Views from the balcony at http://www.oceaniaclub.co.uk/

2 cashes from 2 entries into the WCOOP (World Championship of Online Poker) makes Rex a happy bunny.

569th of 7217 in Event #1 for $423 and last night in Event #9 210th of 3290 for $625.

Both were $215 buy-ins, the first 6-max and the second 4-max and the shorthanded deepstack format is definitely one that suits me, with lots of play post-flop. I have to say that the ring experience I've gained also helped as I managed to avoid getting entagled in messy pots that eat at my stack too often.

I won't bore you with the bad beat stories, but in both I maintained a stack around the average and got my chips in ahead. On the flipside I had my fair share of luck in both as well.

So it's two more close encounters with the business end of a big tourney and I'm feeling more confident than ever that the really big score will come, even if it takes a couple of years.




In other news I'm still at 200nl in the Rings and am coming back out of my first $1k downswing. Learning a lot and if it takes a couple of months to get a consistent 3BB/100 profit then that's fine with me. At the moment I'm running around the 2BB/100 mark and really the sample of 18k hands isn't enough to start drawing any conclusions, other than the fact that it's beatable.

So a short update but a productive one :)

I said a couple of weeks ago that I was stepping up the level, but I did so with some trepidation and with the risks of hubris front and centre in my mind.

Bit of a double whammy in this post as I've achieved a couple of things which I was aiming for but didn't think were just around the corner.

First up I came 71st of 7557 for $2200ish in the Sunday Million on Pokerstars. Absolutely delighted to have cracked the top 100 and to have had a decent stack at various points while deep. It was a huge buzz to be playing for a bigger share of the $1.5 million prize pool and to feel I was holding my own. I've maintained for a long while that the big tournaments are full of enough satellite players and fish to make them pretty soft, but I have to say that from about 200 down there was a noticeable increase in standard, albeit with the odd lucky big stack sneaking through. It pays to check OfficialPokerRankings.com in these situations and at the end I had a chap who finished 52nd on the leaderboard for Pokerstars in 2007.

In the end 66 was < 88, but no regrets and I'm happy that I was prepared to put my chips on on numerous occassions based on a read on my opponent rather than on my own cards.

More convinced than ever that I'll reach a final table of one of these, though it's more likely to be the warm-up as it was 4:30am when I was knocked out this morning and that's not something I want to do before heading to work.



In other equally positive news I've started playing 200nl. This is something I was sceptical I would ever do as for the longest time I couldn't click with cash games. However things appear to have fallen into place and I'm steadily moving up the levels and my bankroll increases and I feel comfortable. At time of writing I'm $800 up after 2500 hands which is nice, but is nowhere near enough to start drawing any conclusions. If I drop back below zero by any margin I'll drop to 100nl for a bit as I've done with the other levels. One thing is clear though, there's plenty of fish at 200nl so I won't go hungry.

So looking like a positive month at the moment and thanks to all the cardschat people who have been supportive in this move up, both in tournies and cash. I'll be more than happy to settle for this level of play in the long-run, but there's a growing feeling that I've just started at the foothills of what might be possible in the next few years. No rush, but it will be interesting to find out.

Just made a rather nasty mistake which turned out ok.

I've been playing the $100 tournaments quite happily for the past week. As yet no cashes but if a few coinflips had gone the other way or KKs held up v AK then it would've been MANY CASH! so no worries there, just keep playing and it will come.

So this evening I register for the usual $22 rebuy and the 80k guaranteed and think "Ooo look a 70k $100 I'll do that too."

Five minutes later when it starts I'm puzzled as to why I only have 1500 chips instead of the normal 3000 for the guaranteed tournies. Realisation slowly dawns that it's because it's a rebuy!

Now I could stomach a proper stab at a $100 rebuy and play aggressively for the first hour as is appropriate, but if I do then it'll be part of a planned bankroll strategy, not due to my miopia when reading the lobby. There are plenty of people who complain about the standard of plays in the first hour of rebuys and say that you don't need to double-rebuy or plan to spend 5 or 6 buy-ins. Put bluntly they are wrong. In order to get most $EV out of rebuys you realy must be prepared to get it in marginally in order to build a big stack and increase final table chances. Playing tight and scared is a recipe for long run losses. Of course it's possible to get lucky and cash (or even win) but long run, nope.

If this was Cardschat then I'd elaborate and be more circumspect about criticism about rebuy shortackers (good a name as any) but here I'll settle for saying it's just plain wrong.

So I find myself doing exactly what I think is a bad idea and playing a tight short stack during the first hour. Eventually I get a straightforward double up and find myself faced with the option of adding on for another $100 for 2000 more chips on my 4500 stack after an hour.

Figuring that it's now +$EV to do so I'm now in the hole for $209 and not feeling wonderful about it. Fortunately I've got a strict philosophy that once you've bought into a tournament and it's started then there's absolutely no point in worrying about it, you may as well play it properly and try and get some cash back that way.

So 4 hours later I manage to shortstack my way to the money and finish 54th of 550ish for $906.

Very lucky bunny and as someone who has drilled into their brain it's better in the long-run to make the right decision and get unlucky than to make the wrong one and get lucky, it's hard to celebrate much :)

Final note, this is the first tourney where I've noticed a better average standard of play in mid-late game. Some fascinating resteal-type action that great to watch and on occassion be involved with (I shoved 99 in the bb over the top of an sb shove to a button raise at one point, button folded and sb had JQ. Q on the turn killed my one and only short at getting a decent stack, but a very nice hand.)


More generally the win above probably puts me ahead for tournaments for August while Ring is $1000 up and running at 3.5BB/100 over 15000 hands. I've a shot at Platinum for the month, which I may or may not go for.

Registered and ready to go for the Sunday Warm-up tomorrow and looking for my third cash in it, in a row. Obviously final table, in my ever so humble opinion.

Just to follow up on the previous post...

Made the money in the Sunday warm-up for $375. Got just above the average at one point but never really threatened. Pretty straightforward the rest of the way though limped into the cash with a shortstack in the end.

The million started two minutes after I bust out which was good timing. I played half a dozen small pots early as I like to do and missed pretty much everything In the end Shoved KJ in the BB versus 3 limpers (which is never going to be dominated if called and got looked up by 99 which was a good result to get me back to the average on a coinflip. Unfortunately a 9TT flop did for me with the Q turn just rubbing it in. So I bust just before the first break.

Good fun and yet again these tournies show how soft they are.

$160 up on the deal yay, roll on next week.



100nl continues to move in the right direction with losing a stack to a beat not carrying any sting now (it wasn't the beats that were stinging it was the fact that it was REAL money that translates into a decent meal out that was giving me pause). I cleared $1000 profit at 100nl last night and the trendis steady and giving me hope that 4BB/100 hands is very doable in the long run.

Which would be nice.

Poker 100nl, the Sunday tournies and me

Tomorrow is a big day for me as I'll be playing in both the Sunday Warm-up and the Sunday Milion. I've played both before and even cashed but that's not the thing. The "thing" is that I use my FPPs (frequent player points) to buy-in to the Sunday Warm up, which has a value of $215. As I've been moving up the ring stakes and gradually playing more tables I've been earning them faster. Most recently I'm earning at a rate that should allow me to play every two or three weeks.

So last night I played a long session and earned the 13500 points required for the ticket. Without thinking at 3am I bought it and signed up for the warm-up as usual. This morning I sat down to play some more ring and smiled as I remembered I was registered already for the warm-up (this never fails to give a warm glow) then realised I'm on holiday from work at the moment and could have played the Sunday Million instead. For us Europeans with jobs where we are required to be awake when we get to our desks at 830am this is not the norm. I spent a moment considering whether I would choose to do the million rather than the warm-up if I had the choice; bigger field but bigger payout, though same structure, when it struck me I actually had the bankroll to buy-in to it anyway.

I'm not going to go into the numbers, but for the first time I haven't cashed out the majority of my winnings after a big win. This combined with my recent development of a Ring game and transition from 25nl to 100nl has meant that for the first time I've actually got a hefty chunk of change sitting on-line.

All of which leads me to consider seriously where this poker adventure is heading.

Let's look a some facts

I'm a good MTT player. I think I can say this based on the evidence

On Party (about half my Party profit came prior to OPR keeping track)
In the money 102/580 18% - profit $12,479

and

On Stars
In the money 74/309 24% - profit $5,687

the links on the right to Officialpokerrankings.com ------>
will show you more detail if you want it

I know I can win tournaments and that if I play enough I will come out ahead. I also know I can get better and that there are areas I plan to improve.
Absolutely central in my mind is the fact that I will sooner or later win or get a decent cash in one of the "big" tournaments.

If this comes across as arrogance I make no apologies. To win these things requires the self-belief to make the right moves, big folds and big plays without fear. Of course there are better players, more than a few I should think :) but the joy of poker is that you can pick your opponents most of the time.

Overall my in the money is high, possibly a little too high meaning I should be pushing harder in the mid-late stages and my distribution of finishes is very good. I get a big stack quite a lot considering I don't bust out early very often.

So what's the point of this self-back-slapping? As far as I'm concerned the biggest vulnerability for any player is failure to manage expectations and subsequently playing at the wrong level, either due to 1) skill or 2) bankroll.

For years I've been playing the $22-$33 tournaments with a smattering of $55s and doing well, with the occassional barren period (some 2k swings). I've never really been inclined to move up and only taken shots at the bigger tournaments through satellites. The swings with MTTs are huge and you can play perfect poker and lose 20 in a row. The thought of moving up to the $55-$110 range playing just MTTs and suffering potentially 3-4k swings did not appeal.


However wIth my newly enhanced bankroll I need to convince myself I have the ability to give it a crack without relying on luck (variance I'll accept, luck is for gamblers).

But this is only half the picture as I find myself (still to my surprise) a Ring player as well now. Playing Ring can provide the sustained income that MTTs can't. Clearly there are still downswings and I've had the pleasure of some myself, but with a sufficient sample income can be projected with a degree of certainty.

So after successful skirmishes with 25nl and 50nl I've moved to 100nl. Initially I took a mighty tumble with a 7 buy-in downswing. So I moved back to 50nl for a bit to regroup. After a week I came back again. I can't recommend this enough. Each time I have tried a higher level I have moved down again, not for bankroll reasons but because it just seems easier the second time. For a start moving down is a joy. I said elsewhere it's like playing pool after playing snooker - the pockets are huge!! your confidence soars and when you move up again you feel more ready for and the numbers more familiar like you belong. Anyway, on return things went a lot better as you can see.



I'm not a big fan of EV graphs. I think there is a huge danger that people start mentally spending (or playing with) money they shoud have won rather than the money they've actually got. I also think that dwelling on and complaining about downswings and bad beats is the best way to beat yourself mentally. However I do find value in understanding my long-term expectation. 20k hands isn't enough to get any real sense of it but it's encouraging to see that I'm about where the average puts me and it's not a series of lucky rivers keeping me afloat.

Click here for an EV graph!!

I also look at that initial $700 downswing as a good thing. I enjoy the challenge of digging myself out of these and battling the graph back upwards without resorting to overplay or panic. Perhaps if I had started out well I would got carried away and crashed harder some point. As a result of digging myself out of the hole 2 or 3 buy-in swings can now be ignored as the matter of course events that they are.

One final piece of the puzzle. I have absolutely not tilted for a very long time, can't remember the last time and certainly talking years rather than months. Bad beats are of course irritating but are really just the poker gods way of reminding you that you're doing the right thing. Of cours if I suffer a beat on the bubble of the million final table tomorrow I'll dwell on it a bit, but it won't on any level affect my game. The final piece, but I think the most important.

So what's the plan?

Firstly not to lose this nice roll due to poor bankroll management. I'm going to start playing $100+ tournies whenever I can, but only if the income generated from the ring games is consistently coming in. I'll keep playing the $22 rebuy I won twice recently and any other tournaments with good structures. If I have issues at 100nl I'll drop to 50nl for a tune up. If things go really well I'll have a think about 200nl (though that's a mighty jump to make). I'll certainly be looking for every opportunity to play the Sunday "bigs" and there's the POkerstars Championship of On-line Poker coming up in September where I'll be having a go in at least one and possibly a couple of the lower buy-in events.

When I started my blog in Feb 2005 I'd been playing for a year and I wrote this

"I don't pretend to be an expert, but I believe I am starting to understand how the game works. My long-term goal is to spend a couple of years learning and studying how to play before expecting to win more often than not, in the meantime while I experiment and learn I'll settle for staying above break even."

I've done a bit better than I thougt, but I maintain that this pokeradventure will take about 10 years to reach its destination. I'm 4 and half years in and it feels like it's time for things to crank up a notch. What's nice about it is that this should be achievable with the minimum of risk.

Time will tell whether I look back at this post with a wry smile at my naivety or with a big smile at my prophetic wisdom. Either way I'm going to continue to have fun, cause I really, really, enjoy playing poker.

I probably should have mentioned that earlier.

Rex

In a shocking twist they've changed the structure of my (and I use this term advisedly) $22 rebuy...

... and I lurve it!

It's now a 10k guaranteed event with 3000 starting chips, 1 rebuy and an add-on for 4000. This gives an effective stack size of 10,000 with the blind structure of the 1500 chip tournies. It's a feather bed of a tournament now with even the average stack after the first hour having 90+ blinds!!

Had my first go on Weds and came 15th of 560 after having a monster stack for large parts of it in the end losing with 77 v ATo when a win would have put me in good shape.

Looking forward to playing this a lot and having the chance to play some deepstackery on a regular basis :)


In other news I've played 10k hands of 100nl. The good news is that after an downturn of $700 in the first 1500 hands I've clawed it back to break-even. More importantly I've become comfortable with the stack size and feel I've got the measure of the play. Looking forward to kicking on into profit in the next 10k hands :)

Holy crap I won it again :)

$2628 this time.

This is not a bad month.

Chaos theory tells us that random events like to cluster together and it's true of poker results as well as buses. I like to spend my FPPs (Frequent Player Points) on the Sunday warm-up and due to moving back to 100nl I had enough this weekend.

Two key hands with sets versus top pair top kicker let me get to the money without too much trouble, and but for JJ losing to AT I would have been top 20 with 100 left. As it was I short-stacked my way to 76th when a shove with KQs met AK :). 76th for $1040ish was well worth my time.

What's good is that more than ever I know I can get to the final table of one of these. The play is absolutely shocking early on and the good thing is that there were plenty of people who are throwing away big stacks even once we got deep.

In other news I played a Cardschat event on Full Tilt and won for $150, for a change I got a big stack and was able to have some fun with teh bluffs, which was nice.

Also as mentioned above I'm back at 100nl and have clocked up a couple of thousand break even hands since doing so. Feeling a lot more comfortable than last time and am very, very definitely rolled for it so hoping it sticks this time, but not worried if I have to drop back to 50nl for a bit.

One last thought, OPR (official poker rankings) have updated their site to give rankings by year. I'm delighted to see that for Party Poker in 2007 I was ranked 579th at 99.42% which I think isn't bad. This butters no parsnips but is a nice thing to see.

For Stars 2008 it's looking good with me sitting over 99% at the moment and I'm looking forward to seeing what this latest result does to my stats when it updates in a couple of hours.

$2,316 FTW in the $22 rebuy! In my last post here I wrote a bit about MTT tournament selection and listed a few that I like,

"the $22, 1 rebuy, 1 add-on tourney - starts about 1930 gmtthis tourney is great. Play it like a $62 and rebuy immediately and enjoy the deeper stack. Lots of people playing scared or donking off 1500 chips and then rebuying. Later stages see nice deep stacks. A truly soft tourney with a lot of people way out of their depth."

Well other than the fact that it starts at 1915gmt this proved spot on :)

I came third in this a month ago and it really is one of the best structured tournies around. I got a decent stack early which due to QQ being a worse hand than AA eventually disappeared around the 3 hour mark. Nothing much spectacular (and a coinflip at the critical moment) saw me enter the last couple of tables in good shape. Shoving AQ over the top of a lunatic with K8o then saw me enter the final table as one of the leaders.

Things continued to go my way until we were three way, when the other two remaining suddenly decided to play back at my raises and I had to shift gears. This led to me getting all in against the shorty (a decent TAG) and his 86o beat my AK to make the last three stacks about even. The other chap was pleasant enough but was playing scared. This was reinforced by his repeated discussion of a chop, which I really wasn't interested in.

Eventually I got it in with KK v his K8 to get heads up with a decent chip lead. This was swiftly reversed when A9 hit an 889 flop only to find out that he had QQ after the chips went in.

At this point I was 4 to 1 down and not looking good, but AQ is a better hand than A9 and I think he started to panic a bit as I was winning two hands of every three unnopposed. The longer it went on the more confident I was of clawing back and 44 held v A3o to put me back with the advantage.

Eventually the chips went in with AJ v his 44 and two aces on the flop and a jack on the river ended it.

There's a rail thread here and thanks to what must have been over a dozen railers from Cardschat. Glad I could deliver a good result :)

Things I know about poker - number the second

Game selection in Tournies
Table selection is huge in Ring games. What is given less attention is game selection in tournaments. There is no doubt in my mind that MTT success can be significantly improved by carefully choosing which ones you play. Of course unlike Ring games you don't get to choose based on your opponents. Instead pay close attention to the structure, it really makes a difference.

My favourite tournaments all provide more chips than the standard Stars structure (which is 1500 chips). With the normal blind levels this can easily be a case of one hand going wrong post-flop and you are in push-mode in the first hour. More worryingly it can mean that the average stack in the mid-late stages of the tourney is less than 20bbs. And that is a recipe for luck over skill.

My recommendations:

- the $44 6-max tourney - starts about 1600hrs gmt
for some reason about 90 of the 150 starters in this bust in the first hour (presumably due to overplaying the short-handedness. This results in a quick rush to the final 30 and deepers stacks than most 1500 chip tournies allow.

- Any rebuy you are rolled to play "properly"
yes I know people can win rebuys by not rebuying or adding on and good luck to them. However it is so huuuuuuuuuuugely +EV to play a rebuy where you can afford to exploit any edge in the rebuy period with zero concern for the cost. I'm not talking about being stupid but instead taking the flips and pushing hard versus the fools. Of course rebuys mean deep-stacks, and deep-stacks are good if you are wanting to exploit your skill-based edge.

- the $22, 1 rebuy, 1 add-on tourney - starts about 1930 gmt
this tourney is great. Play it like a $62 and rebuy immediately and enjoy the deeper stack. Lots of people playing scared or donking off 1500 chips and then rebuying. Later stages see nice deep stacks. A truly soft tourney with a lot of people way out of their depth.

Will playing these tournies guarentee success? No! But it does give you another couple of % on your side which should be all you need. Playing any tourney should be a long-term positive expectation if you have the mad skills, but it's nice to have the odds pushed a little in your favour.

Hand of the day Versus a fule

And from the aforementioned 6-max $44 tourney.

He'd pretty much demonstrated his credentials prior to this, but if you need evidence this tourney plays soft, then look no further :)

PokerStars Game #18740751117: Tournament #94923913, $40+$4 Hold'em No Limit - Level II (15/30) - 2008/07/11 - 11:38:09 (ET)
Table '94923913 2' 6-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: xxOLxx (3840 in chips)
Seat 2: gustavomas (3815 in chips)
Seat 3: jamjams99 (3025 in chips)
Seat 4: Irexes (2285 in chips)
Seat 5: Zozzo (1660 in chips)
Seat 6: kampfkueken (2635 in chips)
jamjams99: posts small blind 15
Irexes: posts big blind 30
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Irexes [Jh Js]
Zozzo: folds
kampfkueken: calls 30
xxOLxx: folds
gustavomas: raises 30 to 60
jamjams99: folds
Irexes: raises 120 to 180
kampfkueken: folds
gustavomas: raises 120 to 300
Irexes: raises 1985 to 2285 and is all-in
gustavomas: calls 1985
*** FLOP *** [8h 8d 9c]
*** TURN *** [8h 8d 9c] [2s]
*** RIVER *** [8h 8d 9c 2s] [8s]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Irexes: shows [Jh Js] (a full house, Eights full of Jacks)
gustavomas: shows [9s 5s] (a full house, Eights full of Nines)
Irexes collected 4615 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 4615 Rake 0
Board [8h 8d 9c 2s 8s]
Seat 1: xxOLxx folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 2: gustavomas (button) showed [9s 5s] and lost with a full house, Eights full of Nines
Seat 3: jamjams99 (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 4: Irexes (big blind) showed [Jh Js] and won (4615) with a full house, Eights full of Jacks
Seat 5: Zozzo folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: kampfkueken folded before Flop

Random thoughts about stuff and poker

July is in deficit by a couple of hundred $ at the moment following a great June. I've played 10 tournies and cashed in 5, which is rather nice but no decent monies.

In ring the 100nl started well at the tail end of June but began July with a nearly 5 buy-in drop. Most of it was just poker being poker but about $150 was avoidable. So rather than chase and refine my game further at 100nl I dropped back to 50nl. In 5k hands since I've been decidedly break-even but it's a solid game I'm playing and after dabbling at 100nl the pots look smaller which is a good thing and allows me to play my game without worrying about the cash.

It did occur to me that this is a bit like playing pool after a game of snooker. The pockets suddenly look huge and the game is easy for a while til it wears off. Interesting of course that not long ago I was feeling the same about the 25nl/50nl jump.

Still rolled for 100nl and will give another go when I feel it's right. I'm following my Irexes Principle article on this one. Occassionally I listen to advice, particularly when the source is so credible :)


Finally, why do people with a photo of more than one person in their Stars avatar tend to be disproportionately bad?

The spectacular image you see above is courtesy of the man of many avatars, Cardschat's one and only Philthy.

Truly awsum and to quote an idiom of the current zeitgeist - EPIC WIN!!

I shall be breaking this little beauty out at weddings, barmitzvahs, team events and when I need some graphical gloating from now on.

Rock on little dino, rock on :)

Much to my surprise I find myself playing 100NL this evening.

Since I started playing poker in 2004 I've played a lot of tournaments, a whole lot. And once I got over my clueless (and very lucky) start I got pretty good at them to the point where I made some decent money at a decent rate of return. I really really enjoy playing tournaments. There is nothing quite like the thrill at the end of a big tournament as you near a prize which is 100 times or more the buy-in. Tournaments at the level I have been playing them hold the promise of a sudden cash windfall which can have a real and immediate effect on the world beyond the computer screen. I am fortunate not to be hard up for cash, but still a few thousand dollars is never to be taken entirely lightly. One day I hope and plan to go further and scoop something truly significant in one of the big Sunday tournaments.

Yet while I have been prospering at the tournaments all of my attempts at turning a profit at cash games met with failure. That is until January of this year. Up until then I had made sporadic ventures into the ring form, sometimes with short-lived success, but never with anything other than a tournament players approach to what is a very, very different game. Then finally this year something clicked.

Since January I have clocked up nearly 100,000 hands of ring at just under 4bb/100. Nobody is as surprised as me at this as in previous efforts I was so conscious of not "getting it" that I truly wondered if I was just not cut out for playing for cash. I think it was something about the uncertainty with which a lot of hands are played and the fact that success cannot be measured over the course of a hand or a session or even a month, but only through the careful assessment of a statistically significant sample of hands.

So what changed, what epiphany led to this sudden turnaround? I must confess that though I am sure it would help, I am a rubbish student of the game. I have read a few books (though I enjoy the prose more than the hand analysis) and I would much rather play than engage in discussion. I understand the odds, the concepts, the terminology and the strategies, but aside from occassionally looking at my VPIP and PFR stats in Pokertracker the thought of analysing hands or sessions to look for leaks leaves me completely cold.

What does tend to stick with me are comments made by others, passing observations that give an insight into how other people think about and play the game. Whether they are strong or weak, tight as a gnats or the most crazy maniac I find it fascinating to hear what other people see when they look down at AJo or 88. I think that my strength in poker is my good memory which results in pattern recognition which over time asserts itself as a statistically significant edge when I play. This is then coupled with an understanding of how other people think (translated into stereotypes with which I can label the unknown player) is perhaps the key to success.

So with this in mind I must credit the drip drip impact of discussion with the players at Cardschat for my mutation into a ring player. Most specifically Tenbob for his description of hands and comments via MSN which I am sure were throwaway from his point of view but provoked a lot of thought at my end.

So this time around I found myself understanding things like pot control, deepstack play and the radically different role of the river in ring as compared to normal stacked tournament play. This is not the time to list the differences in the two forms at length as it's a list I am still extending, but suffice to say that as far as I am concerned Cash games and Tournaments are two completely different games played with nearly the same rules.

Then over the weekend two things happened. First I found myself third in a $22 rebuy tournament. This took my bankroll to a very comfortable position, far in excess of what is required for the 50nl game I was playing. Secondly ChuckTs posted a video at Cardschat of a game we played a while back. The video contained both his commentary and the exposed holecards of all the players. I found it revelatory. There is nothing I can specifically point to, but to hear someone describe things I was aware of from a different perspective allowed a number of things to click into place. I think that this was enabled by the 90,000 hands of playing a relatively straightforward game. I'm a big believer that in poker you should never run before you can walk and that overreaching your grasp is the quickest way to ruin. I think I've done enough walking and am ready to extend my reach :)

So tonight I took a stab at 100nl. I finished $18 up over the tiniest of samples and had a blast. I will be absolutely shocked and amazed if I don't drop back down to 50nl at least a couple of times before I stick at the level (and as with the move from 25nl to 50nl) I will probably benefit from doing so. Nevertheless I think this is an important landmark which I have reached albeit unexpectedly.

Unlike many people I don't ever see myself as a cash player first and foremost. I hope to continue to strike a balance betwen tournaments and cash learning from both as I go and probably playing each more in turn as the mood strikes me. It's been a fun journey on my pokeradventures so far and I am optimistic though hopefully not unrealistic about where the next few years will take me.

Thanks for reading.

$1619 last night in the wonderful $22 1 rebuy, 1 add-on tourney.

There's a thread with the HHs here...

and I'll probably say more about this lovely windfall later :)

In this thread here I pwn Ring - I mock thee variance I do some bragging about a rather nice ring session and some people say some nice and/or sarcastic things.

Gesshoo (Joe) makes a very nice comment about my play (cause he's a good chap) and asks about the impact of bankroll management and sound game selection on success. This got me thinking about what the factors that affect long-term success are.

Obviously being able to play the game ok helps, but it is definately not the entire picture. Resistance to tilt and the ability to control the ego is something I've written about before (see here Poker and the Ego). But Joe's comment really got me thinking about what is necessary for long term success in terms of bankroll management, which led me in turn to consider the Peter Principle and it's impact on the world of poker.

The Peter Principle is a management theory that states that people continue to get promoted within an organisation until they reach a level at which they are incompetent. Indeed all of us are potentially incompetent if given sufficient responsibility.

The Irexes Principle (see what I did there) applies exactly the same theory to poker,

"Most players will move up in stakes until they reach a level at which they lose money."

The theory is that for most players who have more than a purely recreational approach to the game there is a drive to play higher and higher buy-in games.

This drive leads players to consistently play at a level which either their skill or bankroll cannot sustain and as a result they lose money. So a player may be winning 3BB/100 at $10NL and move to $25NL. Here they either find themselves a long-term loser or a winner, but at a lower rate where they would be better off back at 10NL.

Part of this is that I believe that too many players take a short-term view of the game and use it to justify their skill-level as being sufficient to move up. So a player may have 50,000 hands at $25NL losing at -3BB/100, but they have +4bb/100 over the final 3,000 hands. This possibly variance induced upturn is then used as a rationale to try out $50NL where they come unstuck (or even worse have a little bit of success which convinces them they can play the level, followed by their lack of skill hitting which is then denied and written off as bad luck).

The situation can be even worse in tournaments where anyone can get lucky with a big win. The realistic players sees this for what it is, but the victim of the Irexes Principle decides to move up the buy-ins and then complains when they lose the roll on an "unlucky" serious of coin-flips.

So what's the key? I think that inspiration should be taken from Napoleon who was well aware of the perils of the Peter Principle (he probably attended a management course somewhere) and ensured that his soldiers were promoted only into roles that they were capable of. As a result his army was seen as a true meritocracy.

So the Napoleonic poker player will ensure that they don't fall victim to the Irexes Principle and play beyond their skill or roll, they will guard againt deluding themselves about their ability and will see good (and bad fortune) for what it is.

The Napoleonic Player will forever have the long-run in mind and will only move up when they are ready to do so. They will also happily move down again when things don't work out. Happy because they are demonstrating a skill as important as playing the right cards, and in the knowledge that when the time is right (and reinforced by further proven success at the level below) they will move back up again for another crack.

If I am a successful player it is because I am obsessed with the long-run. I am in no hurry to get where I want to be and am happy to think in terms of hundreds of thousands of hands and years of play. Upturns are nice, but can seduce you about your skill in the same way that a downturn can be wrongly written off as bad luck when it is fact a leak hitting home.

One day I'd like to get myself to 200NL (or even beyond) and sitting in the really big MTTs as a matter of course. If that day is not far off then great but if it takes me another 10 years, then that's fine too.

Well... no blogging for ages and then after posting a couple of days back I suddently feel the urge again. This being mostly related to the screenshot above.

I very nearly qualified for the WSOP ME.

I'll just type that again...

I very nearly qualified for the WSOP ME.

I came 3rd when 1st was $12k to pay for entry and some expenses. Probably a good time to have a look at my thoughts about this as I suppose I may never get closer.

It is absolutely an ambition of mine to play in the WSOP (and to be honest I want a go at the main event). I strongly suspect this will happen at some point even if I buy-in and to be honest I wasn't anticipating having to think about what it would mean for a few years if I won a seat.

Honestly I reckon there's about a 1 in 3 chance I'd have gone and played if I'd won. It would be tricky with work and I can't quite bring myself to dispose of 12k quite so easily (nearly there, but not just yet).

In the end I was short stack of 3, one decent and one awful. I got it all in versus the awful one twice with the better hand A9 v A4 and AT v JQ and split the first and lost the second, so it's no regrets on the play. Really interestingly I feel now and felt at the time absolutetly no reaction to the beats. I've gone on about being tilt proof a lot, but I'm really getting there now.

In summary, good game ($255 for my troubles I think), terrible structure and a bad beat at the end. I must however remember the good fortune early on that got me there in the first place :)

Also it seems we (Cardschat) won a $255 freeroll for points won during the event so it's all good.

In other news I bust out of the $215 Sunday Warm up earlier with a set of nines versus a rivered straight after 45 minutes. It's the first time I've gone out of one of the big ones in the first hour after playing 20+ of them over the years. Feels good to break that duck and get it out of the way :) (also helps that I bought in with FPPs and not cash).


Now for another new feature where

REX RESPONDS
to your feedback

Fredrik Paulsson said...
I'd make a witty comment but I haven't had my first cup of coffee yet, so suffice it to say "ungh."

Well done, now write another one.

Dear Fredrik,

Thanks for your comment. My advice is to put a little whisky in that coffee. Pretty soon you will be both charming and irresistable to women. There's nothing like that boozed up smell first thing in the morning.

Rex



That's all for now, more about the ridiculous upswing I'm having in the rings next time (if it lasts) <---- see how I tempt fate.

It's been about eleventy-billion years since I last made a post here. I make no apologies as I've been a tad busy at work. There's this thing going on which is rather large and complicated and I'm right slap bang involved with. What with this thing and the other things that I do it's a fun time. It also means I'm getting in from work tired and not particularly in the mood for the the typy-thing what I am doing right now and you are reading.

Ok? Good. Notwithstanding the aforementioned hiatus and apropo of not much at all here's some random bits and bobs from the last month of happy fun pokery.

Had some good results in May..

May Ring

May Tournies



And it's started of well in June with a couple more decent tournament results though nothing stellar. I've hit 6 final tables in as many weeks but no top 3 finishes which is where the money is. Don't think there's anything more to it than not getting the right result at the right time and it's encouraging to finally get a good run on Stars.

Also I feel my 50nl game is now stable and consistently in the 3-5bb/100 range. Loads to learn still, but I don't feel I'm sitting down with gaping holes in my game waiting to be exploited. Still vulnerable to a cheeky 3-bet from Irishmen with skull-and-bones avatars but then who isn't?

This weekend I shall mostly be playing the $215 Sunday Warm-up by cashing in some Stars FPPs. This is of course a guarenteed route to riches.

Anyway here's a new feature which is an excuse for me to write random things without much structure or thought.

Ladies and gentlemen (and I use that term entirely incorrectly), I give you,

THINGS I KNOW ABOUT TEH POKER

1. 25NL is very beatable without doing much complicated

2. Table selection is very important in Ring games

3. Deepstack poker is an absolute joy whether it's in an MTT or Ring (I may never play another SnG)

4. Minimizing the losing is as important to making money as maximising the winning

5. Keep it simple until you understand each concept, you will lose possible value but might not be good enough to get it anyway

6. To avoid marginal decisions don't get in marginal situations

7. Pattern recognition works at the consscious and subconscious level, sometimes that "feeling" is your brain screaming "HE'S GOT A SET YOU MORON, FOLD!"

8. When out of position post-flop going check-call on the flop and betting the turn is remarkably entertaining

9. I overheard this and it is very funny

meant4u: odds he had 2 hearts in real poker
meant4u: not great
Muckurjunk: yeah this is fake
Muckurjunk: you really are a scientist

10. When asked how he concentrated on the golf course for 4 hours Nick Faldo said he didn't. He said he relaxed between shots and then switched it on as he approached the ball. As in golf, so in poker (without the balls obv)

11. Sometimes you have to fold winning hands and call with losing ones

12. Be simultaneously more aggressive and more passive than the average at the table

Thrilling isn't it? Nothing groundbreaking or possibly even interesting, but it's a post.

Finally, because it's cruel and involves me making mock of the afflicted it's ...

HAND OF THE DAY VERSUS A FULE!

I'd stacked this guy twice already with KK v his A4s and something else equally daft. This made me a monkey apparently. Also according to this genius I was an idiot for only playing hands when I won them.

Our hero (the fule) was talking to me thus...

ThePinkTaco said, "LET ME KNOW NEXT TIME U GET A PREMIUM HAND IREX AND I WILL CALL YOU"
Irexes said, "we know that"
Irexes said, "we've seen it"
Irexes said, "twice"
ThePinkTaco said, "ITS TAKING U FOREVER TO GET ANOTHER"

the very next hand.....

PokerStars Game #18117458616: Hold'em No Limit ($0.25/$0.50) - 2008/06/13 - 19:58:02 (ET)
Table 'Leonora' 9-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: ThePinkTaco ($15.20 in chips)
Seat 2: Irexes ($87.55 in chips)
Seat 3: Lilicita ($56.60 in chips)
Seat 4: Poker Roach ($26.50 in chips)
Seat 6: verygud ($49.25 in chips)
Seat 7: OldSoul67 ($30.70 in chips)
Seat 8: briefkase ($8.20 in chips)
Seat 9: MOJO 77 ($12.95 in chips)
Irexes: posts small blind $0.25
Lilicita: posts big blind $0.50
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Irexes [Ts Tc]
Poker Roach: folds
Poker Roach leaves the table
verygud: folds
OldSoul67: folds
briefkase: folds
MOJO 77: folds
ThePinkTaco: raises $0.50 to $1
Irexes: raises $3 to $4
Lilicita: folds
ThePinkTaco: calls $3
*** FLOP *** [Th Ac 6c]
Irexes: checks
ThePinkTaco: checks
*** TURN *** [Th Ac 6c] J♣
Irexes said, "ready?"
Irexes: bets $4
ThePinkTaco: raises $4 to $8
Irexes: raises $60.50 to $68.50
ThePinkTaco: calls $3.20 and is all-in
Uncalled bet ($57.30) returned to Irexes
*** RIVER *** [Th Ac 6c Jc] 2♣
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Irexes: shows [Ts Tc] (a flush, Ace high)
ThePinkTaco: mucks hand
Irexes collected $29.40 from pot
Irexes said, "ty"
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $30.90 | Rake $1.50
Board [Th Ac 6c Jc 2c]
Seat 1: ThePinkTaco (button) mucked [Ah 9d]
Seat 2: Irexes (small blind) showed [Ts Tc] and won ($29.40) with a flush, Ace high
Seat 3: Lilicita (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 4: Poker Roach folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: verygud folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 7: OldSoul67 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 8: briefkase folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 9: MOJO 77 folded before Flop (didn't bet)

ThePinkTaco said, "MONKEY"
Irexes said, "monkey with all your monies "
Irexes said, "that's $40 now"
ThePinkTaco said, "RIVER SWIMMIN MONKEY"
Irexes said, "oo that really hurts"
Irexes said, "wait"
rexes said, "no it doesn't"
Irexes said, "cause I've got all your money"
ThePinkTaco said, "I JUST SENT YOU A VIRUS, YOUR ONLINE POKER DAYS ARE ABOUT TO BE OVER"
Irexes said, "sorry can't hear you"
Irexes said, "over this big pile of your money"
ThePinkTaco said, "SAVE IT SO YOU CAN BUY A NEW COMPUTER"
Irexes said, "I'm terrified"
Irexes said, "but I have lots of money so I'lll be ok"

He did not buy-in a 4th time.

I miss him.

Now give me a comment or it's 2 months to the next one which if you are really good will be my long-promised and as yet undelivered thoughts on the contrasts between Ring and Tournaments. I bet you can't wait.

Unlike donuts and whiskys you can never have too many final tables. So it's a good thing that today I had 3 (three).

With time to play I fancied a tourney and with nothing much coming up on Stars I ended up in a $44 6-max tourney with 144 people. Never played 6-max before and I fear I may have been missing out. The standard was shocking. Whether it's just a fluke or something about the structure but two-thirds of the field was gone in the first hour. I suspect it has something to with people getting overexcited about position and playing a third of their hands out of the blinds, but whatever the reason, it was great fun.

Shortstack with 25 left, but I finished in 5th for $316 following a couple of very fortunate suckouts. Can't complain and a good start.

I then entered two 180-man $22 SnGs and bust after an hour in one and ended up 8th in the other for another $94 which was good. In the end AJo was less than 55 and again can't complain. I really should play more of these alongside cash tables as they fun, relatively quick and the 1k for first is something I should be scooping every so often.

We'll gloss over a pretty daft error that knocked me out of the Cardschat Online Poker Championship NL game and move on to the Full Tilt $5 buy-in. I won it last week and this week ended up 2nd for another $90. Due to this happening at exactly the same time as the $22 SnG I wasn't paying much attention (also my excuse for the CCCOP btw) but I got hands that held up at the right time which made it straightforward. Congrats to dj111432234 (or similar) for the win, too big a stack to catch him and 22 < QTo in the end.

In other news I've had a very good run at 25NL which saw me win about $250 in the last week. More importanltly I've refocussed my game and thought through a few things. As a result I think it's time to move back to 50NL. This time though as soon as I feel myself drifting off game it's back down to 25NL to sort it out (even if I'm winning). I'll view it as a tune up, albeit a tune up with a pretty much guarenteed positive return.

So there we have it, an unambiguously positive post. So expect a month without anything here I once more encounter the other side of variance as a result :)

So the last couple of weeks brings the usual upturns, downswings, loop-de-loops and twiddly-dees.

On Saturday I won the Full Tilt $5 Cardschat game for $160 which is nice. I've only got a tiny bit of cash on there and only play CC games, so I'll transfer it to Stars at some point I suspect, but it's nice to have.

The game itself was pretty straightforward in that I had some good hands, got my money in and they held up. In the end it was a coinflip for the win, but I'll take it.

Other than that I have hardly played a tourney in the last couple of weeks. It's a busy time at work so I'm not really in the mood for tournies, while the ring games provide exactly the kind of mental wind-down I need. Unfortunately this has coincided with a nasty downswing of about 9 buy-ins at 50NL. I'm still running at 3BB/100 at 50NL and although a big chunk of the downturn was just bad fortune with hands not holding, I can't escape the feeling that there's something not right about the way I'm approaching things.

As a result I have moved back to 25NL to work it out at a level I feel entirely comfortable with. What was immediately apparent was that at 25NL I started playing a better strategic game (playing good sessions rather than individual hands) and I wasn't getting stacked in marginal situations. I also found I was analysing my game far more effectively than I did before I moved to 50NL. In part I think I had drifted off of my "A" game and was getting too eager to play for stacks and move the win graph ever upwards, but I also think it relates to a concept called conscious incompetence.

If I'm a better player than I was when I moved up (and started winning at 50NL) why am I feeling I am making more mistakes now? Conscious incompetence is a concept that's often used in management training programmes (if you've been on a course with a flipchart involved you'll have heard of it). There's a better description here but the esssence of it is as follows.

When you first begin something you have no sense of what is required and what the skills and knowledge involved are. From driving a car, to making a cake to playing poker we all begin in a state of unconscious incompetence. Basically we don't know what we don't know and we aren't very good at what we are trying to do.

Eventually we move to a state of conscious incompetence where we become aware of our failings and also that there exist skills or knowledge that we don't have. This is the point where we begin to appreciate what we need to learn master the task before us and hopefully focus our efforts on learning it.

Next comes conscious competence where we have gained the skill but utilising it is still a conscious effort that requires focus (think of when you had just passed your driving test and the car still required a force of will to control).

Finally is unconscious competence where the skill is now second nature and takes place without thought, driving a car without conscious effort, or folding J5s under the gun should fall into this category.

For me poker is a constant loop through these cycles as the game reveals itself stages. For example the newbie begins in a state of unconscious incompetence raising with A5o in early position and wondering why a pair of aces on the flop doesn't hold up very often.

They then move to conscious incompetence as they hear of things called pot odds, implied odds and position but don't yet understand them, eventually moving through conscious to unconscious competence as the application of these principles becomes instinctive.

However the process then begins again as new concepts appear, be it continuation betting, floating, value-betting, 4-betting light and so on and so on. The good player will forever be aware of the fact that they are simultaneously in all four states of competence at the same time.

I remember with my development as a tourney player constantly thinking "OMG how could I have played without knowing that" as each new revaltion hit me and I'm now going through the same process with ring. As a result I'm not rushing it, not expecting to play perfect poker or to win big for a while yet. Instead I'm concentrating on where I am in learning the game and not taking backwards steps.

I think that during this downswing I have become aware of some mistakes and gaps that previously I didn't know existed on the one hand (the move to conscious incompetence), but also I think I have taken for granted some of the things I have previously learnt (unconscious competence) and drifted away from some of the basics that had previously helped me win.

A move back to 25NL gives me a safe environment to explore both of these things, think a bit more about some new concepts and get my basic game back on track.


As an aside I think there a lot of people who are stuck in the first phase of development as they complain about losing when the problem is actually that they are making mistakes they don't recognise and are therefore not prepared to do anything about. Less common are those who have made a few circuits of the loop and have some knowledge but have decided they are good enough and that they don't need to (or can't) learn more. This lot are prone to moan more.


In other news, last night about a dozen Cardschat members played a ring game together which is with the intention of circulating all the hand histories so the game can be analysed. I really enjoyed it but was conscious not to play to the camera and so played the situations as they came to me. With the deadest run of cards possible this meant I was a superrock and watched an interesting couple of hours of poker without really getting involved finishing down $11. The plan was to use the image this gave me to win a big pot at some point, but unfortunately the chance never came. Still, next time I'm sure.

Finally, the Cardschat meet up in London last week with Tenbob, FP, Dakota, Dorkus, Gesshoo and partners was excellent. I must admit to a bit of nervousness about meeting people who I have a huge amount of time and respect for in the flesh in case they turned out to be a bunch of fruit-loops (I'm sure they thought the same about me). In reality all were a pleasure to spend time with, and I look forward to seeing them again in the future. On the plus side the posts at Cardschat are now accompanied by a wide range of accents when I read them :)

After a flurry of posting it's been two weeks since my last post here. This has been in large part because I was determined to dig myself out of the dip discussed in my previous post before writing it up. I'm delighted to say I have done so :)



As you can see if you click the pic it took a fair few hands but I'm back in good shape after 15k hands of 50NL. My win per 100BB rate has taken a knock, but I've learnt a lot in the process.

The most interesting thing is how much better I do once I've been at a table for an hour or more. So many of the big surges in the graph (a couple of $200 or more) are after sitting with the same people for an hour or two and making copious notes. With the extra information I am making player-dependant moves that are for big pots. I'm still making profit without the reads, but they really make a difference and I think this bodes well for the eventual move up the levels.

Still making mistakes but they are getting fewer and my thought-vocabularly (if I may be so pretentious :) ) is getting bigger to help analyse them.


Yesterday I qualified for the Stars Warmup 500k guarenteed tourney in a rebuy turbo which cost me $12. Played the event today and came 400and somethingth for $253. Got a big stack early after taking a coinflip with QQ v AK and getting a result (Q on the flop made it less stressful) then losing with a set v an all in flush draw, which would have put me in the top 10 after 2 hours.

After that it was sensible poker until I pushed over the top of a raise with JJ and he called with KK. I've debated this at length because I nearly folded and only called because I figured he was trying to isolate the shortstack BB. Probably a marginal good move at best, but lots to think about.

This left me with not many chips and the bubble looming. A double with AQ v AT saw me make the cash before AQ couldn't beat KK!!! (rigged clearly) and I was out. A good showing and I look forward to more of the same.


Finally, after 4 years I've withdrawn all my cash from Party Poker. This is a bit sad as I've had some great times playing there with many, many SnGs and MTTs. Most of all I will miss the 700pm GMT $33 MTT which I won 4 times last year and had many other cashes in over the years. I had achieved total comfort with this and had notes on enough of the players that it was unusual to sit at a table with more than 4 or 5 unknowns.

In total I leave Party with over $22k of profit plus the 1k I moved across to Stars to begin a roll there. The majority of it was MTTs with a few thousand profit in SnGs as well.

The last couple of years are documented below, though they don't contain my big early (and very lucky) wins like this one which contribute another few thousand. I think this is a big enough sample to be happy with the results and 18% is a good ITM with a high final table %. A couple more wins rather than seconds would have been good but I won't complain.



I've decided to move to Poker Stars for a couple of reasons. First the range of games is so much better; the 180 man SnGs are great, the fields are bigger and there's more of them. The tournies on Party have been dwindling since the end of the US players there and while 200-300 fields means lots of FTs it doesn't make for much opportunity for really big cashes.

More importantly I think I will have better bankroll management and target setting with one number to consider rather than splitting it in two across Stars and Party. Recently if I was doing well on one and not the other I was finding it tricky to properly consider my overall position. Should I think of one total figure or each independantly? There are good answers to this, but I figure that one number is going to make things simpler.

Which leads to the third reason, the Rings. I'm sold on playing Ring now and though I intend to continue playing both Ring and MTT, I don't see myself playing single table SnGs much if at all. They are good fun, but they ultimately reduce to a fairly stark mathematical model which I've got a bit bored with. Without playing them on Party the variance of MTTs is too great to sustain (1k swings the norm), so I'm better off on Stars with the Rings to even out the barren spots.

So farewell Party, you've been good to me and unlike most I actually like your interface. Yes, even man-in-an-organge-cap, strange-beret-man and the other non-customisable avatars that look like they've escaped a murder-mystery weekend.

You will be missed.

Managing the internal narrative

I've had an interesting few poker days and it's got me thinking about the way I think about the game. If you'll bear with me I'll try and explain.

First of all I had a fantastic run on the rings in a session a couple of nights ago followed by the worst losses I've sustained since the move to 50NL. What was a good night nearly became an incredible one and ended up a $40 loss over about 1500 hands.

This thread Lucky I don't tilt documents what happened, and as you'll see I made some nice moves given the context (a massive donk giving his money away) and got repeatedly outdrawn when way ahead.

Earlier this evening I got knocked out of the Cardschat Full Tilt tourney when I called an SB allin steal with Q9 in the BB and Ranny turned 47o (SOULREAD IMO :)). The 4 on the flop did for me :)

Then about ten minutes ago as I write I was knocked out of a $10 rebuy in 125th (of 2151 starters) by this hand,

PokerStars Game #16347299071: Tournament #81875998, $10+$1 Hold'em No Limit - Level XVI (2000/4000) - 2008/03/29 - 20:17:16 (ET)
Table '81875998 115' 9-max Seat #9 is the button
Seat 1: sickdonkeyfi (167370 in chips)
Seat 2: kashvii (107807 in chips)
Seat 3: Chris333KK (72092 in chips)
Seat 4: potstabber10 (199371 in chips)
Seat 5: jedi1066 (135786 in chips)
Seat 6: leg177730 (147288 in chips)
Seat 7: martin69 (224963 in chips)
Seat 8: Irexes (45225 in chips)
Seat 9: kalltkaffe (70881 in chips)
sickdonkeyfi: posts small blind 2000
kashvii: posts big blind 4000
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Irexes [Kh Ks]
Chris333KK: folds
potstabber10: raises 6000 to 10000
jedi1066: folds
leg177730: calls 10000
martin69: folds
Irexes: raises 34825 to 44825 and is all-in
kalltkaffe: folds
sickdonkeyfi: folds
kashvii: folds
potstabber10: raises 154146 to 198971 and is all-in
leg177730: folds
*** FLOP *** [Ac 2d Jd]
*** TURN *** [Ac 2d Jd] [6d]
*** RIVER *** [Ac 2d Jd 6d] [3s]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
potstabber10: shows [Ah 4h] (a pair of Aces)
Irexes: shows [Kh Ks] (a pair of Kings)
potstabber10 collected 109250 from pot

(HH edited to make it shorter)

4 hours down the drain for a small profit.

However in all these cases I am very happy to say it registered barely a flicker of emotion and in terms of impact on my play I don't think they registered at all. I regularly say that I don't tilt and I genuinely mean it. For me controlling the anger or emotions generated while playing is a huge part of the game. Letting someone not only take your money but also knock you off your game and cost you more is as big a hole in your game as playing unsuited aces under the gun. The trouble is that it's harder to spot in Pokertracker and too easy to write off once the steam stops coming out of your ears.

But how do you watch the fool above with A4 reraise allin and hit an ace on the first card out against your KK without wishing to put your foot through the monitor? How do you reload in ring against the superdonk without becoming one yourself? I think the answer is to control the dialogue which is taking place in your head while you are playing.

While we play we talk to ourselves, we tell the story of the game, the narrative of what is happening, why it happened, our role in it and most importantly we tell ourselves what is going to happen next. Of course objectively the fact that we may be on a downswing, or superdonk just took half our chips is irrelevant to the way we should play the next hand (metagame considerations aside) but in practice we tell ourselves "I'm due a win", "He can't be lucky again" or most dangerously that playing badly is justified by the bad play of others.

These negative thoughts make for a great story in which we cast ourselves as the hero. In our imaginations we are always going to come back if we have a chip and a chair and a double up with KJo is a racing certainty. Sometimes we do the opposite, we approach a hand with the fatalistic expectation of defeat and this is of course the best way to ensure a win! Because reality will confound whatever we expect to happen and the romantic in us knows that in the story the last minute 3-pointer always goes in.

In really bad cases I hear people tell themselves they are just unlucky. This is wonderful way to avoid confronting either the reality of bad play or failing to grasp the role of variance. It's seductive though to hand over control of your fate to a perceived tendancy to get outdrawn because the martydom it easy and beating yourself up in public is rewarding to a certain kind of person, and it's short step from there to the ultimate "story" of OMG RIGGED!!

My repetition that "I don't tilt" is as much about developing a self-fulfilling prophecy as anything else. I have decided I don't tilt, so I don't. There are a few people who have decided they are lucky (coughBBBcough) and amazingly they seem to be so. Of course this "story" is no more true than the "I'm unlucky" gang, but the advantage in attitude that such an internal dialogue gives must be huge when harnessed correctly.

What I tell myself constantly is that the wins and the losses are part of one long continuum, that when I am losing I am playing as well as when I am winning. "Meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters both the same" said Kipling, and he's absolutely spot on. The player who has a big MTT win out of the blue and decides they are a world beater is as deluded as the poor chap who drops 5 buy-ins in a ring game and decides there must be a hole in his game when he's just been unlucky.

It's tricky but the eyes must forever be on the horizon, on the 60% ROI over 1000 tournies or the BBs won every 100 hands, not the tourney win or the $200 pot. The trouble is that poker is seductive in it's appeal to the storyteller in all of us. In the films the ace comes on the river, the gambler finds redemption or crashes to oblivion and good guys always win. It's hard to tell a thrilling tale about Sklansky bucks or hundreds of thousands of hands, but that is where the money is really won and that is the story we should be telling ourselves.

So when I find myself in situations like those above and I lose a few quid, I don't think OMG the universe is out to get me, I think hard about whether I made any mistakes and then move on to let the real story of my poker adventures continue, and that is a very, very long tale, which I tell myself will have a happy ending.

In far less time and with far less trepidation than I thought would be the case I've made the move to 50NL.

I played 27,000 hands of 25NL at a winrate of $3.01 for every 100 hands played, amounting to $813 profit. Although I was happy to carry on like this for a while longer, the fact that I was feeling very comfortable combined with the tourney cash the other day, led me to start thinking about moving to 50NL a bit quicker than anticipated. And well, once I start thinking about something I want to do then it's usually only a matter of time before it happens. While this approach to life has yet to see me spending a couple of months of the year playing high buyin tournies in Vegas, it was a short step from thinking about 50NL it to clicking on the appropriate Stars lobby.

So here's (hopefully) the final state of my 25NL play..



The biggest difficulty I anticipated at 50NL was turning the cash values back into the correct sized units for bets once I made the shift. For example where a $2.50 bet at 25NL meant a pot had the potential to get spicy at 50NL it was probably just getting started. This is more of a psychological that mathematical thing but once I began however it pretty much clicked straight away.

More of an anxiety is that my previous Ring attempts have been at this level and although never getting roundly beaten I certainly wasn't making much of a profit and I hadn't demonstrated anything like a solid winning game. The approach, strategy and game I've developed in the last 7 weeks playing 25NL was untested at this level, so I was a little bit concerned that I was going to find things substantially different needing to make some radical changes to be profitable.

I've anticipated this as I move up because I expect the tone of games to gradually change (much as tournies do) with higher stakes. It's often a subtle thing, but important to understand in order to avoid getting caught. What's a dumb move at a low level, can become standard at a higher one and vice-versa.

However what I've found so far after about 1,000 hands is that if anything I'm able to play a bit more creatively without much added risk. The fishies seem the same and other than the numbers it's not much different.

So here's a graph showing a very nice profit so far, completely unsustainable but nice nevertheless..



The intention is to stick at 50NL unless I drop $200 below my starting point when I'll shift back to 25NL. This is of course possible playing good poker and I could sustain more of a loss, but it's sensible bankroll management.

In the longer run the plan is to head for 100NL, but I won't start thinking about that just yet :)

Good day today in the Happy Fun land of Rex pokery.

A decent run at the rings, not many hands but about $80 up and I'm over $800 up in 26,500 hands at just over 3BB/100. The rate is also gradually creeping up which is good.

I tried a 31 person $11 qualifier for the Stars Sunday warm up, a seat for 1st... and came 2nd! Which was unlucky but a good try.

Followed this up with a 12th of 140 in the traditional $33 on Party for a small win and then came 3rd of 180 on Stars in a $22 for $428 :)



All in all a good return on a days play.

What's really nice is that I am getting more and more comfortable multitabling and playing a couple of ring tables alongside a tourney is becoming very straightforward and I don't feel I'm missing much. Once it gets near the end of a tourney it's 100% attention, but I'm looking to a future where I cover my buy-in for tournaments on the ring tables while I'm playing them. This is obviously a great way to reduce the killer variance of the MTTs.

I'm very happy with my game atm both Ring and MTT and I'm starting to feel like a Ring player. Unlike a lot of people though I don't see myself shifting entirely or even predominantly to the form. Hopefully I'll find the right mix to maximise fun and profit, which if it can be done is a wonderful combination :)

Well this hand is just silly.

PokerStars Game #16078552628: Hold'em No Limit ($0.10/$0.25) - 2008/03/18 - 20:08:34 (ET)
Table 'Bauschinger II' 9-max Seat #9 is the button
Seat 1: Nlogrea5 ($24.75 in chips)
Seat 2: Wizzawig ($37.10 in chips)
Seat 3: charlie cuse ($17.80 in chips)
Seat 4: Irexes ($28.20 in chips)
Seat 5: WICKED ZZ ($5.20 in chips)
Seat 6: Mikromozek ($30.55 in chips)
Seat 7: jrxx1907 ($5 in chips)
Seat 8: mikkeee4712 ($10.20 in chips)
Seat 9: Goldmoon64 ($4.65 in chips)
Nlogrea5: posts small blind $0.10
Wizzawig: posts big blind $0.25
WICKED ZZ: posts big blind $0.25
jrxx1907: posts big blind $0.25
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Irexes [Ac Ah]
charlie cuse: folds
Irexes: raises $0.75 to $1
WICKED ZZ: folds
Mikromozek: folds
jrxx1907: folds
mikkeee4712: calls $1
Goldmoon64: raises $0.75 to $1.75
Nlogrea5: folds
Wizzawig: folds
Irexes: raises $2.25 to $4
mikkeee4712: raises $6.20 to $10.20 and is all-in
Goldmoon64: calls $2.90 and is all-in
Irexes: calls $6.20
*** FLOP *** [Ad As 5d]
*** TURN *** [Ad As 5d] [6c]
*** RIVER *** [Ad As 5d 6c] [Qh]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Irexes: shows [Ac Ah] (four of a kind, Aces)
mikkeee4712: mucks hand
Irexes collected $10.55 from side pot
jrxx1907 said, "vnh"
Goldmoon64: mucks hand
Irexes collected $14.10 from main pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $25.90 Main pot $14.10. Side pot $10.55. | Rake $1.25
Board [Ad As 5d 6c Qh]
Seat 1: Nlogrea5 (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 2: Wizzawig (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 3: charlie cuse folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: Irexes showed [Ac Ah] and won ($24.65) with four of a kind, Aces
Seat 5: WICKED ZZ folded before Flop
Seat 6: Mikromozek folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 7: jrxx1907 folded before Flop
Seat 8: mikkeee4712 mucked [Ks Ts]
Seat 9: Goldmoon64 (button) mucked [9c Kc]

Yes they had KTsooted and K9sooted.

So the flopped quads were probably overkill. This comes after a very nice run where I am up $260 in the last 2000ish hands. This is obviously an insane win rate but I am really feeling comfortable now with the level and after an hour of most sessions with 4 tables, usually at least two are at twice the starting stack.

Not ready yet to go for the jump to 50NL, but I am really enjoying this now and can genuinely see myself approaching this properly and gradually climbing the levels.

And like buses two come along at once.

It's been an interesting 24 hours of poker and stuff so here's a further little update.

Further to my comment below that "I've had a few finishes in the 10th to 20th bracket recently which could have converted so I'm due a win." I just came 7th of 200 in a $22 MTT on Party. I was unlucky not to be chip leader with 30 left as I got all in versus two chaps on open ended straight draws with a set. They both hit leaving me at about half the average instead of way ahead of the field.

I dropped further to 2BBs before going on a nice run and coming 7th, though never really threatening to get a stack. Clearly this was just a warm up for a proper win just around the corner. $180 for my troubles.

I also came 2nd of 36 on Full Tilt in a Cardscat game last night for $80 which was nice. I despise playing on Full Tilt with a firey passion due to the inadequate real time hand history viewer, I've said it before but I spend a lot of time rereading HHs while I'm playing in order to make notes and FT makes this a nightmare. If I'm missing a setting that can resolve this please let me know.

Then and most importantly and non-pokerrelatedly this morning while playing wii sports with eldest Irexes JR I bowled a perfect 300 game.


please note new ricockulous 50" Panasonic TV ARF ARF ARF

If you've played wii sports you'll appreciate that this puts the other achievements into perspective. I am now officially a "cool dad" as the most strikes that any kid at Irexes JR's school have got in a row is 6. Well in your face 8 year olds, I pwn you all, muahahahahahhaha.

Anyhoo, back in the sane world here's a graph for my Ring play to date



I think this is pretty solid and probably demonstrates convincingly that I have a winning game at this level. As I mentioned below I'm trying to develop a relatively low variance approach that I can elaborate on as I move up rather than incorporating lots of bells and whistles at a level where it's not going to make much difference.

It's interesting how it's affecting my MTT game as well as the two are very different but there are interchangable concepts that I think are resulting in mutual benefit. In teh MTT above I took a nice pot with QQ on a Kxx flop. The betting pattern of the other guy didn't make sense for a K and where I would previously have backed off, I put him on a weak hand and check-called his flop bet (I was OOP) and after a check-check turn I led the river. He called with 66. I'm sure this wouldn't have been the way it played out without the ring experience making me reconsider some things.

What is most clear is that Ring is about the implied odds of deepstack play and therefore you need to minimise deepstack situations where you are behind but engineer them when you are ahead. MTTs on the other hand are about solid preflop hand selection and making calculated gambles as the ever changing context dictates.

I've got a lot more to say about this but I've not fully articulated it in my own head, so I'll wait til I do before committing my thoughts to the screen.

So for now, ta ta.

Hello.

It's come to my attention, via comments, abuse and even the Cardschat blog that I don't post enough here.

This is a combination of laziness, the fact that I tend to really use this to keep track of big wins rather than anything else and in the last month the fact that my password to log into the blog stopped working.

I've rectified the latter but the first is not going to change and the second is in part at least out of my control.

Anyway in response to the complaints of the literally ones of people who read this I'm going to make an effort to post something at least once a week. Which probably means more random unedited stuff like this and fewer results. I can smell the advertising revenue I'm going to make as a result of this new editorial turn already.

How about a look at what I'm up to pokerwise at the moment in order to pass a few lines? Ok.. MTTs have been solid but unspectacular. According to OPR I'm 95%+ on both Party and Stars for the last 120 days with a combined profit of about $1600. While this is probably true 120 days is a long while and I'd be delighted to stumble into a nice 1k+ win sometime soon. I've had a few finishes in the 10th to 20th bracket recently which could have converted so I'm due a win.

This is how the pokersites do it by the way. They assess who is "due" a result and give out the cash accordingly. It's a kind of communist, anarcho-syndicalist principle which I heartily endorse. If you are losing regularly it's probably cause you've been profiled as a capitilist pig-dog. You only have yourself to blame.

Elsewhere in the rings I've been proceeding at a steady 2.5-3BB/100 hands. Which translates to about $2.75 for every 100 hands played. At about 25 thousand I'm just under $700 up at this. I've got to say it's fun and very, very, relaxing. I think more so than the tournies my non-tiltness is a bonus, as in a tourney if I lose to a major suckout (for example I reraise KK all in and get called by A2o and lose to a flush, and this comes to mind for no reason *coughAGcough*) then it's nice to not lose my cool but it doesn't save me much in the long run.

In ring I can imagine that the suckouts can cost a lot more than the initial hand if it all goes wrong (see Tenbobs recent Monkey Tilt post for the exception that proves the rule).

So I'm quite content to watch the craziness with a kind of detachment as long as my little graph continues to go upwards at a reasonable rate, which it is very obediently doing. I'm not setting the world on fire with my winrate, but I'm gradually adding some flair to my game without forcing it. I want a solid base before I move up, which I'm planning to start thinking about when I get to $1000 profit.

In other news I shall be running an event on CC shortly which should be fun and provide plenty of opportunity to offend people, and I'm also playing more CC games than previously usually a couple a week.

Tomorrow the members of Team Rex are in fact gathering for a final hurrah in a Dino Frenzy tourney on Stars. I've put a $5 bounty on everyone to make it fun and we've invited Mr Malorkus by way of thanks for organising the event with such aplomb.

The CC games are good fun and due to the nature of them you get some pretty detailed notes on people which means that the play can be really unusual without context. It's good fun and the online equivalent of a homegame, where play doesn't really represent what happens elsewhere online due to the familiarity of the players. Great way to relax and play without stress though and long may it continue.

So I hope this satisfies the reader (ie you, unless you are a google bot or something in which case spider-off elsewhere) and by the way I appreciate your comments. Do beware though of anything else posted in the comments section as due the aforementioned laziness all sorts of crap get posted there which I don't delete very often. However it probably relates to SATISFIING YOR LAIDY or something similar so may be of use to some of you.

Anyhoo, til next time. I've been great and you've lost several minutes of your life reading this.

Smoochies

Rex

A 5th in my old favourite $33 MTT tonight. With 3bb left with 22 to go it wasn't looking too rosey, but in accordance with my feeling that people start panicing in MTTs way too early I came back pretty quickly with only moderate hands to be in contention.

I was short stack for a lot of the FT and in the end made a stand with ATs in the BB. Unfortunately it was the one time the raiser ahead didn't fold as he had AA. To be fair this was probably a good call for him :)

Anway it's $460odd for my efforts and as I type I've just made it into the money in the $3 rebuy on Stars which I was playing at the same time. Decentish stack so you never know.

Good to play a couple of decent tournies after all the ring and really enjoyable. Also interesting to see the cross-fertilisatin of my play between the two forms. Must write something about this soon :)

Being off work this week has meant I've been able to rack up some hands at the rings.

So we're at 7500 hands so and as the graph above shows (click for bigger version) I'm $161 up at the moment. This isn't tremendous in terms of overall BB/100 at just over 4.2BB/100. However the first 3000 were at a loss and were where I did most of my learning the hard way (and ran KK into AA four times). In the last 5000 I'm running at 8.3BB/100 which is better and possibly sustainable.

Still lots of things I'm not grasping properly and a review of my stats on Pokertracker has meant that I'm still changing starting hand selection a lot, particularly what I'm prepared to play from early position.

I'd like 10k hands where I'm playing largely the same before I start drawing conclusions and considering what a "normal" return might be.

All encouraging stuff though.



Right now to take down the $3 rebuy this evening.

A couple 1000 more hands played on the rings and the mistakes are getting further apart. I'm feeling much more confident playing deep into the stack now, which is good. Only 3 million more hands and I'll have it sorted Tenbob :)

As you may see from the snap above (give it a click) I've just come 5th in my old faithful $33 MTT for $360. Good result in the end as I was shortstack for a lot of the final table. I had a great image versus 4 very aggressive chaps and a double up would have put me in good shape. Unfortunately a push from the SB ended in disaster to seal things.

Still good result and ends a barren run on Party.

Now... back to the rings...

The graph above shows the last 3 days of play at the rings.

First thing to note is that I've switched to $25NL rather than $50NL.

If I'm going to give this a proper go then I should firstly do it at a level where I'm not thinking about the cash, and secondly I can see benefits in working my way up from lower limits. There's going to be lessons learned here that will no doubt help at higher levels, and although I'm sure the fishies congregate everywhere, I'm sure they are more numerous at the bottom end.

That said the thought of playing $5 or $10NL really doesn't appeal, the money has to mean something to make it real :)

Also I've started 4-tabling. This is new for me (apart from a brief try about 18 months ago). I've never been much of a multi-tabler in tournies, 2 sit and gos or maybe 2 MTTs being the most I like to play, preferring to really zone in on my opponents to make notes. However in ring it seems to suit me a lot more. For a start it helps to avoid boredom and any tendancy to overplay hands as a result, and secondly it helps even out the variance which is a big part of the game.

So far it's been going well as I'm $107 up after 3700 hands. You'll note from the graph that I took a hellava drop in the middle... this was KK v AA 3 times in 6 hours and a bunch of other stuff that I won't bore you wth. Happily though I made it back by the end and today as you can see has been rather good. Even that dip has given me confidence that in the long-run I can pull out the win.

A fun hand from the run is here
Xpert play and pro-read :)

It's impossible to overstate how much I feel I am learning doing this, it's also important to note how much I still have to learn and that process will take years not days. However there are clearly some things in my approach to tournaments which are helping the adjustment to ring. For a start I'm aggressive and c-bet a lot (a hell of a lot) and also bet strength the same as weakness regularly.

I have also given a lot of thought to managing pot-size and this seems to be the key to successful ring play, knowing when to juice it and when to back off even if you are probably ahead.

I also like making the big lay-downs (which is why I think I have a decent MTT record) and in the long run trusting reads to avoid getting stacked in ring is as good in real terms as winning a big hand.

There are of course a ton of differences too, the river plays very differently and comes into play in a more significant way than in tournies, where often the hand is pretty much decided by the turn.

Of course it's all about playing for stacks in ring, but in a very different way to tournies and the quality of hand required to put it all in is much much higher than an MTT or SnG. This area has always been the one I've struggled with in dabbling in Rings, winning the small pots through nice aggression then losing the big ones by being out of my depth.

This time something seems to have clicked, though as you can see I've had a good few thousand hands to find it.

I don't wish to overstate where I am with this because bad things will of cours happen and there's whole areas of the game I'm sure I don't even know exist, let alone understand, but I'm enjoying ring more than ever before and prepared to put in the work.

Thanks to Tenbob for the support in this, it's funny how things people say in passing can suddenly make you think about the game in a different and important way and chatting about the game with him has certainly madea big difference.

It's been up and down of late, with decent play in MTTs not getting me to final tables. Not worried about it because it will come, but it'd be nice to have a couple of decent results close together and give the money a boost :)

I've been dabbling in the Rings for the first time in a long while and this time I think it might stick. There's no doubt it requires a different set of skills to tournies and I'm gradually learning to adjust. The trickiest part is switching off my natural desire to double up born of all the tourney play and let the cards dictate slightly more the nature of each session. In a tourney you have to eventually force the play regardles of the cards and situation, but in ring it's more about adapting play in a series of self-contained mini-games. There is of course a meta-game (image is important of course) but it's different in nature.

Thanks to Tenbob for forcing me to take his money on a couple of occassions while learning ;) and for getting me to post the graph above. It shows that I'm up playing the rings though have had a break even period for a while now. To be honest break even while I explore the nuances of this is no bad thing.

While I'm at it congrats to TB for his insane evening of monkey-tilt last night on Stars and Titan. Crazy few days - Tenbob's blog

I taught him all he knows :)