Some people yell at their computer when they lose hands as a matter of regularity. Some throw things, pound the desk, etc. I have always held the belief that I should, for the most part, carry myself when playing online in the same fashion as I would at a live game, showing no external reaction to the results at hand. I fail at this constantly of course. I grimace, I cuss under my breath, I grit my teeth, all things that would be *really* noticible in a live game, and i’m not even happy with that, and wish I was better at it.

Well you can see where this is going, right? I’m playing tonight and get very agitated. No, its not going as far as you think its going, I didn’t directly destroy my computer or a loved one or anything Anyway, I’m taking a beating and hit a point where I’m requiring myself to drop down a level with some new, more strict bankroll requirements that I’ve instituted. As I lose my last hand, and click sit out I let out a yell, “WELL F***”. Problem: I’m playing on my laptop, relaxing on the couch, and my cat is sitting on one arm. He freaks out, jumps, catches my ear in two spots, and the back of my neck. Three *solid* gashes. I start bleeding a LOT(ears, as it would turn out, bleed a LOT from superficial wounds), the laptop is cast aside in a panic, and somehow the display ends up cracked. It either landed badly on something on the floor or hit the table next to the couch.

So anyway, its time for a new laptop display, a new ear, and a new cat. Ok, not really on the last two.

And this really sums up the last few months. Just the ultimate in frustration. In April, I made as much money as I expected to be making in January. But in reality, I’m supremely frustrated. If I was just a marginal consistant winner my bankroll could have doubled or tripled now because of rakeback and bonuses. But man its been all over the place, and I’ve basically been a breakeven poker player for 5 months now, only building any at all because of rakeback.

I can’t be all negative though. I’m only negative in the poker sense. Moving back home, and quitting my job, no matter what happens, has been the best thing I’ve ever done. My contract work looks like it may continue indefinitely, and I actually have a second potential contract offer in the works. The help I’ve been able to give my family, and the time I’ve gotten to spend with them after having lived away from home for 13 years, is priceless. It looks like there’s a reasonable chance that this will lead to self-employment in some form in the end. Perhaps there’s still hope for my poker game, this post doesn’t signal any sort of defeat by any stretch. Its more of a “wow poker has been a massive frustration so far, but the experience as a whole has been wonderful and totally worth it” message.

Three different sessions, three quits that I’m really proud of:
1) 3 hours at Stars 3/6. I won a few pots early, but got stuck about 25 BB. That’s a bit over $150, which, since I’m still adjusting(and semi-shot taking) to 3/6, stings when it happens quickly. But the table is good, my mindset is good, and I never tilt. There’s a gradual climb back up, the fish are very co-operative and stay for the entire session, I play over 300 hands 1-tabling, and I have a massive turnaround, get my rungood on, and crush the game. The fish finally get up, and I get up with them. I play 350 hands, and win $180. A great, balanced session where I played well throughout, and only left when the table conditions dictated the game wasn’t good anymore.

2) 45 minutes at Cake 3/6. I go on a big rush early. I’m up $120 after about 15 minutes. I stay steady for awhile, up $140 about 40 minutes in. Then I take 3 beats in a single orbit. Its bad. One of them is a runner runner WTF hand to take out top set, dude capped his turned draw and hit it on the river, while I capped the nuts. Two other ugly rivers and I’ve dropped $85 in 6 hands. Bad thoughts start setting in. The dreaded “I SHOULD be up over $250 now and on the rush of the month” I planned on playing longer than this. The table is still good. I’m not positive that I’m tilting. But I’m not likely playing my A-game anymore. If anything else happens I might tip over, and I might not have the sense to leave. Its time to leave now.

3) 1 hour at FTP 3/6. I can’t win a hand. I literally go over 60 hands without winning a pot. I’m catching bad, I’m running bad, and I’m taking some hits. I make a close fold on a flop in a multi-way pot, and watch the cards come runner-runner perfect, woulda had a straight flush vs what turned out to be a flopped boat. Ah well, I think I made a good fold anyway. I’m down a bit, $50 over 30 hands or so, not even a blip, and then, as mentioned, I go 60hands without winning a pot. After 110 hands I’m down $225. I finally catch a good hand, flopping a set vs the biggest fish at the table, but a runner-runner flush puts that good hand out. I’m down $270 in a bit over an hour. I’m shot-taking 3/6 here, and I don’t think I played badly, but I’ve hemorrhaged 50 bets in a very short amount of time. The table is still good, but its not as good as it was when I started. i don’t have the worst seat, but I definitely don’t have the best. I’ve got a 33/23 LAGTAG on my right between me and the fish now(who snapped up the seat before I could after the 60/30 donk that was there before left). Its just not my night. I don’t need to chase my losses, and I don’t think I can play my A-game in this situation. I take a deep breath, click sit out next blind, and am done.

Three different situations, one where I was down and came back, one where I decided to “book a win” after I catch myself reacting poorly to a couple beats, and one where I just get completely owned from start to finish and just have to accept that its going to happen sometimes. In all three situations I think I made expert decisions about when I needed to quit. I’m more happy about my quitting decisions than whether or not I lost or won in those sessions.

Regarding the last one specifically, the assbeating, to steal and paraphrase from one of Tommy Angelo’s thoughts on quitting in “Elements of Poker” (ps. BUY IT, you won’t read a better collection of thoughts on poker):

I’m playing limit holdem, i’ve been playing awhile, and I’m running flat. I’m not tilted, yet. If I was to get involved in another swollen pot and lose it, I might be. I’ll play one more big pot. If I win it, I’m back. I’ll take a quick breather and hunker down and see how I hang in. If i lose it, I’m done. I flop my set, I play my hand well, and I lose on the river, and I stick to my plan, and I quit. When I stand up from the table, I feel bad because losing feels bad, but I feel great about the escape.

That last line in bold… I fucking love that line. And I love poker right now. After running super hot early inthe month, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to push my way into 3/6. I’ve given some back, but I can feel myself getting better every day. Artifically, I still want this to be a $1000 month, but really, I don’t care. 3/6 limit 6-max swings are big, at least for me right now(but from what I can tell for everyone always). $1000 isn’t even 200 BB, whether i make that number or not just depends on how I run over my next 1500 hands or so. But damn I feel great about where i’m heading right now.

After months of “well i’m working on my game, I’m trying to get better” blah blah, and after my first losing month in a long long time(I lost money in March even after rakeback, which I didn’t write about due to the site being down and my problems getting to the site consistently after it changed), finally some things have started going right.

In fact, since April started, I’m a massive, massive luckbox, in addition to the fact that I think I’m playing well. I’m very happy playing limit and working on improving my limit game,and have been on the hottest streak of my poker life since I started just focusing on 1 tabling 2/4 and the occasional 3/6 and really thinking about hands and disucssing hands and stuff.

The March Hand Swap on 2+2 went great, and I’ve signed up for the April one. In addition, I’ve been chatting with an acquaintance(friend is probably too strong a word, poker buddy maybe, eh whatever) who plays high limit live in Vegas for a living. I’m not LAGging it up or anything, but I played at a .5/1 table with him and asked a ton of questions about his thought processes while playing, and have watched him doing some “live coaching” of another poker buddy and tried learn something about what reads he’s getting on people and how he’s exploiting bad players and such. My overall numbers at 2/4 are still standard TAG numbers, 24/18 or so, but i’ve put in a number of sessions where over 100 hands I run 35/30 because of a bad player that I’m trying to pound on or maybe I’m just finding good situations better now?

And, I’m running hotter than the freaking sun. I’ve played about 1350 hands at full tilt so far this month, and am winning almost 30 BB/100. I’ve had two days where I won $1/hand for over 200 hands(up $250 in 230 hands at 2/4 is pretty ridiculous). I also deposited at Cake Poker to take advantage of a $500 bonus they offer(they also offer Rakeback with that bonus). So far I’ve worked off $70 of the bonus, and am up about $40 in play in about 1500 hands. All told I’m up about $900 in holdem on the month so far. I did blow some time early in the month screwing around with stud/8, and losing $300 or so in the process, but my holdem game is as sharp as its ever been.

How long this will continue for, I don’t know, but, I’m enjoying it while it lasts and am hopefully on my way to my first truly solid month since I quit work 4 months ago now. We’ll see how things look at the end of the month of course, the volume of hands I’m playing is very low, due in part to the fact that I blew the first 5 days of the month playing stud. The hourly volume is really not that far off track. I’ve played about 30 hours of holdem this month, again without playing much holdem for the first 5 days of the month. I just haven’t done *any* multi-tabling. Its been great for my game, and with lots of contract income that doesn’t look like its going to go away any time soon, I’m pretty content where I am.

GRAF

Note: Graf does not contain any Cake play, which does not import into tracker programs w/o some modifications which I haven’t messed with yet.. Total results including Cake are winnings of ~$950 including rakeback and bonuses in ~3000 hands.

Well, the site was only down a week, week and a half or so, but I’m lazy as hell and kept having weird DNS problems when viewing the site and trying to post, but I think things are back to normal now, so HOORAY.

Its probably too late to get anyone on the free trial for this, but with the latest release of Holdem Manager, a 3 day trial was added(instead of the normal 2500 hand limitiation), allowing users to import their entire database and get the full feel for the program. I felt that was pretty important because the program includes an integrated HUD, and one of the big things that is cool about Holdem Manager is its MASSIVE filtering capabilities for hand reviews, and those kinds of things are a little hard to get a good feel for without being able to import your entire database. So Sunday I grabbed the trial version of HM and went about importing all my limit hands, hands I’ve played since I started playing limit again recently, and datamined hands. That came to about 240,000 hands. I had previously exported all my pokertracker hands, and began the import. I didn’t close any other programs and kept using my computer, in fact I was playing a somewhat resource intensive game at the time, and the 240,000 hands imported in about 40 minutes, without once causing any noticeable lag or slowdown on my system. Its *much* smoother playing on full tilt, hands import constantly during play and during datamining without any resource issues at all, switching between screens and setting up filters takes just a few seconds where it takes sometimes over a minute in pokretracker these days. I’m extremely impressed with the software, and would recommend it to everyone.

Now, Pokertracker 3 is in beta right now, and I had planned on waiting until both were out and seeing which one I wanted to go with, but, the Holdem Manager guys have done a great job selling me here, and I think after trying it out I really dont’ want to go back to the old version of PT and wait any longer, so consider me a Holdem Manager user for now.

And with that, here’s how HM’s graphs look. I played a 27 hand 2/4 session early yesterday afternoon, and won 7 or 8 of the hands, got dealt AA twice, and at one point won 6 hands in a row, a couple of them significant. +$121 in 27 hands. I had to leave for awhile, came back later and ran nealry as hot, at one point being up over $300 in less than 250 hands, all at 2/4 limit. I took a little dip before I logged out(and went over to the software-less Cake Poker, more on that in another post though), so hey, here’s a graph for yesterday:

So I’ve been 4-tabling limit for a week or so now and doing ok, gone on a couple short heaters at 2/4, after a pretty bad session last night am a *very* small winner at 1/2 over ~9k hands. The 4-tabling is nice, I’m reviewing a lot of hands, watching a lot of the deucescracked videos(they have a large number of excellent limit videos) and working on basic fundamental play at this point. But I want to do some 1-tabling as well to work on getting reads on players and such. Way back in 2003 on 2+2 there was an “Open Internet Challenge” to turn $40 into $2000 by aggressively moving up in limits:

1. Start in the 50c/$1 with a “separate” bankroll of $40 as soon as you have made $40
2. Move up to the $1/$2 games when your bankroll reaches $80
3. Move up to the $2/$4 games when your bankroll reaches $160
4. Move up to the $3/$6 games when your bankroll reaches $240
5. Move up to the $5/$10 games when your bankroll reaches $400
6. Move up to the $10/$20 games when your bankroll reaches $800
7. Move up to the $15/$30 games when your bankroll reaches $1200
8. Move up to the $20/$40 games when your bankroll reaches $1600

You have completed the challenge when your bankroll reaches $2000.
Any time you lose more than the amount made at the previous level you can choose whether or not to drop back to that level to rebuild your bankroll or to keep playing at that level. If you lose your entire bankroll you must start again with a new $40 at 50c/$1.

I’m going to screw around with this while 1-tabling, starting w/ $40 at .5/1, keeping track of how i’m doing, and seeing how fast I can move up when I just focus on a table and focus on picking a good table and watching the play closely. I’m not trying to move up to 20/40 anytime soon or anything like that, but I am looking forward to spending a little time at 3/6 and 5/10 if I can work my way up there in this manner.

most of my time will still be spent 4 tabling 1/2 and getting my hands in and working on my basic fundamental low limit play. But I will be doing this as well maybe a few hours a week for now.

so:

OIC Roll: $40

Level: .5/1

GOGOGO.

“Kick back and relax in this double layer terry velour, shawl collar robe with long sleeves, roll-up cuffs, two patch pockets and double belt loops. Made of 100% cotton, triple sheared, 12 oz. terry velour fabric. 48 inches long.”

SHIP IT.

I only have two goals for march.

1) Log 100 hours at the tables. Can’t improve and win if you don’t play. I won’t play if i feel like crap, can’t play my A-game, etc. But I want to get more hours in. Note I’m not saying hands. I don’t want to feel forced to 4-table or whatever to meet a goal. After watching a poker video or something I may want an hour of 1-tabling here and there to work on hand reading or fundamentals or some new idea to try to implement which might mean I don’t get 30,000+ hands in or whatever.

2) Start using the page break feature in WordPress so the front page isn’t spammed with HUGE posts all the time. I like to write a lot sometimes and don’t want to stop that, but putting some of it behind a {more} link for people that actually care to read about all the crap in my head is probalby better

One last note, I signed up in the limit shorthanded forum for a Monthly Hand Review Session that they do, pairing up all the people that are interested, swapping a few hundred hands with your partner and reviewing and discussing each other’s play. I’m looking forward to doing that.

Not good, not good at all! I mentioned briefly in an earlier entry, I had bronchitis and didn’t play poker for a 10 day stretch in the middle of the month.

The poker itself was nothing to write home about. Given that I missed a big stretch in the middle of the month, I logged a good number of hands, almost 24,000. But, despite the epiphany post below I just don’t feel any better about my no limit play. In the few days after that post, my WWSF is up, and is a good sign of possibly the beginnings of getting out of weak tight mode, but I just can’t seem to beat the game consistently. My winning days are 1 BI ahead. My losing days are 4 BI down. I’m never putting together solid, consistent, upward graphs over even a full session that have me thinking I am getting anywhere. My outlook is probably worse than reality b/c I just got SO frustrated after feeling like I was improving my play, to log 4 straight losing days in a row.

I started the month 2-tabling 50NL and got crushed: -$299 in 2000 hands

I then had a tilt session at 100NL: -$120 in 126 hands (that freaked me out b/c I’ve tilted off buyins before, but I haven’t in 4 years moved up as part of tilt)

I never did make it all the way back to even, I logged 19,000 hands of 25NL and won $166.

At the end of the month I decided that I was getting too frustrated with NL but didn’t really want a poker break(Hell, I just missed 10 days being sick!) and switched over to 1/2 limit 6-max: 2350 hands, up $20(had a breakeven day, a big winning day and a big losing day, just been playing for 3 days so far)

I never did get even, I had a chance tonight for a bit but went on a big downswing to end the night, here’s the monthly graph:

Finances

So, since this is a “hey I don’t have a job” blog too, lets go over that:

Poker: -$234.95

Rakeback+Bonus: +$392

Other Poker Related Revenue(web stuff basically): $285

So on the month, despite sucking at poker, I’ve made money. The amounts are a bit deceptive though. I’ll finish the FTP signup bonus tomorrow. Last month I would have made $203 in rakeback alone if I wasn’t working off a bonus. The Web stuff had a couple quarterly things in it this month and won’t be that high monthly either. But still, made money.

My living expenses came in a bit higher this month than I wanted. I spent $1450 on the month. I want that number to be $1000-$1100 most months. An insurance snafu accounts for about $250 of that(I paid out of pocket for a Dr Visit and 3 prescriptions while I was sick, I’ll get some of that back now that insurance is straightened out).

Of course, I am still contracting for my former employer, which trumps all of this really. My contracting income makes all of this negligible and once I am paid i’ll have more in savings than I did at the start of February by quite a bit. But, the goal is to not suck at poker, and so far, well, I do suck at poker, and its pretty frustrating!

For the short term I am going to play 1/2 6-max limit at least until the “demoralized woe is me” feeling about NL goes away and I feel like i can give it another solid effort.

I’d put off signing up for StoxPoker for a bit because of their signup fee, and the fact that I enjoy the heck out of the DeucesCracked videos, but I had been through the list of available videos, and I *really* wanted to watch Ed Miller’s series on the basics, his “Poker Made Simple” series. I’ve been playing poker for a long time, but I started out playing limit, and I’ve played SNGs, and MTTs, and really only have 75,000 hands or so of NL poker under my belt. I’ve read all the 2+2 strategy threads, and I love the videos and discussions on advanced topics, but, I come across a lot of 2+2 strat threads at the micro levels that I don’t know how to answer, and I come into a lot of situations where I really don’t know how to play post flop. I get in trouble in 3 bet pots espicially with AK and AQ. I c-bet then shut down too often but struggle to figure out when to double barrel or to not c-bet at all. Some stuff that is really basic.

So I signed up for Stoxpoker to suck in the 8 or 9 videos Ed Miller has out for low limit players that teach some of the basics of 6-max No Limit. The first few videos helped ground some topics I already had a fairly good feeling for… basic hand selection, “Small Hand, Small Pot” and “Big Hand, Big Pot” concepts that I was already decent at, though watching the videos as I said definitely made me a little more confidant in some of my play. Then we get to the last half of the videos. “The Basics of Bluffing” with lots of info on c-betting, double barrel bluffs, picking off weakness, attacking c-bets in position, triple barrels and all in bluffs. The very basic, very simple idea of the entire thing… “Pound on your opponents relentlessly in position”

This is a concept I already knew, I don’t know if something clicked in my head from watching the sample hands in the videos, or watching some specific situations, or what. But I decided to go into my play today with that one idea in mind. I’m going to pound on my opponents relentlessly when I have position. I’m going to abuse the hell out of the button. I’m going to raise limpers like crazy on the button, going to 3-bet a good deal more often on the button, steal like freaking crazy, and we’ll see how much trouble I get myself into.

I got myself into some trouble. I got in some 3-bet pots and played them miserably. I misread my opponents a few times. But I played some situations really well too. I stole some pots on scare cards. I repped a few flushes. I raised some donk bets with air. I double barrelled when I thought my opponents were weak. A couple hands I floated a flop bet, tried to steal the pot on the turn, and followed through with a river bluff on a scare card and picked up the pot every time.

So how does this show differently in my stats?

From 2/1 to 2/20 I ran like this:

17.68 VP$P / 13.47 PFR / 2.73 total AF

27.98% attempt to steal blinds, 37.91% W$WSF, 24% WTSD, 53% W$SD

Those stats are basically weak/tight. I’m winning, over 13,000 hands I’m up $260, 4 PTBB/100 at 25NL with those stats. But the 38% won when saw flop stat really bugs me, espicially given how tight I play. I think i’ve mentioned before that I have “Green Line Issues” that really, really bother me. Green line issues being a term from PokerEV. When I have a showdown worthy hand, I play strong, and I win money. But I am not good at picking up pots without a showdown, I’m too weak/tight.

And lastly, positional stats from those hands:

UTG: 12.54/12.54 (VP$P/PFR)

UTG+1: 15.01/13.73

CO: 19.95/17.20

BTN: 24.84/19.94

Ok, so I’m positionally aware. But just not enough.

So lets compare, looking at my stats from tonight. Its just 1700 hands, its just one night of play, but I think its a sign of things to come:

20.10% VP$P, 16.68% PFR, Total AF 4.03, Att to Steal Blinds 37.62%, W$WSF 44.44%, WTSD 22.59%, W$SD 57.38%

The numbers in bold are the major differences.

And, positionally:

UTG: 10.61/10.61 (VP$P/PFR)

UTG+1: 12.86/12.14

CO: 22.22/20.26

BTN: 41.25/37.19

As I said above, the thing I took away from the Ed Miller videos, which is part of the basics of no limit holdem, but for some reason I’ve never quite “gotten” before, the thing I decided to focus all my attention on in tonight’s session… “Pound on your opponents relentlessly in position”

I won 9 PTBB/100 tonight with a couple big missteps and suckouts along the way going against me. If I’d made one better decision and had KK hold up against AK in a big all in PF confrontation, it’d be a 15 PTBB/100 session. Its just one night, just one session, but I think something has “clicked.” Hopefully this is the breakthough I’ve needed to really get myself in more good situations post flop, and to get myself through to the next level.

I’ve had bronchitis since last Wednesday and other than a couple thousand hands Friday and Saturday combined when I thought I was getting better I haven’t played any at all. And since I am a male, I delayed going to the doctor until I felt like I was dying(on Monday). Anyway, I am hopefully on the mend now but may well not get back to the tables until this weekend.

Random Observation from spending all your waking hours in bed in front of a TV: Valentines Day cannot come soon enough. At this point on some shows/time slots well over HALF the commercials are Valentines related, so insane. Also, as I watch the 11am episode of Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel, I also notice that there are no valentines day commercials. Is that because all the husbands/boyfriends with money are at work at 11am, or that no one that watches mythbusters actually has a girlfriend?