
Seat 10:	cakeseat10	($116.46)

Dealt to Hero

Preflop (Pot:4.50)

cakeseat9

RAISE

$6

cakeseat10

RAISE

$9

cakeseat1

FOLD

cakeseat2

FOLD

cakeseat3

FOLD

Hero

RAISE

$12

cakeseat9

CALL

$6

cakeseat10

CALL

$3

Flop (Pot: $40.50)

Hero

BET

$3

cakeseat9

CALL

$3

cakeseat10

RAISE

$6

Hero

RAISE

$9

cakeseat9

CALL

$6

cakeseat10

RAISE

$12

Hero

CALL

$3

cakeseat9

CALL

$3

Turn (Pot: $85.50)

Hero

BET

$6

cakeseat9

CALL

$6

cakeseat10

RAISE

$12

Hero

RAISE

$18

cakeseat9

CALL

$12

cakeseat10

RAISE

$24

Hero

CALL

$6

cakeseat9

CALL

$6

River (Pot: $175.50)

Hero

BET

$6

cakeseat9

CALL

$6

cakeseat10

RAISE

$12

Hero

RAISE

$18

cakeseat9

ALL-IN

$9.25

cakeseat10

RAISE

$24

Hero

CALL

$6

ShowDown:

cakeseat10 SHOWS

Hero SHOWS

cakeseat9 SHOWS

Hero	win the pot: $158

Winrates and idiots

Sometime I wonder how a good winrate can be "only" 1BB per 100 hands. I wonder this, particularly when a bonafide idiot comes along and hands you about five of them in a single hand.



The only downside is that he left the table before I could tag him..

Back in the saddle

Rumours of my demise have been somewhat exaggerated.

After doing my best to annihilate my online bankroll, I took another hiatus from poker of several weeks. Having dropped significantly more than half of my bankroll, and probably 80% of the online roll I was basically on the felt as far as online poker was concerned. I did actually manage to zero all of my poker site accounts, but still had a bit sitting in Neteller.

A couple of weeks ago then, I decided to deposit $100 to play a $10 rebuy on Red Star. I went deep in the tourney, but not deep enough, basically just recovering my buyin. That left me with $78 after losing some in a cash game. Since then, I have run like God, starting with single tables of 1/2 and working up. In two weeks, I would estimate that I have probably won around 300BB at all stakes.

In the context of the cooler of the last few months it's still a pretty tiny dent, but gee it feels like such a long time since I've run this good.

Sorry, can't help it..

http://www.holdemmanager.net
Limit Holdem $2(BB) Prima Game#3435842680

ShotintheDark ($98.20)
Hero ($35.52)
zappa12 ($215)
LuigiVampa ($129)

ShotintheDark posts (SB) $1
Hero posts (BB) $2

Dealt to Hero Ad Ah
fold,
LuigiVampa raises to $4
ShotintheDark raises to $6
Hero raises to $8
LuigiVampa calls $4
ShotintheDark calls $2
FLOP ($24) 9d 5h Ks
ShotintheDark checks
Hero bets $2
LuigiVampa calls $2
ShotintheDark calls $2
TURN ($30) 9d 5h Ks 5d
ShotintheDark checks
Hero bets $4
LuigiVampa folds
ShotintheDark calls $4
RIVER ($38) 9d 5h Ks 5d 6s
ShotintheDark checks
Hero bets $4
ShotintheDark raises to $8
Hero calls $4
Hero shows Ad Ah
(Pre 81%, Flop 90.0%, Turn 95.5%)

ShotintheDark shows 6d 6h
(Pre 19%, Flop 10.0%, Turn 4.5%)

ShotintheDark wins $51.30

We resume our normal programming

Ok, so a few days of running good have been well and truly reversed.

Exhibit A: the one outer

Fun times

It's a very long time since I've felt really good about a hand.



The irony is that I had only just won two big pots by calling down bluff raises on the river from the same player.

Good beat!!

This makes for a nice change:



and this:



especially coming after this:



and this:

Still here, nothing new to report

It's been a while. I'm still here, still playing occasionally, still running like a warmed up turd.

It's been a remarkable run. I've played 29 months of online poker now, and the last three months have each been worse than any month prior to those three. And two of those three were three times as bad as any previous. The net result is I have lost almost exactly 50% of my bankroll in three months. The total losses in BB terms are probably in the vicinity of 1000, and bonuses and rakeback are not remotely close to covering it.

I took good advice, taking a break and slowing down my play only to come back to this sort of shit:

My graph now looks like this:



As you can see, there's really been no let up. The situation now is that I cannot afford to play the stakes that would recover the losses in anything resembling a reasonable time. As a result, I am now essentially a casual player only. I'll still try to get to the casino occasionally, as the 10/20 there is juicy and I can but hope my turd ball does not extend to the actual felt.

Running good when it really Matters

baby Alexander, born last night:

What a great way to put the rest of the world in perspective.

A litany of shit

Here is a snapshot of how my last two months or so have gone. It continues to get worse, and I will very soon not have an online bankroll left. Oh well, it was (sort of) fun while it lasted




I didn't play all of these perfectly, but there is some element of kick in the arse to almost every hand.

Good luck on the tables everyone. God knows you need it.

Bad.

So bad. Horrible.

This describes the last month, the last week, the last hour.

The worst month I have ever had by a factor of three. The worst week I have ever had. The worst hour I have ever had. My 2010 profit flatlined.

My graph now looks like a teepee, and my ability to play the games I want to is in some jeopardy.

I think I might be too busy to play poker for a while.

February summary

Ok, it looks like I have hit my targets, but not before taking a bit of a bruising in the last couple of sessions. I tend to tilt a bit when my sessions start badly, reacting by getting looser and more aggressive (i.e the opposite of what I should do).

Nevertheless, it was another strong month, with a net profit of $2236 , consisting of $450 from a RedStar rake chase, $150 from a deposit bonus and nearly $1000 in rakeback. As you might gather, it's been a pretty heavy month at fairly high stakes (for me), and positive in that play came out in the black to the tune of around $636 - that was hammered by a loss of nearly $700 in the last couple of sessions.

The month was also marked by another of my horriffic $1000 coolers mid-month, but compensated by a $1000 heater the next day and a pile of rakeback.

RedStar is great value for me right now. Between the bonus, rake chase and rakeback, I am netting nearly 70% of my rake back. That's pretty great value.

I have a pretty busy few weeks coming up, with the start of semester and all that jazz, so I'm expecting to take some time off from the pokers. Except for a live tilt or two at the ANZPT in Perth, I might even try to take two or three weeks off from poker completely. Now that is a real challenge!

So I look down at AA

So I look down at a beautiful pair of aces (spades and diamonds) and raise (playing 8/16 6max limit). Only the big blind calls. Flop comes down JdTc6c, bet, call. Turn 9c - an ugly card, but I bet, and he calls. River Qc. Check, check.

He turns over 8h5c for the runner-runner 6th nut flush, which is why poker is clearly a game of skill. Or limit is, at least.

For his next trick, he runs down my KK with the mighty T6 suited.

Table selection shmabel selection

This month I am chasing a $450 rake chase bonus on Red Star, and as a result have played nearly all my sessions on there (Cake). Apart from choosing first the tables with the high % of players to flop, I have virtually stopped table selecting - I just hop on as many tables from 3/6 to about 6/12 as I feel comfortable playing. I am pretty confident that I can beat any table at these stakes (on this site at least), and with rakeback, rake chases and a deposit bonus I am way into green territory. And I am still constantly surprised at the number of poor players who hover around the higher stakes.

Case in point was a nice little half hour heater at 6/12 which netted 25BB or so. The player on my right was an awful, awful loose passive player who would play way too many hands preflop, call too many bets and then fold the river if he didn't have a pretty strong hand. Earlier, I played with a mouthy guy at 4/8 who is a dreadful weak tight player - he plays way too tight preflop and then completely fails to get value from his monsters (his set of kings went check-check on the turn and river because someone raised him on the flop).

It's probably obvious from reading the above that I am running well - up nearly $2500 since the last cooler just over a week ago. I am planning to take a bit of a break once I hit this month's $2500 rake target, since I have been playing way too much and have a lot of other stuff going on in my life.

Insane swings

I had a $1000 cooler yesterday in the space of a couple of hours, mainly at $3/6. 150BB is the very definition of severe. It was pretty painful stuff - one of those days when your monsters get coolered or just win the blinds, and your steals and marginal hands get threebet mercilessly. I tilted a bit by refusing to quit when I probably should have, even though I don't think I was making bad decisions.

Today was a completely different story, winning almost all of it back again mainly at 3/6. It makes such a difference to hit a few flops and the occasional runner-runner. Not to mention idiots who will call four bets cold with pocket deuces.

The swings are a little bit insane, and are a little bit hard to take. To give you some context, in real life I still have a crappy five year old $200 CRT telly because I'm too tight to spend $700 on a new one. So $1k in 2 hours is kindof a big deal. Though I must say $1000 down followed by $1000 up is much easier to deal with than the reverse.

On rake, rakeback and going pro

I had a little look at some more stats from the last year. In particular, I wanted to look at the rake I'm paying to play fixed limit at my main sites: Red Star on the Cake network, and Purple Lounge on Microgaming. I have 33% rakeback on Red Star, and a VIP deal which is superficially considerably more than that on Purple Lounge. I play mainly 2/4 to 5/10 Euro on Purple lounge, and 3/6 and 5/10 USD on Red Star.

On Cake, both 3/6 and 5/10 are costing me roughly 3 big bets per 100 hands in rake. I get 33% of that back automatically, and probably another 15% through races and bonuses.

On Microgaming, I was somewhat surprised to discover that 2/4 and 3/6 are costing me almost 5 big bets per 100 hands. At that rate, I need 60% VIP in order to make the equivalent of what I get on Cake (not including the Cake races and bonuses). My deal is good, but it's not that good. 5/10 is a little better, costing around 3.8BB/100 in rake but I find that the variance at that level is a bit steep, even when the play seems terrible.

In play, I actually made a small loss of around 0.5BB/100 on Microgaming in the last 12 months (easily covered by the VIP bonus but still not great), while on Cake I made a profit of 1.7BB/100. It felt to me like I was just running bad on Micro and good on Cake, but looking at the numbers it seems like the difference can be entirely explained by the 1-2BB/100 difference in rake between the two. I am going to have to have a think about where I am going to play over the next year.

Considering the above, I had a think about hourly rates. If I were to play 4 tables and a mix of limits of 3/6 and 5/10, I could probably make around $30 an hour or more from rakeback alone. Races and bonuses would probably add another $10-$15. Then if I actually managed to turn a profit on the tables, that would add a further $30 or maybe more based on a winrate of 1BB/100. That's over $70 an hour based on a pretty modest winrate.

It's certainly food for thought. I don't think I would ever consider doing this full time, because I like my job, and because playing 40 hours of poker a week could be just soul destroying. But it is interesting to see that I could probably make a pretty decent income from it if I really needed to. For now it's a handy extra bit of money from time to time, and an ability to cover some decent tournament buyins.

And it is of course always interesting to note that the poker rooms and affiliate mafia make at least as much money out of me as I do.

January summary

January turned out to be a pretty tidy month, despite a week's holiday and a couple of really nasty cooler sessions.

The net result was $2216 profit, including about $670 from rakeback and the RedStar rake chase (turning into a nice extra bankroll boost). It was actually pure coincidence that I just made the $1000 rake target to get the $150 rake chase prize (otherwise would have been just $50).

Of note is that I busted out on Purple Lounge and had to rebuy, and am continuing to take shots at the fishy 5/10EUR game but without stellar results. My first choice limits now are probably 3/6 and 6/12 in dollars and 2/4 to 5/10 in Euro. Also I played some PLO100 with pretty good results over a few sessions. PLO is definitely something I will be adding to my regular mix - time to fork out on the Holdem Manager Omaha plugin.

ANZPT qualifier fail

but all is not lost

Cliff notes on last night's action:

Beat: rebought five times in the ANZPT satellite and still finished second last
Brag: won $800 playing 10/20 limit before and after the tourney
Variance: should have stuck with Limit

For some of the time, that was the worst limit table ever (and by worst I mean best). Much of the play was short handed (4 or 5), including when I sat down, and a couple of the players were going "friendly table here, no bluffing or raising." I didn't buy into that, because I have to play my game - there's too much money on the table to deliberately play bad. I just quietly ignored them and they didn't actually complain about my (mostly) open raising preflop. Iso raising the guy on my right who limped every hand was fun, except that I was very frequently cold called on my left and sometimes in several places. I kept it friendly by chatting a lot, showing some winning hands (see, I don't bluff you), and occasionally checking down multiple streets.

The classiest bit was a four way capped hand preflop, where 63o UTG sadly found his 6 high flush was no good against Q7o in the CO (my AK had to go in the bin on the turn).

The win also came despite losing a $250 pot in a massive cooler with eights full of tens to quad tens. The guy with quads slow rolled me unintentionally I think, having genuinely thought that full house beat quads.

The tourney was not fun. I shoved JT on a flop of J98, guy has QT. I flop trip tens with my AT, and get run down by a flush. I flop top, top and get run down by not one but two flushes. I make one or two bluffy moves and get cut down each time. Just wasn't my day. Or it was my day, just not my table.

But yeah, winning 40BB in four hours of fixed limit despite a huge cooler hand is pretty good going. Shame about the tourney.

A cursory glance at a yerar's statistics

A few observations on my limit holdem stats over the last 12 months.

Hands played: 65k

BB/100 actually -0.2. Not marvellous, but certainly more than covered by rakeback.

It's actually better than that though, because I have 1.4BB/100 over 30k hands at 3/6 and 5/10 and 13BB/100 over 1k at 4/8. I lost at 0.5/1, 1/2 and 2/4, and also made statistically insignificant losses at 6/12 and 8/16 plus a big heater win at 10/20.

I wonder whether the lower stakes are causing me to play suboptimally due to a lack of sting?

End of year summary

After the fairly amazing November result, December was a bit of a downer with a net loss of nearly $900. This set back my bankroll back below the $10,000 target I had set at the start of the year. However with my overall profit sitting at around $11k, I am not too concerned.

2009 goals:

• $10k bankroll: hit, then dropped below. I'm very happy with the result, considering my roll started the year on just over $2k.
• Play more tournaments: not really - I'm finding it hard to set aside enough time to play online tourneys
• Play more big live events: the APPT teams was the biggest event I've played and provided a lot of great experience. It was good to mix it with (and outlast) some of Australia's top pros.
• Get back to 3/6 and 5/10 limit: definitely achieved. These are my staple levels in FL, including Euros on Purple Lounge.
• Get into cash NLH: Not really achieved. I've had a few shots at NLH and PLO, but not enough to be confident of beating these games.

Overall year result: net profit of around $8600. Not bad pocket money for a hobby.

WBCOOP

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! The WBCOOP is a free online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers, so register on WBCOOP to play.

Registration code: 764889

Shot taking WIN!

Ok, blog slackaments no post in donkeys. I am overdue in posting my year summary so that will come in the next day or so.

But I did have to report yesterday's awesomeness. One table of PLO100. 45 minutes. Five and a half buyins profit. Between that and some 5/10 limit, I had a $1000 day.

Here is the PLO session. The whole session was 79 hands, and I have removed the hands where I folded pre or on the flop - leaving 42 hands (giving an inkling of how good I ran).



I don't think I ever played PLO100 before, and I certainly haven't thought deeply about the game. Advice appreciated.

Rule #1: remember to run good once in a while