Variance bites back HARD

I just failed to cash in 12 straight STTs. TWELVE. At least 10 of those I was eliminated when I went in as a favorite. Those games are full of the biggest idiots imaginable and I failed to cash TWELVE straight times. I'm not sure that is even mathematically possible. Just plain "wow" to what variance can do. Currently have played 171 of the $3.80 super turbos and have broken even for the last 62 game span thanks to shit like this.

A new cash cow

Those $3.80 Super Turbo shortstack tournaments on Full Tilt might not be real poker, but DAMN are they lucrative. Since my last post I have played a total of 101 of these, to the exclusion of all the other styles, and have had an ROI of around 33%. I think that is easily sustainable as well since I have such an obvious skill edge over all the fish who splash about in them. I saw somebody limp/call an all-in with 6-4 suited earlier. Do these people have no brain? Trapping with 6 high for Christ's sake!!! They have money to waste though, and I'm happy to line my pockets with it. It is a grind, but they are very time-efficient and you can rattle off a lot of them, and the money just rolls in. Seriously, if I played them 40 hours per week I could probably scrape a living off them. That's a pretty crazy thought.

I have started to pick up on a few of the skilled players who play these (they stand out a mile for obvious reasons) and try to avoid them... there are so many games going on, the tables fill within seconds, so it's not hard to find a game without a solid SNG endgame player in. But I have enjoyed playing against them as well. The highlight of my day today was folding 1010 pre-flop on the 2nd hand against a guy called TheFrenkel, one of the decent regulars (his Sharkscope bore out my assessment). There is always a shove on the first few hands, often with any ace, any pair or any two face cards even. Well this Frenkel guy open-shoved from UTG+1, and I am sat behind him with 1010. I snap call this against anybody else at the table and just have to dodge the ace usually, but this guy's shoving range was almost certainly similar to mine (from UTG+1 I'd be shoving AJ+, 99+ I think), and against that I am never ahead by much and sometimes behind, so despite having a big hand I folded. Some div called in the blinds with KJ (obv) and Frenkel showed QQ. I was damn pleased with myself.

Quick update

Not really had as much time to devote to the game as I would like recently, so my sample sizes are small, but so far I have played 6 of the $15+1 Stars 9-man SNGs and had a 1st and two 3rds for a 27% ROI. I'm still a little unsure whether I am properly bankrolled for these, so I'm not playing more than two at a time, which is a bit of a waste I suppose but it should keep a higher per-game win-rate at least. Hopefully soon I can start to 4-table happily and without bankroll concerns holding me back, then I'll have a proper sample size to judge my results.

I have also played a handful of $3.80 Super Turbos on Full Tilt (yes, despite my saying I withdrew all my money I actually didn't take it ALL off... I took most of it off, and the rest will likely follow next time I have a decent sized purchase on my credit card that needs paying off). These are crazy, you get 300 chips and start at 15/30 blinds, so it is shove or fold lolz. Of course there are morons who don't grasp this and limp/fold or limp/call as normal, but really there is never any decision after pre-flop (unless you have junk in the big blind and nobody raises). Most of the people on Cardplayer who have tried these are reporting good results, so I had a bash earlier and played 4, winning 2 of them for a 100+% ROI!!!! (did someone say "small sample size" again? Quit bursting my bubble!!!). The problem is, these games are dangerously addictive, and I can feel they might start to creep into my game selection in the near future more than they should... I hope they don't mess up my real poker.

MTTs are still mis-firing, although I'm playing fine. I mis-click folded AA today though for the first time; I was clicking in another browser window when my table popped up and my cursor just happened to be exactly where the "fold" button was :( I'd been shoving like a maniac too, I'm sure my shove would have got action. Sucks but hey.

Running normalaments

Ok, not to jinx anything but I seem to be running normally again... I'm not getting constantly sucked out on and am even pulling the odd suckout off myself. I've started playing the $15+1 STTs on Stars, although I am a little concerned whether I should be with just $400 in my Stars roll. Having said that, I cashed out from Tilt for $630 so there is a little more in my roll than is actually online at the moment, and the play in these things is really pretty ordinary to be polite. I've bumped into a handful of solid multi-tabling TAG regulars who obviously "get" SNG play and are tough opponents, but really despite being 3x the stakes the games feel just as soft as the $5.50 games I used to play on Full Tilt and crush for something like 40% ROI.

It feels nice to actually be winning money again. After two bustos in these games last night I ummed and ahhed about playing another and decided to go for it... and took it down. I had a nice suckout to set me rolling when my AK beat KK, and then I took out another two players with the same hand when one guy went nuts preflop with 77 and a shortie decided his two baby cards were probably live and he was getting great pot odds... King on the flop and I have a nice chip lead. Gets even better just after when I raise the cut-off with JJ and the big blind calls then donk shoves into me on a 4h-7-7h board... shows down 66 for lolgoodgameaments. At this point I have over half the chips in play on the bubble, and just crush the table for a bit. It was a perfect spot to have a big stack because the others were all fairly similar so all had an eye on each other and pretty much gave up playing pots with me without a huge hand. I think 5 or 6 consecutive orbits they gave me free rides in the big blind, and I never got played back at when I stole. I burst the bubble myself when I called a shove with A10o and the guy had Q10o which was just about perfect for me, and then promptly doubled up one of the others by running a Q6o steal into 1010. He used his chips to bust the other player and we went heads up. I figured it was going to be yet another "so near yet so far" game when I 3-bet shoved over him with KQo and he called with Q4s, only to nail a flush. So gay. But I wore him down again, being very aggressive, and it set it up perfectly when I got AKs and shoved on him and he called with A10o. He flopped a 10 but I turned a flush and all was well with the world again. OFFICIALLY A WINNING PLAYER ON POKERSTARS!!!!

ZOMG I sucked out on someone!!!!11!

http://www.pokerhandreplays.com/view.php/id/18724

I still didn't cash though. Just not enough decent hands, had to shove K4 from the button when I got low and ran into an Ace. Boo-urns.

The $4.40 180 man games do seem pretty beatable though.

My Pokerstars debut

It was a bit of a washout actually. I played the $10k guarantee with a $5 buy-in, field of ~4400, and I worked out all the options menus and changed the table skin to some sleek new black background they are Beta testing so it looks a lot better than the mustard shit they set as default... and then I sat card-dead for an hour, until I picked up AQ just before the break with a 25BB stack, and opted to 3-bet shove over a 4BB opening raise. He showed 10-10 and predictably I lost the race. Sound familiar? It actually doesn't bother me though, whereas if it had happened on Full Tilt I would have been cursing the heavens. It's an interesting one, psychologically. I think of it as being like rain; when I am at home, doing my boring everyday things, rain is a nuisance and can really piss me off (it's been fucking WET with capital letters in Manchester lately)... but when I'm on holiday somewhere else and it rains, it just feels vaguely comical. I remember getting caught in a crazy tropical storm in Havana once, but everyone in my tourist group found it funny for the novelty. I guess we are more carefree when we are vacationing, or something. And I kind of feel like I am vacationing on Pokerstars at the moment, although I plan on playing there as long as it suits me, so I guess nothing will bother me for the short term no matter how bad I run.

I plan on playing one of the "First Depositor" freerolls later on, they gave me a couple of entries into those when I deposited, along with a $50 bonus I probably won't play enough to clear lolz.

Standard of play so far is questionable at best... the tourny I played began with 150BB effective stacks, which was a very pleasant surprise to me (although they make up for it by jumping the blinds by greater amounts when they rise it), but that is wasted on some people as there were two ninnies at my table who open-shoved for 150BBs twice each. Just cut a hole in the bottom of your wallet already guys, jayzus. Wish I could have been dealt some cards, because these guys were trying to give it away. I'm sure there are a lot of players that bad though... I've heard people say Stars players are worse than Full Tilt ones, which would be a nice bonus. I also look forward to checking out the $4.40 180-man SNGs that people on Cardplayer have said are extremely soft and full of brain-dead people on day release from their hospital beds.

Tilt is dead

Seriously, Full Tilt isn't rigged. But it sure feels like it lately. Two more all-ins that I lost from ahead today (first time I've felt up to the anal raping of poker recently) and I need a change of scene. So I've finally made a deposit on Pokerstars... I've given myself a roll of just over $400 on there to begin with, and am about to cash out the remaining ~$630 of my Full Tilt roll back to my credit card and wash my hands of the site, in the short term at least. Maybe I will use my Player Points to order something from the site as well... I was trying to save them for something half decent, but I guess I can probably get a cap or some sunglasses or something cheap and cheerful from them.

So I'm looking forward to the change of scenery. Having said that, my first impression of Pokerstars skin is that it couldn't be any worse... there's a weird clicking sound constantly going on, and the colours are just puke-worthy. But then I remember feeling that way about most interfaces I have used when I first began on other sites, so I'll grin and bear it and eventually not even notice it any more I'm sure.

Since I signed up under the name "RonaldRais'n" (with an avatar of Ronald Reagan looking gormless), then I guess that means I am no longer TheAlbinoKid. That does sadden me actually, I like the way that name straddles the grey area between sounding cool and sounding stupid... but I wanted a comedy President-related name for some reason when I signed up at Stars a while back (I've had an account a few months but never deposited). George W Flush was taken though, and Theodore Raisevelt was too long, so I ended up with something a bit crappy that sounded good at the time, and really wish I had just stuck with TheAlbinoKid... but a fresh start is a fresh start, right?

Cash games are not my thing

I really wish they were, but it doesn't seem to be. I am now officially a losing PLO cash player, and while I haven't kept detailed stats over the years on my NLHE cash play I suspect I am a marginally losing player in that too. I'm not really sure what the problem(s) is/are.

Tournament play still sucks balls as well, although I still have faith in my game in that format. I thought I was going to cash for the first time in a week last night when I lasted ok in an Omaha Hi donkament, but then I bubbled when I flopped middle set on an A93 rainbow board only to find some knobhead had open-limped an AAxx hand and flopped the only hand that I was behind.

Someone please make it be over.

Vicarious living

My poker life has been slow recently, due to various commitments I have only managed to log 12 SNGs and a couple of short-lived donkaments in recent days (+43% ROI in the SNGs though)... I am not hating the game as much though, and I consider that a valuable bit of progress. So this post is really to wish the best of luck to the posters at http://forums.cardplayer.com/forums who are playing in the World Series of Poker Main Event... I believe there are 3 of them, Loretta, Lucko and Lucko's girlfriend LJ (see linked blogs on the right), and I believe they all registered to begin play today (Day 1c). Best of luck to them all, let's hope at least one (hopefully two) can make it through to Day 2 and then beyond!

AQ in Sit-n-Gos

Ok, I have only played 4 SNGs since yesterday (2 wins, a 3rd and a bubble) but already my old bogey hand of AQ pre-flop at low/middle blinds has come up again. Well, when I say bogey hand that is probably not the right term... what I mean is, I am caught in two minds (maybe more) about how best to play it.

Originally when I began playing SNGs and did very well, I was very aggressive with it and this approach had a lot of success by 3-betting and 4-bet shoving this hand; I found enough people willing to go to the wire with AJ, A10 and medium pocket pairs that my approach seemed to be +EV to me. But then I took some of the advice from the SNG section of the Cardplayer forum, where many players seem to fold AQ to 3-bets early on, and started playing it much more cautiously, with the result that I was raise/folding pre-flop an awful lot and having to fold to c-bets on whiffed flops even more often, and I was leaking chips as a result. My results dipped noticeably.

So now I am of a mind to return to my previous aggressive approach with AQ pre-flop; my experience of the range of hands people will call my shoves with when 4-bet over is obviously vastly different to the posters on the forum, so I am left in the agonising scenario of having to either a) ignore all my own experience and learnings and trust to the experience of others instead even though it conflicts with mine, or b) ignore well-thought out advice from a selection of experienced and reasonably successful players who specialise in this format. Neither option really sounds very appealing when you lay it out like that. But all in all I think I have a slight preference for failing in my own way, since I have already briefly tried and failed by doing it the other way previously. This might be down to variance, but it also might not.

The hand that prompted this post can be found posted here, along with responses:

http://forums.cardplayer.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=63980

I titled it a "standard" hand, knowing full well that many of them would want to open-fold it pre-flop* and would think my line was spewy and not at all standard, and there are already the nitty voices speaking of how we should fold to the re-raise at this early blind level. They sound convincing, but I have made more by 4-betting than by folding, I am positive.

Gah. This is why poker is such a great game though. Even experienced and highly competent players can disagree on what is optimal. Put me in mind of "Caro's theory of loose wiring" that he speaks about in his classic "Caro's Book Of Poker Tells", where he illustrates two different example hands where the cards dealt to each player and on every street are identical but the end result in terms of winner, pot size and which players were in the hand are very different, because some of the players play their hand differently but plausibly from one example to the next. (The rest of the book is pretty outdated now to be honest, but it was classic at the time). I don't really know where I am going with this, but it popped into my head so I wrote it. I think I'll just let this post trail off quietly...

* hyperbole for comic effect, obv :)

Sit'n'Gogogogogo

Played 2 $5 SNGs just now and won them both; it appears my idea has some merit that the poker gods approve of. I didn't actually have many flips, but my small edges held... Ax hands held off Kx hands all-in pre-flop, and I sucked out goooooood on the bubble of one of them when I shoved 67s in the small blind and someone made an idiot call out of the big blind with K8o (if you don't get why it was an idiot call, go and learn ICM now), and I flopped two pair and filled up on the turn. It's always nice to make an hourly rate of ~$30.

Poker seems fun again. Shame I have to go out to play tennis later this evening or I would embrace the $5 donkfests whole-heartedly (I have solved my anger issues on the court by the way... now I simply just hit balls around and don't care where they go. They seem to mostly go in the right places still, so it's working out fine!). Also, there is a strong possibility of a new job on the horizon, which would force me to keep slightly more regular hours than I do now and thus limit my hours on Full Tilt, but it would also allow me to put some more money towards my bankroll than the pittance I have been able to afford it so far, so maybe my poker 'career' will benefit overall, who knows.

Back from the abyss

Ok, so after one final bad beat at my live donkament last Thursday (guy called my shove with KJo on a 10-8-3 rainbow board, I had QQ, he rivered a K), I stopped playing. I really wasn't in the right mindset to play any tournaments... I realised I was playing too many hands too early, on the basis that if I was going to get shafted by the dealer then better to have it happen early before I had wasted too much of my time, and obviously that attitude is not conducive to winning poker. I still feel like poker isn't worth investing too much time in, but am wanting to play again, so as a result I am contemplating returning to the single table Sit-n-Gos for a while.

This is my current SNG results "snake" -

I played these from January to April as my standard fare, and did consistently well (Sharkscope lists me with a 38% ROI at an average stake of $5)... it really helped to grind my bankroll up. But they are a very dry form of poker, you feel almost robotic when playing them... you sit tight early and only play premium hands, and then you go nutso near the bubble and steal like crazy when the blinds are bigger. A lot of people would say it isn't even poker, which is a short-sighted view but I can totally understand why they would say it. The skill-set required is very different from an MTT, let alone "real" poker (ie. cash games), but it is a game of skill nonetheless. I'm not sure I will play them for long, because even a hot streak at Sit-n-Gos doesn't compare to the thrill of going deep in a large(ish) MTT field, but maybe the fact that they rarely last more than an hour will stop me from getting impatient... also, when I have my feel back I should be able to multi-table them more easily than I do with cash games or MTTs.