Pokerstars: so far, so good

I was under the impression that players at Pokerstars were better on average than other sites. TAGgier and tougher. Maybe I was wrong.

I played one table for an hour or so tonight and picked up 35BB in pretty quick time. A heater and a small sample admittedly, but the players seemed really quite bad. A couple of too aggressive (60/40 type) players, and a couple of loose/weak players (44/0 and too tight post flop).

Anyway, I've turned my $50 deposit into $120 so far and I will see how I go while finishing my deposit bonus. I probably won't stay while I have Rakeback elsewhere, but you never know.

WBCOOP!

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

The WBCOOP is an online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers.

Registration code: 470094

That's Omaha for you

... Get all the chips in on the turn holding the nut straight only to be beaten on the river card by the nut flush *and* a straight flush.

[hand history deleted because the converter doesn't recegnise it as Omaha! see comment]

In case anyone's wondering about the PF call, this is OnGame where you earn points only where you contribute to the pot. I limp a fair few hands based on point value alone, and continue only when I hit the flop fairly hard. Top pair plus OESD was hard enough for me. Turn is perfect, so I shove as I must knowing full well that a club will kill me. I could have folded those last couple of dollars comfortably knowing I was lost.

All was not doom and gloom however, as I managed to turn $10 into $70 on a $25 PLO table and stay alive on another. All up, not a bad little session.

Note that the winner hit a two outer to scoop the pot!

A poker gadget

I have been tinkering with Javascript, and have started working on a little gadget to aid the online poker player.

Have a look and tell me what you think.

My objective is to have a convenient way to visualise a player's hand ranges based on statistics. The idea is that if a villain raises 15% under the gun, you move the slider to 15 in order to visualise an approximation of the villain's range. I have four prioritised sliders - the left one has highest priority, so should be used for the smallest number and so on. You'll get the idea after you play with it for a bit.

The hand rankings are based on a 100k hand simulation of four random hands going to the river. I use four as a compromise between the ten handed sim and heads up. The hand rankings will always be a subjective consideration. I may modify the gadget to allow the selection of different hand rankings.

Comments?

Ultimately I want to include actual hand simulation against the villain's range. As in, you enter your hand (e.g KK) and get an estimate of heads up equity against the specified villain's range. I'm not sure if I would be able to do that in javascript though.

A bit of fun

Just on a whim, I signed up for a little 20-seat sit 'n go last night (3.75 with rebuys and addons). It turned out that it was a super shorthanded tournament with four seat tables. This turned out to be very interesting, and really good practice for blind stealing a sizing bets correctly. The players were almost uniformly dismal (to be expected at that buyin), playing either weak tight or loose passive. I was able to steal blinds and bluff the flop at will, and was given excellent odds to chase straights and flushed by all the postflop minbetting. Anyway, I didn't have to rebuy at all (I intended to double my stack at the start but won the first hand and never dropped below starting chips after that) and just took the addon after 30min. Finished up in 2nd for about $38 or so.

I had a good session at the cash tables too, ending up $100 up or so. Unfortunately I then sat at two very fishy tables late in the evening and pissed away the entire evening's profit on a massive cooler over about half an hour (running at about 30%WTSD and 33%W$SD) *sigh*.

Book Review: Winning Low Limit Holdem by Lee Jones

The overwhelming impression I have of this book, is that you could lose an awful lot of money by applying its strategies in the wrong game. Don't get me wrong, it's a reasonable book and contains a lot of good advice - but much of that advice is predicated on the game being very loose and very passive and most definitely full ring. In fact, a more fitting title would be "Winning in loose passive full-ring holdem games", but I guess that doesn't ring so well.

The book is pitched at so-called "low limit" games - up to around the 5/10 level, but I have to say that I am far from convinced that most or even many games at that level are as loose and passive as Lee Jones assumes. The third edition is a couple of years out of date, and so in particular his comments about the looseness of online play is pretty much obsolete. Also it is very hard to find full ring limit games online now, and it would be a disaster to translate Jones' advice to the 6-max games.

Another frustration is that the advice is often quite vague. I have been reading 'Stox' recently (another review to come of that book - when I have fully absorbed it), and the very precise analysis and advice in that book is in stark contrast to Lee Jones' book. Admittedly, the books are pitched at completely different audiences and games, however I still think Lee Jones' book would do better by being more precise in its advice and more clear on the assumption upon which such advice is predicated.

There are a few places where Jones makes statements that are just simply wrong in my view. I would be interested to know if anyone else agrees.

• He advocates checking JJ and AK in the big blind, planning to checkraise favourable flops. In my view you have too much preflop equity not to raise with JJ and AK, regardless of the number of callers.
• The advice almost always assumes there are many players seeing the flop. While this is often the case, even in loose games there will be a proportion of hands which are two or three handed on the flop. Therefore his advice to automatically give up hands like top pair no kicker or second pair on the flop is going to lose money in those occasional shorthanded on the flop situations.
• He says to checkraise with an overpair on the flop only if you expect that to knock players out, otherwise to bet out. In my view, if players are likely to call two cold, that is an excellent reason to checkraise, therefore maximizing your equity.
• He gives an insane piece of advice in the section on "dealing with a maniac" where there is a flush draw on the flop. He advocates folding TPTK when the flush card comes on the turn. This makes no sense to me. I am generally calling down even when the fourth suited card hits the river.

Overall, this is a book that is worth reading but that must be examined critically. I would not recommend it to a beginner, because there are too many ways that they can misinterpret or misapply the advice. Two stars out of five.

November summary

Opening balance: $2546

Closing : $2708.74

For a rather pathetic monthly profit of $163. Given that this included a big chunk of rakeback (about $250), a couple of decent rake races (about $250), and a massive heater in a shot at 5/10 (about $300) it means (the rest of) my play was utterly dismal (ooh, about -$650). Still, I managed not to go backwards, which has got to be better than nothing eh?

Will carry forward $2295 in the online bankroll, and AUD$550 offline. Exchange rates will make future months a tricky calculation.

Bad things(tm) this month:

• Getting hammered at OPoker (Crypto) and Eurolinx (Micro) for a lot
• 2/4 coming back to earth with a thump (after the early heater, I briefly went negative before recovering a bit
• Losing money from play
  

Good things(tm) this month:

• Pacific fishies
  
• Massive heater at 5/10
• A fair first crack at live 10/20, managing not to lose money
• Rake races at Eurolinx and OPoker
• Rakeback
• Pacific fishies
• Not losing money overall

On the further upside, December has started with a bit of a bang. This was one of those miracle hands that just kept getting better:



On another table, I was playing against a massive, massive maniac. Maybe the biggest I ever saw. This guy raised about 50% of his PF hands, and played them almost all to the river for maximum betting. I don't think I am exaggerating. He hammered me a few times when he hit a set of fours (capped pre), a rivered str8 w J9o (capped pre), and a better pair on the turn.

But finally, revenge was mine:



Postscript: perhaps the funniest thing I ever saw at a poker table.