How bad can I run in SNGs? Pretty @X$!% bad

LHE SNG
1st orbit, 1st hand I played:

Preflop: Hero is MP1 with J A
2 folds, Hero raises, 3 folds, BTN 3-bets, SB calls, BB calls, Hero calls

Flop: (12 SB) A 3 8 (4 players)
SB bets, BB folds, Hero raises, BTN calls, SB calls

Turn: (9 BB) J (3 players)
SB bets, Hero raises, BTN calls, SB calls

River: (15 BB) 4 (3 players)
SB bets, Hero raises, BTN 3-bets, SB calls, Hero calls

Results: 24 BB pot
Final Board: A 3 8 J 4
BTN showed 4 4 and won 24 BB (16.5 BB net)
SB mucked 5 A and lost (-7.5 BB net)
Hero mucked J A and lost (-7.5 BB net)

Got knocked out of this one holding AA, lost to rivered 2 pair by a guy holding 74o.

***

LHE SNG#2
Folded mostly. Raise preflop, 4 callers, miss, check/fold, mostly.
This is the one I got knocked out on:

Preflop: Hero is BB with 2 2
UTG+2 raises, MP1 calls, 2 folds, CO calls, BTN folds, SB calls, Hero calls

Flop: (10 SB) 7 2 K (5 players)
SB checks, Hero checks, UTG+2 bets, MP1 raises, 2 folds, Hero 3-bets, UTG+2 caps, MP1 calls, Hero calls

Turn: (11 BB) 3 (3 players)
Hero bets, UTG+2 raises, MP1 folds, Hero 3-bets, UTG+2 caps, Hero calls

River: (19 BB) J (2 players)
Hero bets and is all-in, UTG+2 calls

Results: 22 BB pot
Final Board: 7 2 K 3 J
UTG+2 showed K Tand won 22 BB (13.5 BB net)
Hero mucked 2 2 and lost (-8.5 BB net)

***

Hope you're running better than I am.

M

It's raining Full Tilt poker chips

So I went online and caught a bunch!

Okay, I know I said I was going to wait a week, but I decided to take a shot. I fired up 8 tables of 10c/20c and 4 tables of 25c/50c LHE. My win rate was 3.xx for 10/20 and 5.xx for 25/50. Feels so good to have hands hold up for a change. Check out my green line:


Hope everyone catches some of those chips before the rain stops.
M

The Poker life is a good life

Still looking for answers from my last blog entry...please take a minute to comment if you have ideas.

After taking off the 25th and 26th to analyze my databse, I got back to playing the game. Finally have some results showing up in green. I moved down in stakes and have won 8 BI's total since the switch. At this rate, I'll move back up in a week.

March 27:

M

New Tulsa Poker article on examiner.com

This time out I take a look at the Osage Million Dollar Elm poker room.
Fulfill your thrill in the Osage Casino poker room
M

PTR accuracy, live poker attendance

I have a 2-part question. First, how accurate is PTR? I don't know and I'd really like some feedback. According to my Poker Tracker database, my lifetime winrate at LHE (excluding RUSH) for all stakes 0.46BB/100 over 389k hands. According to PTR, it's 0.89BB/100 over 223k hands. PTR missed 166k hands? So the accuracy/error rate for PTR stats is anywhere from 42% at worst to 57% at best? Hardly seems useful. I've been looking up some of my most frequent opponents to see if they're winning players or not, and if they are, then I spend a bit more time analyzing my play against them. Vs. losers I simply note to play ABC vs them as there's less adjusting to do to maximize profit. Anyways, can I really trust PTR when it reports a player as a winner?

2nd part: We all know the goal of making 1 BB per hour playing live LHE. What's a reasonable expectation for a winning player online? Yes, I know it depends. I don't expect to hear 1.5 and for that to be the whole story. I'd just like to hear from some winning players and figure out a range to see just where the range falls. If you're a LHE player, please leave a comment and tell me what your winrate is. (Or hook me up with a link or forum thread that covers it.) Thanks!

***

Tulsa's live poker scene has been struggling the last couple of years. First, this was due to the downsizing of the Cherokee Casino poker room. The Cherokee was renamed the Hard Rock Casino and renovations have been going on for as long as I've been going there, which has been over three years now. I don't know exactly when it happened, but at some point the portion of the building the poker room (with its 25 tables) was in was demolished, and they moved the poker room to a much smaller area (13 tables) with no windows, no views looking out to the casino, etc. Second, and at the same time, the Creek Nation Casino opened it's new version of itself, the River Spirit casino. Personally, I think this one was an improvement. The new poker room is better lit, better design, 5 plasma screens, has more room between tables, and there are more food and beverage choices. So except for the notion that people don't like change, this one should have helped the situation. Third, the economy is in the toilet. I read a story every week that asserts Tulsa is better off than most of the nation, but no matter how you sugar-coat it our economy is still the pits. The limit games, which used to start daily at 5pm and run til 2am, lately they don't start til 8pm and then break by midnight. The 4/8 and 6/12 games can no longer be found; you have to be happy with 2/4 or 3/6...or switch to NL, but those games are light on players, too. Our third local casino, the Osage Million Dollar Elm, has the smallest poker room of the three and it's cash games, which used to run 24/7, now has hours of down time where no games are running at all. Their Friday morning NLHE tournament only had 25 entries.

Barring a reversal of fortune in the economy, what can be done to get people to the tables? I'm serious about this question, I really need some ideas.

Moving down in stakes, playing 'wildman'

Have I mentioned March has been wreaking havoc on my bankroll? Well, it is. At the beginning of the month I started to play 25c/50c LHE RUSH 6max more or less exclusively, with a bankroll of 45 BIs. Four weeks later my BR has dipped to 35 BIs. I've looked at my stats and I'm playing pretty much the same way I did in February, during which I posted my highest 1-month profit. So, yeah, March sucks big green donkey dicks.

I took a couple days off to review hand histories and see if I can identify any glaring mistakes, and honestly, what I see has changed is that my opponents are calling down with bottom pair, unimproved small/mid-pairs and other assorted trash an insane amount of the time. (Which would be great if the deck breaks even and I could hit a hand now and then.) Add to that they are catching their 4- and 5-outers vs. my overpairs at a higher rate than expectation, and basically I have a disaster on my hands. 10 BIs may not be much to a NLHE player, but for LHE, believe me, it's huge. I either have to move down for a while or flounder where I'm at, so I'm moving down. Even if the run-bad continues I'll have slowed the bleeding. Looks like success at the 25c/50c limit requires a bit more gamble than I'm used to, but if that's the case, I'll also need a bigger BR to handle the swings.

I have 87 BIs for 10c/20c, and my first session went well, winning better than 3 BIs in 2 hours. Think I'll give it at least a week before I take a shot at moving back up.

***

I thought I might share a game I play when I'm running bad and tilt is setting in. I play what I call "Wildman". I have about 4 million play chips on my PS account. I sit down to a play money LHE table, play every hand, cap preflop, cap flop, cap turn, cap river--every hand. It is absolutely hilarious and always cathartic. Just mash the BET/RAISE button every time it's your turn to act. Fifteen, twenty minutes is all it takes before it's 8-ways to the river every hand. If you're looking for a way to kick tilt to the curb, and have some play chips to work with, I highly recommend it. Twenty minutes of Wildman is all I've ever needed to get over tilting.

M

Tulsa Hard Rock poker room review articles

Published a couple articles covering the Hard Rock - Tulsa poker room.  One for the poker room and one for their tournament schedule.

Ante up in the Hard Rock poker room
Poker tournaments at the Hard Rock

M

My first royal flush of 2011

Soooooo pretty...

M

Tipping dealers

Why do you tip a waiter? Because they don't make much for an hourly wage? No, of course not. You tip them for good service. Good service = good tip. Bad service = bad tip or no tip. The idea that you have to tip dealers out of obligation when winning a pot is a bit overdone. Tip dealers who give you good service.

I'm a limit hold'em player. Primarily 3/6, occassionally 4/8 or 6/12 when there's a game going (where I live the latter two aren't spread on a regular basis). I tip $1 when I take a pot. However, if the house didn't get a rake, I don't give a tip. If it's a HUGE pot, generally over $100, I'll tip $2, if it's a dealer that does his/her job well. There are two dealers I refuse to tip (lots of misdeals, mistakes, bad attitude). This poor performance costs me money, so I don't tip them. (Surprisingly, their performance hasn't improved as a result--but hey, life's not perfect.)

At the end of the night, if I'm up for the session, I also tip the floor staff 1% rounded up to the nearest $5 (usually $5 or $10) and give a $2 tip to the cashier. If I'm down for the session, no tip to cashiers or floor staff. If action is contested at the table and the floor rules correctly (IMO), I give the floor a $1 tip before he leaves the table. And yes, I generally tip more if I was involved in the hand. There's nothing wrong with building goodwill with the floor staff.

I'm not saying this is best, just saying this is how I do it.
M

Writing for examiner.com

The ingredients:

1. I'm a writer.
2. I love poker.
3. I'm unemployed.
4. Examiner.com is looking for writers to cover local topics of their choice.

The result?  The Tulsa Poker Examiner.

My plan is to cover poker events, strategy, interviews, news, tournaments, and (a little bit of) opinion.

I published my first article today:  Play a hand in the River Spirit poker room.  It's a review of the poker room and the games and tournaments they run.

If you're a passionate, knowledgeable writer, you can write for examiner.com too.  Click here to get started. 

M

Saturday poker sucks; Sunday, not so much

Gamblers a-plenty, but the deck runs even on Sunday.

25c/50c LHE 6-MAX RUSH on FT



Here are the adjustments I made:
1) No naked bluffs.
2) Play passively with draws. No 3-betting big draws, raise big draws only in position heads-up.
3) 3-bet preflop only with QQ+, AKs.
4) Rather than jam monsters from the get-go, trap. No capping preflop. Raise the turn with overpairs+.
5) Fold 3rd pair or worse to donk turn/river bets.
6) Fold overcards on the turn if all I have is pair outs.
7) It's okay to limp small/medium pairs and suited connectors 56-QJ from EP, raise them from MP & LP, but see #1 for postflop play.

Had fewer sticky river situations as a result. I'm not advocating the above for these games all the time. Generally a more aggressive game is ideal for tighter fields. One cannot describe the weekend RUSH player pool as tight. Far from it. So with multiway pots as the norm, you have to adjust.

M

Weekend poker sucks

Yeah, I said it. I can't seem to make a hand or buy a pot on Saturday or Sunday. I'm matched up against a table full of fish and just can't hit or hold up or both. It's not worth iso-raising AK because 4 callers is routine. Open-raise, yes. Iso-raise, no. And forget bluffing. You can't bluff players who'll call the river with a pair of twos, or, for that matter, eight-high.

Yep, you read that right. Playing FT 6-max RUSH LHE 25c/50c, in a blind vs blind hand tonight the SB open limped and I raised with 5 6 and the SB called. I had this player flagged as a weak player, with seven different notes on him. He chases to the river with any draws (including gutshots) regardless of pot odds, and folds if he misses, except for a couple times when he had ace-high . He tends to raise the flop or turn with made hands as weak as second pair. The flop came down 2 3 A. The SB checked, I bet my gutshot straight-flush draw, and he called. The turn was the Q. The SB checked, I again bet my draw, and the SB called again. The river was the K. The SB checks again. At this point, I have to bet. No question. There's no hand I can beat at showdown and he is known to fold rivers where he's missed. I bet. He tanks for a full ten seconds and calls. He has 78 and wins the pot. I could not believe my eyes.

I quit once I hit my stop loss of 50BB. It always hurts when I play well and the deck just bends me over. And it's really, really hard to quit when I know I'm playing well but just not hitting my fair share of the time. But the truth is if you can't bluff, and you can't hit, you simply can't win.

The bad news:


Hope the deck is being kinder to the rest of you.
M

Back to Winning

Okay, I know I said I was going to take the day off. But at the end of the day I put in a couple hours anyway. I don't normally play late at night (10pm to midnight), but anyways...

And then I did something I should be doing more often. I spent four hours going through the hand replayer and making notes on every hand, identifying weak players and the mistakes they're making. For some reason, maybe because it was a "holiday", there were tons of players at my tables I'd either never seen before or had no notes on them for whatever other reason. I usually review my session the next day, in the cold light of objectivity. But I also have the bad habit of reviewing only those hands where I lost big pots. It's helpful, but it doesn't tell the whole story. Last night I reviewed EVERY hand. There were quite a few where I didn't get full value out of my hand. Others where I called down even though it was painfully obvious I was beat and should have saved two bets.

Until I get a system that can run a HUD (and even after, regardless), I think it's extremely important that I review every hand in my sessions, as much as time allows anyway (it takes twice to three as long to review a session as it does to play it), and identify weak players and what mistakes they make so I can exploit them in the future.

All that being said, I crushed the tables for 7.5BB/100 last night.

Full Tilt RUSH LHE 25c/50c


Hope your next session goes this good!
M

Happy St. Patty's Day!

Still playing my style (stats for the month unchanged), but running a little better. I'm still comfortable with my play, knowing the swings will be a bit bigger than straightforward ABC but in the long run I'll make a larger profit. Yesterday was another up and down day but ended on a high note.

March 16:


Taking the day off today for other business.

Happy green beer drinking!
M