If I'm being honest, I'd have to say I'm not a very flashy poker player. I'm not one to make a lot of hero calls. Come to think of it, I don't make a lot of hero folds, either. My poker motto would be KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid.
That's why the hand which I've selected for the hand of the week (perhaps an odd title for a feature I'm writing every two months) is so unique. Facing an inordinate amount of pressure, I made the hero call for a massive chunk of my stack. Was I correct? I'll let you know in my next blog post. Feel free to analyze the hand or critique my play in the comments section below.
THE SITUATION
I'm playing hand No. 103 of a $30+$3 multi-table tournament on PokerStars. I'm the chip leader at my table, and among the top 10 per cent of the field, with a stack of 25,143. Blinds are 300-600 with a 50-chip ante.
MY HOLDING
I've got Kh8s in the big blind.
PREFLOP ACTION
Action folds around to the button, who has the third-largest stack at the table with 15,692. He min-raises to 1,200 total. I elect to defend my big blind with a call.
THE FLOP
The flop comes down 6d 6s 8c. I check, my lone opponent fires a bet of 1,147. I flat-call.
THE TURN
The 9s comes off on the turn. I check, opponent bets 2,400. I flat-call once again.
THE RIVER
The 4s hits the river. I check a third time, and my opponent ships all-in for 10,895. I think about it for a while, and finally click the call button.
HOW WOULD YOU PLAY IT?
I made the hero call, but was I a goat? All that was at stake was 60 per cent of my stack, in a tournament where first place was just a few pennies short of $1,200. I'll keep you in suspense for now, and let you debate my play in the comments section.
Showing posts with label poker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poker. Show all posts
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
I'm done whining . . . for now
A couple days ago, I was doing some griping about how bad I was running. Well, I'm not sure if PokerStars reads my blog (unlikely), but the software, which had been utterly luck-screwing me, made a 180-degree turn in terms of how it was treating me.
Over my next six sit 'n go tournaments (four $30s and two $60s), I cashed four times, including three wins. To say I ran good would be an understatement. Certainly, I played well, adhering to my earlier position that I was making good decisions but just needed the cards to turn slightly in my favour. But I also found myself in some lovely spots. For instance, in one of the $60 SNGs, I had a medium-stacked opponent decide to shove from the small blind into my big blind. I had aces, he had QTo, and I held. Later in the same tournament, I made a raise, and found myself committed when a short stack shipped it behind me. He had AK, I had KhQh, but I flopped a queen and hung on for the knockout. I went on to amass a stack of over 10k before the money bubble burst, and I cruised to the win.
I finished second in the other $60 SNG, but I played well/ran well to get there. On the bubble, I was the short stack, with two medium stacks and one massive stack. First, I shoved a few hands in succession to get out of the danger zone. Then, I was mildly chagrined when one of the smaller stacks doubled up when his AK held against the big stack's QJ, all in preflop. But I was the recipient of some luck on the very next hand, when the other shorter stack got it all in with TT vs. the big stack's A3o. The shorty was safe through the flop and the turn, but the river was a lovely ace to get me into the money.
I was third in chips, but maybe three hands later, the medium stack ran KK into the chip leader's AA. I was at a 10-1 chip disadvantage when heads-up play began, and I busted in short order. But I basically had $150 gift-wrapped thanks to a bit of luck.
So, no more whining from me. I'm playing well and running well. Hopefully it continues.
Bankroll: $7,250
Over my next six sit 'n go tournaments (four $30s and two $60s), I cashed four times, including three wins. To say I ran good would be an understatement. Certainly, I played well, adhering to my earlier position that I was making good decisions but just needed the cards to turn slightly in my favour. But I also found myself in some lovely spots. For instance, in one of the $60 SNGs, I had a medium-stacked opponent decide to shove from the small blind into my big blind. I had aces, he had QTo, and I held. Later in the same tournament, I made a raise, and found myself committed when a short stack shipped it behind me. He had AK, I had KhQh, but I flopped a queen and hung on for the knockout. I went on to amass a stack of over 10k before the money bubble burst, and I cruised to the win.
I finished second in the other $60 SNG, but I played well/ran well to get there. On the bubble, I was the short stack, with two medium stacks and one massive stack. First, I shoved a few hands in succession to get out of the danger zone. Then, I was mildly chagrined when one of the smaller stacks doubled up when his AK held against the big stack's QJ, all in preflop. But I was the recipient of some luck on the very next hand, when the other shorter stack got it all in with TT vs. the big stack's A3o. The shorty was safe through the flop and the turn, but the river was a lovely ace to get me into the money.
I was third in chips, but maybe three hands later, the medium stack ran KK into the chip leader's AA. I was at a 10-1 chip disadvantage when heads-up play began, and I busted in short order. But I basically had $150 gift-wrapped thanks to a bit of luck.
So, no more whining from me. I'm playing well and running well. Hopefully it continues.
Bankroll: $7,250
Monday, August 1, 2011
Why am I on tilt if I'm winning?
I'll admit it. If I'd written this post a week ago, it would have been a bit more of a brag.
One month after returning to the online poker world, I'm up $500. But after the roller-coaster it's been, and the amount of money I probably should have made, I'm fairly discouraged.
In lieu of a chart, here's a sentence summary of my bankroll adventures. I was up $400, down $300, up $800, down $600, up $400, and finally down $200 to land at +$500 for the month.
I've had countless periods of re-evaluation during this stretch. I began the month playing a much more aggressive style than I was used to, and I made it work for me. But playing that high-variance style, combined with playing too many tournaments, caused a nosedive. I decided I needed to get back to using the game plan detailed in Collin Moshman's book, Sit 'n Go Strategy, which is essentially solid early, aggressive late. I also decided I needed to play no more than three tourneys per day, so that I valued each buy-in to a greater degree. I was throwing some of them away on reckless plays.
That shift in focus spurred a huge hot streak, and I was up $900 for the month in a huge hurry. I was doing so well, I was actually on pace to turn in a solid score for PokerStars' Battle of the Planets promotion. Basically, the way it works is, you can win some nice cash prizes if you have the best results over a block of 20 sit 'n gos. I needed to complete 11 on a Saturday morning – an obvious deviation from my three-tourneys-per-day regimen. I did not fare well, playing four at a time as I was. I usually only play two at a time, and though I went on a $200 downturn chasing the Battle of the Planets, I wasn't too perturbed. It was a risk worth taking, and the reasons for my struggles were fairly cut and dried.
The thing was, what I thought would be a short stretch of suckitude endured and became an epic $600 downswing. So discouraging. I gave myself a pep talk and briefly righted the ship, but then PokerStars just decided to rape me repeatedly in the luck department. I hate to tell bad beat stories, but here are some of the beats I've taken on the money bubble over the past week:
KK < QQ
AK < AQ
TT < 33
Each of those beats literally took money out of my bankroll, and that's just a sampling. Here's one that happened tonight, on the bubble of a $60 SNG:
-- First, the pre-beat. I'm second in chips with just north of 3,000, when the short stack ships all in on the button. The small blind is the chip leader, and he calls. I fold the big blind. Shorty shows J5o, chip leader shows KJ. Flop comes QTx, giving the chip leader an open-ended straight draw in addition to his dominating hand. Turn is a blank, and the river is a 5. So freaking gross. I relay this hand because my bubble beats are often preceded by a filthy short-stack double.
-- A couple orbits later, I've chipped up slightly to about 3,500. The chip leader has 6,000ish, and the other two have just north of 2,000. With the blinds at 100-200 with a 25 ante, I raise under the gun to 500 holding Qh8h. I'm on a steal. It folds around to the big blind, who calls. The flop comes QT6. He checks, I bet 600. He insta-shoves. I should add at this point, the dude had been playing extremely aggressive, and had authored some monster suckouts in order to have his stack. With about one-third of my stack already invested and a fairly solid read he was on a bluff, I called. He showed Ac6c for bottom pair. Turn was a blank, river was a 6. I would have been a dominating chip leader; instead I'm out the door. So upsetting to be attacked by a donkey like that. Thanks a million, PokerStars.
So that's where it's at. I've actually been playing really well over the past week; it's just a matter of running a little bit better. I've had a few nice moments during the month – a deep run in a multi-table tourney, and a win at a live game at a friend's house. But I feel the month could have been so much more profitable. But that's poker, as they say.
Bankroll: $6,900
One month after returning to the online poker world, I'm up $500. But after the roller-coaster it's been, and the amount of money I probably should have made, I'm fairly discouraged.
In lieu of a chart, here's a sentence summary of my bankroll adventures. I was up $400, down $300, up $800, down $600, up $400, and finally down $200 to land at +$500 for the month.
I've had countless periods of re-evaluation during this stretch. I began the month playing a much more aggressive style than I was used to, and I made it work for me. But playing that high-variance style, combined with playing too many tournaments, caused a nosedive. I decided I needed to get back to using the game plan detailed in Collin Moshman's book, Sit 'n Go Strategy, which is essentially solid early, aggressive late. I also decided I needed to play no more than three tourneys per day, so that I valued each buy-in to a greater degree. I was throwing some of them away on reckless plays.
That shift in focus spurred a huge hot streak, and I was up $900 for the month in a huge hurry. I was doing so well, I was actually on pace to turn in a solid score for PokerStars' Battle of the Planets promotion. Basically, the way it works is, you can win some nice cash prizes if you have the best results over a block of 20 sit 'n gos. I needed to complete 11 on a Saturday morning – an obvious deviation from my three-tourneys-per-day regimen. I did not fare well, playing four at a time as I was. I usually only play two at a time, and though I went on a $200 downturn chasing the Battle of the Planets, I wasn't too perturbed. It was a risk worth taking, and the reasons for my struggles were fairly cut and dried.
The thing was, what I thought would be a short stretch of suckitude endured and became an epic $600 downswing. So discouraging. I gave myself a pep talk and briefly righted the ship, but then PokerStars just decided to rape me repeatedly in the luck department. I hate to tell bad beat stories, but here are some of the beats I've taken on the money bubble over the past week:
KK < QQ
AK < AQ
TT < 33
Each of those beats literally took money out of my bankroll, and that's just a sampling. Here's one that happened tonight, on the bubble of a $60 SNG:
-- First, the pre-beat. I'm second in chips with just north of 3,000, when the short stack ships all in on the button. The small blind is the chip leader, and he calls. I fold the big blind. Shorty shows J5o, chip leader shows KJ. Flop comes QTx, giving the chip leader an open-ended straight draw in addition to his dominating hand. Turn is a blank, and the river is a 5. So freaking gross. I relay this hand because my bubble beats are often preceded by a filthy short-stack double.
-- A couple orbits later, I've chipped up slightly to about 3,500. The chip leader has 6,000ish, and the other two have just north of 2,000. With the blinds at 100-200 with a 25 ante, I raise under the gun to 500 holding Qh8h. I'm on a steal. It folds around to the big blind, who calls. The flop comes QT6. He checks, I bet 600. He insta-shoves. I should add at this point, the dude had been playing extremely aggressive, and had authored some monster suckouts in order to have his stack. With about one-third of my stack already invested and a fairly solid read he was on a bluff, I called. He showed Ac6c for bottom pair. Turn was a blank, river was a 6. I would have been a dominating chip leader; instead I'm out the door. So upsetting to be attacked by a donkey like that. Thanks a million, PokerStars.
So that's where it's at. I've actually been playing really well over the past week; it's just a matter of running a little bit better. I've had a few nice moments during the month – a deep run in a multi-table tourney, and a win at a live game at a friend's house. But I feel the month could have been so much more profitable. But that's poker, as they say.
Bankroll: $6,900
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Goin' Retro: My big win at the Rock
Three years ago, in May of 2008, I got a free media pass into a super-satellite tournament for the Coast to Coast Poker Championship at the River Rock Casino. This was the first event of the "WPT Canada" tour, and I'm fairly certain it was the last. I alluded to this tournament in a post a couple months back, and I managed to dig up the column that I wrote for the paper afterward. Since I originally wrote it for a non-poker audience, I've added some more technical information for your consumption. Enjoy!
**********
Have you heard the one about the journalist who wins his entry into a major poker tournament, improbably earns a huge payday and writes an award-winning story about it?
If you've read Positively Fifth Street, it's a familiar plot line. In 2000, author James McManus was assigned to cover the World Series of Poker for Harper's magazine, and elected to sink his entire advance fee into qualifying for the $10,000 buy-in main event. He ended up making the final table against all odds, earning $247,760 for his fifth-place finish, and the resulting volume is widely considered one of the best sports books of the past decade.
Recently, my status as a media celebrity (such as it is) afforded me a shot at my own mini-McManus moment. Jody Trainer, an Abbotsford poker pro whom I wrote a feature about in 2006, sent an e-mail offering me a free seat in a super-satellite tournament at the inaugural World Poker Tour Canada event at Richmond's River Rock Casino.
Being a bit of a poker aficionado, I jumped at the chance, selling it to my bosses as an opportunity to take the pulse of poker in Canada. I've been playing the game since 2000, when my buddy Matt and I looked up the rules for Texas hold 'em on the Internet after watching the Matt Damon-Ed Norton flick Rounders. Being that we were poor college students at the time, we'd go down to the corner store and buy boxes of Smarties to use as chips. Then we'd play late into the night, with the winner taking home a bucket of well-handled sweets.
In recent years, we've graduated to playing for vast sums of cash – 10 bucks per tournament, to be precise. Suffice it to say, I'm no high roller.
When I arrived at the River Rock Casino and found my seat, I glanced around to take stock of my opponents. To my left was Joy, a gregarious 77-year-old whose fashion sense echoed that of Johnny Cash, at least when it came to colour choice – black pants, black sweater, black faux-fur vest, black sunglasses, accented by a splashy silver necklace and matching earrings. She brightly informed me that she intended to become the oldest winner of the World Series of Poker women's championship.
Joy took up the game four years ago, and she lost 30 pounds when she started playing online because it cut down on her trips to the fridge. Joy said that poker is a profitable venture for her, and she needs it to be – her winnings supplement a modest pension.
"Find a good mutual fund, and put $100 in it every month," she advised me, using eye contact to emphasize her point. "You'll still be able to pay your rent."
To my immediate right was a young buck sporting a grey Billabong hoodie and a sparse chin-strap beard. He had just arrived at the River Rock after a 13-hour drive from Terrace. Like me, he'd never played in a big tournament before, but he said he'd had some success at $125 buy-in events at his local golf course. Unlike me, he liked to move all his chips into the middle with weak hands like J-10 and K-7. The poker gods must have been smiling on him, because he managed to build a huge stack in the first hour of play.
For the uninitiated, a super-satellite differs from a regular poker tourney in that everyone who finishes in the money wins the same prize. In this case, one out of every 20 players in the event would win a $4,000 prize package, representing buy-ins to a pair of no-limit hold'em tournaments.
In the early stages, I seemed to have a horseshoe embedded in my DNA. On the fifth hand of the event, I was dealt pocket tens in the big blind. The button opened the pot to 250 (blinds 25-50), and I re-raised to 750. The button called, and the flop made me do a double-take – a jack, a ten and another ten. The odds of flopping quads, I found out later, are approximately 407-to-1. I slow-played it effectively, and took about three-quarters of my opponent's stack without a showdown.
Unfortunately, I lost the next couple of hands I played, and I found myself on the razor's edge of elimination, barely treading water as the blinds rose. A couple hours in, I was down to about nine big blinds, and moved all in on the button with A8. I was gutted when the big blind called with AQ, but a miraculous eight materialized on the turn to keep me alive.
That doubled me up, but I was still mentally planning my drive back to Abbotsford when I picked up some massive hands. Twice in quick succession, I was dealt pocket aces and dragged huge pots to boost my chip stack.
Meanwhile, I saw Joy make her exit with under 100 players remaining. And with 55 players left, my buddy from Terrace joined her on the sidelines. There had been 598 entries (including rebuys), meaning that 30 of us would finish in the money.
At that point, the increasingly realistic possibility of winning $4,000 stripped me of any semblance of composure. My table demeanor became less James Bond and more Steve Urkel, and I was literally trembling at times.
Will, a young jet-setting pro from Toronto who was fresh off the plane from jaunts to Monte Carlo and Las Vegas, was seated to my left as the field shrank inside of 40 players. Taking into account my near-constant fidgeting, he started chatting with me in much the same tone that a suicide hotline operator might use to talk someone in off a ledge.
"Hey, you're definitely in the top 15 in chips," he told me, eying my stack. "All you've got to do is avoid confrontations and cruise to the money."
It was sound advice. I locked it down for the most part, but I did raise a couple of pots with legitimate hands and actually ended up busting a short-stacked player in 33rd place when he ran KQ into my AQ.
After eight-and-a-half hours of nerve-wracking play, the money bubble finally burst with the elimination of the 31st player. As I high-fived the other 29 survivors, part of me felt sorry for the guy who'd just been knocked out, but the other (more dominant) part of me was pretty stoked that I'd just won four grand.
I was headed to a wedding in Edmonton that weekend, and thus was unable to make use of the two tournament tickets (for events with $1,000 and $3,000 buy-ins). The casino, though, was nice enough to pay me out in cash instead.
Jody said he was pretty impressed with my performance, calling it "a nice little win." I guess that's a fair assessment – to put it in perspective, Jody boasts upwards of $800,000 in tournament winnings since 2006.
Indeed, I'm not the equal of James McManus as a poker player or a writer. But I've got a pretty cool story to tell my friends.
**********
To this day, this tournament represents the largest score of my modest poker career. It was quite a windfall for me at the time – I was just two months away from my wedding, and I used the cash to pay off the remainder of my car loan and to cover the costs of our honeymoon. It definitely put my wife and I in a much stronger financial position heading into married life, and the tourney itself is simply a great memory.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Grinding out a cash in Vegas
I've had two laptops bite the dust over the last five months, but at long last, I own a legit computer.
So you can expect to see a few more regular updates at this site, including the recap of my Vegas tournament that I promised earlier. That's what this is. Included with this post will be the outcome of my "Hand of the week" that I posted a while back.
FINDING THE RIGHT GAME
Before we headed to Vegas, my buddy Jayeson and I did a bit of research on where the best single-day poker tournaments were held. The site allvegaspoker.com was a tremendous resource.
The general consensus online – backed up by a look at the structure sheets – is that the Venetian is the place to be. We also considered Caesar's Palace and the World Series of Poker at the Rio.
The structures at Caesar's daily tournaments are quite comparable to the Venetian, but the rake at the Venetian was markedly lower in the buy-in range we were looking at ($100-$200). The Venetian's daily $150 noon tournament returns 86 per cent of the buy-in to the prize pool, while Caesar's $85 nooner returned only 76 per cent.
The tourneys at all three places had half-hour-long levels, but the WSOP daily (non-bracelet) tourneys had smaller starting stacks, a couple of missing levels, and the antes started earlier. Not as good a structure and not as much value, and the lure of the WSOP brand wasn't enough to overcome that.
When we got to Vegas, we discovered that the schedules at the casinos were slightly different than we'd expected. Dovetailing with the WSOP, the Venetian was holding its Deep Stack series, and Caesar's was hosting its Mega Stacks series. The Venetian tourneys were out of our ideal price range – upwards of $300 – so we showed up at Caesar's for their $130 buy-in event on Monday.
HOT START
Enough foreplay. Let's talk poker.
At Caesar's, players begin with 15,000 chips and 50-100 blinds. The stacks are deep enough that you can play fairly solid poker, and that's what I did. Over the first two-and-a-half levels, I played just eight hands where I voluntarily put chips into the pot. But I won six of them, chipping up to 32,000 in the process. I wish I could remember some of these hands, but they're escaping me at the moment.
The event drew 371 players, paying 36 spots, including about $7,500 for first. I played with guys from Russia, France, Italy, England, and a few gents from other provinces in Canada. I imagine tournaments in Vegas generally have a fairly high tourist factor, but the fact the WSOP was in town made it a particularly interesting time to be there. Everybody who played poker on the planet seemed to be in town. At least, that was the illusion.
DONKEY BOMBED
There was this guy seated directly to my right who fancied himself the table captain. I might have been annoyed with him, but instead I chose just to be amused.
The dude was in his early 50s, with a greying goatee and leathery sun-burned skin. He took it upon himself to make sure everyone had their antes in, and got into arguments about etiquette a couple times. Classic. Mr. Leather Skin felt it was his God-given right to play every single pot, and he took FOREVER to make a decision pre-flop. Every pair of napkins that landed in front of him required a full-fledged production number as he moaned about how to play this monster, how he just had to call that raise and reraise. The vast majority of the time, he'd call. The man was loose-passive, and a crazy calling station.
He actually played the style reasonably well, but his chip stack obviously did a crazy roller-coaster routine. I steered clear of him for about an hour and 15 minutes, then we finally locked horns.
I hadn't played a hand in a while, so I felt the need to raise with AJ under the gun (a bit loose, maybe). I got a caller in middle position, and of course, Mr. Leather Skin just had to call in the big blind.
The flop was a beauty – AJ3, two diamonds. I decided to slow-play, and we checked it around. The turn was a club, somewhere around an 8. Mr. Leather Skin bet 1,500, and I put in a big raise to 5,000. To my utter shock, the other player in the hand flat-called, and Mr. Leather Face called as well.
The river was gross – the 9 of diamonds. Leather checked, I wasn't putting another chip in the pot, and the other player checked as well. Loud-mouth rolled over T4 of diamonds to take it down. The other player claimed to have 52 of clubs – gutshot straight draw on the flop, flush draw on the turn.
That pot would have had me nearing 45,000 chips, but instead I was knocked down to 23,000. Gaaaaaaah.
RUNNING REALLY GOOD
I felt I had the best seat at the table – to the left of the uber-loose heehaw. But for the next hour and a half, I couldn't find a reasonable hand to play with him. I was utterly card-dead. I ended up blinding down to my starting stack of 15,000 . . . and with the blinds at 500-1,000, that was rather short.
I finally found AJ in middle/late position, and pumped it up to 2500. It folded around to an affable Englishman in the small blind, and he shipped all in with a covering stack. This was not a good spot, so I mucked.
Two hands later, I found AJ again. Once again, I raised to 2500. Once again, the same player – now in the cutoff – shipped all in with a shrug. I had around 10,000 behind, and I was a little suspicious that the same player made the exact same move on me. Was he bullying me? At any rate, if I folded, I'd only have 10 big blinds left. I figured I could well be trailing, but I had to make a stand sometime, so I called.
He flipped over AK, and I was in terrible shape. The flop came down ATx, the turn was a king, and the river was a glorious queen to give me a very fortunate broadway straight. He told me he'd had AK the previous hand he'd shoved on me, as well. Better to be lucky than good sometimes, I guess.
A couple hands later, I finally found a good spot to go to war with Mr. Leather Skin. He raised in early position, and I made a beefy re-raise with KK. He called – of course – and we saw a flop of 642, two diamonds. He checked, and I made a healthy value bet – about 40 per cent of my remaining stack. He check-raised enough to put me all in, and I called.
He rolled over J5 of diamonds, and I just about barfed. He had a gutshot straight flush draw – 12 outs in all. But I managed to fade both the turn and the river, and chipped up to more than 50,000. Phew.
CHIPPING UP
In possession of an above-average stack after that double-up, I began to chip up steadily. My table broke just before the dinner break, and I joined a new table with a bunch of big-stacked players.
On the last hand before dinner, an Eastern European player raised in middle position to 15,000 (blinds were 3,000-6,000, ante 500). I found AK in the big blind, and decided a shove was in order. I pushed about 78,000 into the middle, and after a few moments' thought, my opponent open-mucked JJ. He didn't want to race there, and neither did I. That pot took me over the 100,000 mark, and I had an above-average stack as the money bubble approached.
THE HAND I DIDN'T PLAY, AND THE HAND I DID
If there's one hand where I look back and second-guess myself, it's this one.
We were down to about 40 players – with 36 getting paid – with the blinds at 5,000-10,000, ante 1,000. The player under the gun pushed all in, and I looked down to find JJ in middle position. I asked for a count, and he had about 65,000. At this point, I had just a smidge over 120,000. I felt quite strongly that he probably had AK or AQ, and ultimately, I didn't want to race for half my stack so close to the bubble. So I folded.
In retrospect, I was almost certainly ahead, so calling wasn't a terrible idea. There's no way he had AA or KK, and I highly doubt he had QQ. Given that he was under the gun, it may have been a desperate attempt to steal the blinds. But I was quite convinced of my read, and I went with it, hoping I'd find a better spot.
Two hands later, I found one. The player to my right shipped all in for about 50,000, and I woke up with KK. I re-shoved to isolate, and he had 88. My hand held up to take me to 193,000. The chip average was about 135,000. I was going to make a deeeeeeep run, I figured.
TRENDING DOWNWARD
Regrettably, that represented my high water mark. I didn't find a good spot to play a hand for a lap and a half, and with the blinds at a predatory level, I was soon back down to chip average.
The bubble thankfully burst – a player got it all in with KK, but was run down by AJ on the river. Rough. But I was happy. Not going to lie.
I didn't necessarily just sit idly by and blind away. The table was playing very standard and tight, so I got a little frisky in the cutoff and raised to 25,000 with 93o. The small blind – the biggest stack at the table – shoved all in, and I had to release.
A while later, I tangled with the same player in a blind-vs-blind battle (the player between us busted, leaving an empty seat). I had given him a walk the previous lap, and this time I limped with QJ. The flop came AT8, giving me a double-gutshot straight draw. I fired 25,000, and he called, to my mild chagrin. I put him on a 10 – there's no way he would let me see a cheap flop if he had an ace. The turn was a Q, which if my read was correct, put me in the lead. So I fired 30,000 (leaving maybe 50,000 behind), and after hemming and hawing, he folded.
The very next hand, I had QQ on the button, min-raised, got action in the big blind, and then shoved on a rag flop.
That left me at 144,500 . . . and brings us back to the hand of the week from my June 10 post. To avoid redundancy, I'll let you go back to that post to get up to speed on the action if necessary.
(Waiting . . .)
(Waiting . . .)
Okay, that's enough.
THE END
So I got to the flop holding QcTc, and saw the board roll out Q73. With one player already all in, my only live opponent bet out 25,000. I thought about it for a moment, but with only 96,500 left, I decided a shove was in order. He snap-called with 77, and I was out the door in 34th for a $250 min-cash. (The big blind shover, incidentally, preceded me out the door. He had A8o).
I was very proud to cash at a live tourney in Vegas, but I was also fairly upset with myself afterward because I had an inkling my opponent was very strong in that spot. The proverbial alarm bells were definitely going off when he bet the flop. But when you see a flop with QT, with the stack sizes being what they were, it's hard not to get married to top pair. Credit to the dude who busted me – his bet on the flop was sized perfectly. It gave me the illusion that I had some fold equity.
In some ways, the hand played itself. But I'd like to learn from it. Next time, I'll take more time to ponder the question: Why on earth would he bet the flop?
The tournament was a blast, and my buddy Jayeson also made a nice run. He finished 65th, within shouting distance of the money.
I've got tentative plans to make another Vegas run next year. This time, it'll be more of a poker trip as opposed to a tourist thing. VEGAS BABY!
So you can expect to see a few more regular updates at this site, including the recap of my Vegas tournament that I promised earlier. That's what this is. Included with this post will be the outcome of my "Hand of the week" that I posted a while back.
FINDING THE RIGHT GAME
Before we headed to Vegas, my buddy Jayeson and I did a bit of research on where the best single-day poker tournaments were held. The site allvegaspoker.com was a tremendous resource.
The general consensus online – backed up by a look at the structure sheets – is that the Venetian is the place to be. We also considered Caesar's Palace and the World Series of Poker at the Rio.
The structures at Caesar's daily tournaments are quite comparable to the Venetian, but the rake at the Venetian was markedly lower in the buy-in range we were looking at ($100-$200). The Venetian's daily $150 noon tournament returns 86 per cent of the buy-in to the prize pool, while Caesar's $85 nooner returned only 76 per cent.
The tourneys at all three places had half-hour-long levels, but the WSOP daily (non-bracelet) tourneys had smaller starting stacks, a couple of missing levels, and the antes started earlier. Not as good a structure and not as much value, and the lure of the WSOP brand wasn't enough to overcome that.
When we got to Vegas, we discovered that the schedules at the casinos were slightly different than we'd expected. Dovetailing with the WSOP, the Venetian was holding its Deep Stack series, and Caesar's was hosting its Mega Stacks series. The Venetian tourneys were out of our ideal price range – upwards of $300 – so we showed up at Caesar's for their $130 buy-in event on Monday.
HOT START
Enough foreplay. Let's talk poker.
At Caesar's, players begin with 15,000 chips and 50-100 blinds. The stacks are deep enough that you can play fairly solid poker, and that's what I did. Over the first two-and-a-half levels, I played just eight hands where I voluntarily put chips into the pot. But I won six of them, chipping up to 32,000 in the process. I wish I could remember some of these hands, but they're escaping me at the moment.
The event drew 371 players, paying 36 spots, including about $7,500 for first. I played with guys from Russia, France, Italy, England, and a few gents from other provinces in Canada. I imagine tournaments in Vegas generally have a fairly high tourist factor, but the fact the WSOP was in town made it a particularly interesting time to be there. Everybody who played poker on the planet seemed to be in town. At least, that was the illusion.
DONKEY BOMBED
There was this guy seated directly to my right who fancied himself the table captain. I might have been annoyed with him, but instead I chose just to be amused.
The dude was in his early 50s, with a greying goatee and leathery sun-burned skin. He took it upon himself to make sure everyone had their antes in, and got into arguments about etiquette a couple times. Classic. Mr. Leather Skin felt it was his God-given right to play every single pot, and he took FOREVER to make a decision pre-flop. Every pair of napkins that landed in front of him required a full-fledged production number as he moaned about how to play this monster, how he just had to call that raise and reraise. The vast majority of the time, he'd call. The man was loose-passive, and a crazy calling station.
He actually played the style reasonably well, but his chip stack obviously did a crazy roller-coaster routine. I steered clear of him for about an hour and 15 minutes, then we finally locked horns.
I hadn't played a hand in a while, so I felt the need to raise with AJ under the gun (a bit loose, maybe). I got a caller in middle position, and of course, Mr. Leather Skin just had to call in the big blind.
The flop was a beauty – AJ3, two diamonds. I decided to slow-play, and we checked it around. The turn was a club, somewhere around an 8. Mr. Leather Skin bet 1,500, and I put in a big raise to 5,000. To my utter shock, the other player in the hand flat-called, and Mr. Leather Face called as well.
The river was gross – the 9 of diamonds. Leather checked, I wasn't putting another chip in the pot, and the other player checked as well. Loud-mouth rolled over T4 of diamonds to take it down. The other player claimed to have 52 of clubs – gutshot straight draw on the flop, flush draw on the turn.
That pot would have had me nearing 45,000 chips, but instead I was knocked down to 23,000. Gaaaaaaah.
RUNNING REALLY GOOD
I felt I had the best seat at the table – to the left of the uber-loose heehaw. But for the next hour and a half, I couldn't find a reasonable hand to play with him. I was utterly card-dead. I ended up blinding down to my starting stack of 15,000 . . . and with the blinds at 500-1,000, that was rather short.
I finally found AJ in middle/late position, and pumped it up to 2500. It folded around to an affable Englishman in the small blind, and he shipped all in with a covering stack. This was not a good spot, so I mucked.
Two hands later, I found AJ again. Once again, I raised to 2500. Once again, the same player – now in the cutoff – shipped all in with a shrug. I had around 10,000 behind, and I was a little suspicious that the same player made the exact same move on me. Was he bullying me? At any rate, if I folded, I'd only have 10 big blinds left. I figured I could well be trailing, but I had to make a stand sometime, so I called.
He flipped over AK, and I was in terrible shape. The flop came down ATx, the turn was a king, and the river was a glorious queen to give me a very fortunate broadway straight. He told me he'd had AK the previous hand he'd shoved on me, as well. Better to be lucky than good sometimes, I guess.
A couple hands later, I finally found a good spot to go to war with Mr. Leather Skin. He raised in early position, and I made a beefy re-raise with KK. He called – of course – and we saw a flop of 642, two diamonds. He checked, and I made a healthy value bet – about 40 per cent of my remaining stack. He check-raised enough to put me all in, and I called.
He rolled over J5 of diamonds, and I just about barfed. He had a gutshot straight flush draw – 12 outs in all. But I managed to fade both the turn and the river, and chipped up to more than 50,000. Phew.
CHIPPING UP
In possession of an above-average stack after that double-up, I began to chip up steadily. My table broke just before the dinner break, and I joined a new table with a bunch of big-stacked players.
On the last hand before dinner, an Eastern European player raised in middle position to 15,000 (blinds were 3,000-6,000, ante 500). I found AK in the big blind, and decided a shove was in order. I pushed about 78,000 into the middle, and after a few moments' thought, my opponent open-mucked JJ. He didn't want to race there, and neither did I. That pot took me over the 100,000 mark, and I had an above-average stack as the money bubble approached.
THE HAND I DIDN'T PLAY, AND THE HAND I DID
If there's one hand where I look back and second-guess myself, it's this one.
We were down to about 40 players – with 36 getting paid – with the blinds at 5,000-10,000, ante 1,000. The player under the gun pushed all in, and I looked down to find JJ in middle position. I asked for a count, and he had about 65,000. At this point, I had just a smidge over 120,000. I felt quite strongly that he probably had AK or AQ, and ultimately, I didn't want to race for half my stack so close to the bubble. So I folded.
In retrospect, I was almost certainly ahead, so calling wasn't a terrible idea. There's no way he had AA or KK, and I highly doubt he had QQ. Given that he was under the gun, it may have been a desperate attempt to steal the blinds. But I was quite convinced of my read, and I went with it, hoping I'd find a better spot.
Two hands later, I found one. The player to my right shipped all in for about 50,000, and I woke up with KK. I re-shoved to isolate, and he had 88. My hand held up to take me to 193,000. The chip average was about 135,000. I was going to make a deeeeeeep run, I figured.
TRENDING DOWNWARD
Regrettably, that represented my high water mark. I didn't find a good spot to play a hand for a lap and a half, and with the blinds at a predatory level, I was soon back down to chip average.
The bubble thankfully burst – a player got it all in with KK, but was run down by AJ on the river. Rough. But I was happy. Not going to lie.
I didn't necessarily just sit idly by and blind away. The table was playing very standard and tight, so I got a little frisky in the cutoff and raised to 25,000 with 93o. The small blind – the biggest stack at the table – shoved all in, and I had to release.
A while later, I tangled with the same player in a blind-vs-blind battle (the player between us busted, leaving an empty seat). I had given him a walk the previous lap, and this time I limped with QJ. The flop came AT8, giving me a double-gutshot straight draw. I fired 25,000, and he called, to my mild chagrin. I put him on a 10 – there's no way he would let me see a cheap flop if he had an ace. The turn was a Q, which if my read was correct, put me in the lead. So I fired 30,000 (leaving maybe 50,000 behind), and after hemming and hawing, he folded.
The very next hand, I had QQ on the button, min-raised, got action in the big blind, and then shoved on a rag flop.
That left me at 144,500 . . . and brings us back to the hand of the week from my June 10 post. To avoid redundancy, I'll let you go back to that post to get up to speed on the action if necessary.
(Waiting . . .)
(Waiting . . .)
Okay, that's enough.
THE END
So I got to the flop holding QcTc, and saw the board roll out Q73. With one player already all in, my only live opponent bet out 25,000. I thought about it for a moment, but with only 96,500 left, I decided a shove was in order. He snap-called with 77, and I was out the door in 34th for a $250 min-cash. (The big blind shover, incidentally, preceded me out the door. He had A8o).
I was very proud to cash at a live tourney in Vegas, but I was also fairly upset with myself afterward because I had an inkling my opponent was very strong in that spot. The proverbial alarm bells were definitely going off when he bet the flop. But when you see a flop with QT, with the stack sizes being what they were, it's hard not to get married to top pair. Credit to the dude who busted me – his bet on the flop was sized perfectly. It gave me the illusion that I had some fold equity.
In some ways, the hand played itself. But I'd like to learn from it. Next time, I'll take more time to ponder the question: Why on earth would he bet the flop?
The tournament was a blast, and my buddy Jayeson also made a nice run. He finished 65th, within shouting distance of the money.
I've got tentative plans to make another Vegas run next year. This time, it'll be more of a poker trip as opposed to a tourist thing. VEGAS BABY!
Friday, June 10, 2011
Hand of the week: QT suited in late position
My so-called poker blog has been collecting cyber-space dust for a while now. I simply haven’t been playing much these days, for all the same issues discussed in previous posts.
But last week, I scratched my poker itch in a huge way. My wife and I joined my buddy Jayeson and his wife Ashley for four days/three nights in Vegas, and the gents managed to shake loose to play a tournament at Caesar’s Palace on Monday.
I’ll recap how I fared in a later post, but at this point, I’d like to unveil a new blog feature – the hand of the week. Hopefully, I’ll play an interesting hand every seven days or so, and trot it out for you people to chew over.
THE SITUATION
We’re just inside the money bubble. My chip stack is 144,500 after winning a nice pot holding QQ on the button. Average stack is 159,000. The blinds are 5,000-10,000 with a 1,000 ante, so most stacks are rather shallow. There are nine players at the table.
MY HOLDING
I’ve got QcTc in the cutoff.
PREFLOP ACTION
A solid middle-position player limps into the pot. (Decision point: Fold, call, or raise?)
I elect to call. The button folds, the small blind completes, and then the short-stacked big blind ships all in for 48,000 total. The original limper flat-calls. (Decision point: Fold, call or raise?)
I elect to flat-call as well. The small blind folds.
ON THE FLOP
The flop comes down Q74, rainbow. The middle-position limper leads out with a bet of 25,000. I have 96,500 left. (Decision point: Fold, call or raise?)
HOW WOULD YOU PLAY IT?
In this “hand of the week” format, I think I’ll usually be offering my analysis and breakdown of the hand at this point. But in this case, I’ll keep you in suspense and save my analysis for the next post, as I recap my entire tournament.
I’d be curious to hear how the rest of you might have played this hand. That’s what the comments section is for, folks.
But last week, I scratched my poker itch in a huge way. My wife and I joined my buddy Jayeson and his wife Ashley for four days/three nights in Vegas, and the gents managed to shake loose to play a tournament at Caesar’s Palace on Monday.
I’ll recap how I fared in a later post, but at this point, I’d like to unveil a new blog feature – the hand of the week. Hopefully, I’ll play an interesting hand every seven days or so, and trot it out for you people to chew over.
THE SITUATION
We’re just inside the money bubble. My chip stack is 144,500 after winning a nice pot holding QQ on the button. Average stack is 159,000. The blinds are 5,000-10,000 with a 1,000 ante, so most stacks are rather shallow. There are nine players at the table.
MY HOLDING
I’ve got QcTc in the cutoff.
PREFLOP ACTION
A solid middle-position player limps into the pot. (Decision point: Fold, call, or raise?)
I elect to call. The button folds, the small blind completes, and then the short-stacked big blind ships all in for 48,000 total. The original limper flat-calls. (Decision point: Fold, call or raise?)
I elect to flat-call as well. The small blind folds.
ON THE FLOP
The flop comes down Q74, rainbow. The middle-position limper leads out with a bet of 25,000. I have 96,500 left. (Decision point: Fold, call or raise?)
HOW WOULD YOU PLAY IT?
In this “hand of the week” format, I think I’ll usually be offering my analysis and breakdown of the hand at this point. But in this case, I’ll keep you in suspense and save my analysis for the next post, as I recap my entire tournament.
I’d be curious to hear how the rest of you might have played this hand. That’s what the comments section is for, folks.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Taking a shot
It’s been a while since I posted to this blog, and that negligence reflects a sharp downturn in the amount of poker I’ve been playing. When writing a poker blog, it generally helps to play a bit of poker, you see.
The reason for my absence from the online tables is, my aging six-year-old laptop kicked the bucket. This was about a month ago. So I pulled out an even more ancient laptop, a 10-year-old Dell that was collecting dust in my garage, and wouldn’t you know it, the machine works. One problem – the only application it can’t seem to run is PokerStars. For whatever reason, it won’t connect to the server.
It’s been a somewhat annoying turn of events, but at the same time, I’ve been busy at work and felt I needed a break from the game anyway.
But last Sunday, I felt a burning desire to play the PokerStars’ Sunday Million. Now, I’ve never played the Sunday Million before (its $215 entry fee is generally too rich for my blood), but last week’s event was different. In celebration of the tournament’s fifth anniversary, PokerStars boosted the prize pool guarantee from $1 million to $5 million, with a minimum of $1 million and a Lamborghini Gallardo (pictured right) to first place.
Now, if those sums don’t get your juices flowing, I don’t know what would. So I borrowed a buddy’s laptop and entered the event.
The final numbers associated with the tourney were mind-blowing: 59,128 entries generated an $11.8 million prize pool, with both first place ($1.6m) and second ($1.1m) earning seven-figure payouts.
In the end, the players at the final table settled on a nine-handed chop that saw payouts ranging from $263k to $844k. Regrettably, I was not at that final table, though I did make a decent run and managed to finish in the money.
I had an excellent start. After chipping up steadily over the first hour, I won a huge pot against an aggressive big-stacked player seated two to my right. He’d been raising my big blind from the button every single lap, so when I found AQ in the big blind, I re-popped his opening raise of 450 to 1100. He called, and we saw a QQ9 flop. I bet out, he raised, I reraised all in, and he called with KQ. I held up, and took nearly his entire stack. At that point, I had over 40,000 chips after starting with 10,000.
I continued to build my stack, peaking at 108,000. Along the way, I won another huge pot when my QQ held up against AJ after we got it all in on a jack-high flop.
Two bad beats crippled my chances of making a truly deep run. After moving tables, I found a very aggressive player to my left. On one occasion, it was folded around to me in the small blind, and he shipped all-in after I limped. The very next lap it was folded around to me again, and this time I raised to 3,000 (blinds 500-1,000). It definitely looked suspicious, given the action in that same spot the previous lap. He apparently felt it was a good time for a re-steal, and shipped all-in once again. I had trapped him with AK, but he sucked out with his raggedy Q3 offsuit. That chopped my stack in half.
Later on, just before the money bubble (at 7,450 players), I had 99 in the small blind and called a middle-position raise. The big blind came along for the ride, and we saw a 764 flop. I elected to bet 12,000 (about half the pot) to see where I stood, and the short-stacked big blind shipped it for about 30k. The initial raiser folded, and the pot odds were far to compelling for me to fold. My opponent showed 73o for top pair and a gutshot straight draw, which he filled when a 5 hit the turn. Gross. Losing that pot knocked me down to about 34k, and I was resigned to limping my way into the money.
Once the money bubble burst, I grinded my short stack for another 20 minutes, before shoving in late position with A6 and running into the big blind’s AK. Oh well. I finished in around 5,000th place for $354, which was a min-cash. Obviously it would have been pretty sweet to make a deep run, but I was proud to have cashed in one of the biggest tournaments in history. Good times.
Playing at all was a novelty in itself – I hadn’t played for the three weeks previous, and I haven’t played since. One of these days, I’ll get that big score. As soon as I get a laptop.
Oh, and my bankroll? $6,300 at the moment.
The reason for my absence from the online tables is, my aging six-year-old laptop kicked the bucket. This was about a month ago. So I pulled out an even more ancient laptop, a 10-year-old Dell that was collecting dust in my garage, and wouldn’t you know it, the machine works. One problem – the only application it can’t seem to run is PokerStars. For whatever reason, it won’t connect to the server.
It’s been a somewhat annoying turn of events, but at the same time, I’ve been busy at work and felt I needed a break from the game anyway.
But last Sunday, I felt a burning desire to play the PokerStars’ Sunday Million. Now, I’ve never played the Sunday Million before (its $215 entry fee is generally too rich for my blood), but last week’s event was different. In celebration of the tournament’s fifth anniversary, PokerStars boosted the prize pool guarantee from $1 million to $5 million, with a minimum of $1 million and a Lamborghini Gallardo (pictured right) to first place.
Now, if those sums don’t get your juices flowing, I don’t know what would. So I borrowed a buddy’s laptop and entered the event.
The final numbers associated with the tourney were mind-blowing: 59,128 entries generated an $11.8 million prize pool, with both first place ($1.6m) and second ($1.1m) earning seven-figure payouts.
In the end, the players at the final table settled on a nine-handed chop that saw payouts ranging from $263k to $844k. Regrettably, I was not at that final table, though I did make a decent run and managed to finish in the money.
I had an excellent start. After chipping up steadily over the first hour, I won a huge pot against an aggressive big-stacked player seated two to my right. He’d been raising my big blind from the button every single lap, so when I found AQ in the big blind, I re-popped his opening raise of 450 to 1100. He called, and we saw a QQ9 flop. I bet out, he raised, I reraised all in, and he called with KQ. I held up, and took nearly his entire stack. At that point, I had over 40,000 chips after starting with 10,000.
I continued to build my stack, peaking at 108,000. Along the way, I won another huge pot when my QQ held up against AJ after we got it all in on a jack-high flop.
Two bad beats crippled my chances of making a truly deep run. After moving tables, I found a very aggressive player to my left. On one occasion, it was folded around to me in the small blind, and he shipped all-in after I limped. The very next lap it was folded around to me again, and this time I raised to 3,000 (blinds 500-1,000). It definitely looked suspicious, given the action in that same spot the previous lap. He apparently felt it was a good time for a re-steal, and shipped all-in once again. I had trapped him with AK, but he sucked out with his raggedy Q3 offsuit. That chopped my stack in half.
Later on, just before the money bubble (at 7,450 players), I had 99 in the small blind and called a middle-position raise. The big blind came along for the ride, and we saw a 764 flop. I elected to bet 12,000 (about half the pot) to see where I stood, and the short-stacked big blind shipped it for about 30k. The initial raiser folded, and the pot odds were far to compelling for me to fold. My opponent showed 73o for top pair and a gutshot straight draw, which he filled when a 5 hit the turn. Gross. Losing that pot knocked me down to about 34k, and I was resigned to limping my way into the money.
Once the money bubble burst, I grinded my short stack for another 20 minutes, before shoving in late position with A6 and running into the big blind’s AK. Oh well. I finished in around 5,000th place for $354, which was a min-cash. Obviously it would have been pretty sweet to make a deep run, but I was proud to have cashed in one of the biggest tournaments in history. Good times.
Playing at all was a novelty in itself – I hadn’t played for the three weeks previous, and I haven’t played since. One of these days, I’ll get that big score. As soon as I get a laptop.
Oh, and my bankroll? $6,300 at the moment.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Bankroll management: Keeping score
The approach to building my bankroll that I described in my previous post is somewhat similar to the from-the-ground-up gameplan that top pro Chris Ferguson (pictured above) used in his epic bankroll experiment of 2006-07.
While I started with $5, Ferguson’s degree of difficulty was considerably higher. The World Series of Poker main event champion in 2000, Ferguson decided to see whether he could build a $10,000 bankroll from zero on Full Tilt Poker.
Ferguson began with freerolls – free-to-enter tournaments with massive fields that pay pocket change to the winners. It took him a month to win $2, and a further eight months to crack the $100 plateau. But after 16 months of working at the project for about 10 hours a week, he had his $10,000.
Impressive stuff, no doubt. But as much as Ferguson’s playing skill had plenty to do with succeeding in this feat, his bankroll management strategy was perhaps more crucial. I’ll sprinkle in Ferguson’s wisdom liberally as I move forward with this discussion.
KEEP THE POKER MONEY SEPARATE
I’ve mentioned it before, and I’ll say it again: I firmly believe the first step on the path to bankroll success for a recreational player is keeping the poker funds separate from the regular household income and expenses.
This boundary is beneficial in several ways. It allows your bankroll to serve as an accurate scoreboard, so to speak, of your poker successes/failures. It also prevents poker expenditures from becoming a point of contention with the family, because you’re not gambling with the grocery money. I can’t recommend this course of action strongly enough.
DON’T PLAY ABOVE YOUR MEANS
Ferguson’s rules of bankroll management are reflective of universal poker wisdom. He states that no more than five per cent of a player’s bankroll should be spent on a cash game buy-in or a sit-n-go; and that no more than two per cent should be spent on a tournament.
The principal is, a player must have enough of a bankroll to weather the inevitable downswings that accompany the variance of poker. Think of your bankroll as capital. Knowing you’ve got a comfortable reserve of funds prevents you from playing scared, and also helps to slow the onset of tilt during a losing streak.
I haven’t always been faithful to this strategy. In my previous post, I mentioned my massive spew-fest in the Mansion Poker cash game. That was a classic case of playing above my means. The max buy-in for the $2-$4 no-limit game was $400; when I began playing at that level, I had enough money on that site for just one of those buy-ins. Even after running up my account to $2,000, that only represented five buy-ins, and a few losing sessions quickly wiped me out.
Another classic mistake players tend to make is, when they’re on a losing streak, they play higher to recoup their losses. This is a somewhat natural reflex that I am prone to from time to time, but it’s counter-productive. After losing a string of sit-n-gos in the $20 to $50 range, I’ve sometimes succumbed to the lure of the $100 buy-in game. That’s exactly the wrong thing to do. Most of the time, it doesn’t stop the avalanche; it just speeds the descent.
To recap: If your bankroll is expanding, move up in stakes as you feel comfortable. If your bankroll is shrinking, swallow your pride and move down.
BE A STUDENT OF THE GAME
In an earlier post, I posed the question: “If I can’t have a regular expectation of winning, why on earth am I playing?”
You should be asking yourself the same thing. This next sentence probably isn’t in my best financial interest, but here it is: If you suck relentlessly at poker, you should either quit or get better. Read Dan Harrington’s books. Discuss hands with your friends. Figure it out, for goodness sakes.
That, to me, it the major goal of bankroll management – to figure out whether you’re good or whether you suck. If you don’t like the answer, do something about it. Take responsibility.
It’s probably easier for a recreational player like myself to manage a bankroll. Since the game is not my livelihood, I can take a break for a couple weeks when I go on tilt. I can move down to micro-stakes to satisfy my poker jones before moving back up when I’m feeling more confident. But even for me, it’s a pride-swallowing act to move down a buy-in level. It’s an area for growth.
I think that’s all I have to say on this subject. Bottom line: If poker is to be a presence in your life, make it a healthy presence. It can so easily be the opposite, and the right path begins with solid bankroll management.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Bankroll management: How I've been building mine
Sure, poker is gambling. But it’s a far cry from playing roulette or a slot machine. It’s a skill game. So my thing is, if I can’t have a regular expectation of winning, why on earth am I playing?
That notion led me to separate my poker bankroll from my personal finances waaaaay back when my game was in its formative stages in university. Even then, I wanted to make certain I was a winning player. The best way to do that, in my mind, was to keep all the poker winnings separate – squirreled away in a rubber band like Mike McD in Rounders. I worried that if I were to reach into my bank account to pay for every tournament I wished to enter, I would likely lose track of things, and my hobby could end up being a slow drain on my finances without proper oversight.
THE BEGINNING
My initial investment was a $5 bill, slapped down on a table at the University of Regina’s School of Journalism during a friendly sit-n-go tournament one evening. I won, as I recall, or at the very least I cashed for a nominal sum.
I built up the roll playing $5 and $10 home-game tourneys with my buddies. When I made the leap to online play in 2005, I had enough for a $50 buy-in.
In those early days, I registered to a series of poker sites via a third-party website, with the goal of clearing bonuses to earn prizes. The way it worked was, if you deposited $50 and played a certain number of raked hands, you’d win a prize from the third-party promoter. That’s how I got my poker chip sets, and bunch of poker books and DVDs, my poker table-top, and even a 32-gig iPod.
As I was collecting prizes by putting in the time on each poker site, I was also padding my bankroll - $50 here, $150 there. I had the most success back in the day on Absolute Poker. I generally played limit cash games to clear the bonuses, but then as now, single-table sit-n-go’s were my bread and butter. It seems to me that back in 2005, there were a lot more donkeys at the virtual tables. At any rate, I ran my $50 up to $800 on Absolute, and I used that money to cover about 20 per cent of the cost of my wife’s engagement ring. I love that I can point to that ring and tell her that poker helped pay for it.
THE DOWNSWING
I do have one uber-tilt story from this period. I built up a nice bankroll at Mansion Poker, back when it was a relatively small site. I think I was at around $400 on that site when I decided to take a crack at the $2-$4 no-limit cash game and went on a heater. I was up to $2,000 at one point, and was thinking this could be a real nice secondary income for me.
I still remember the pivotal hand. Towards the end of a winning session, a new player sat down at our table. We were playing short-handed, and I was planning to play a couple more free hands before the big blind reached me and then pack it in for the night. I ended up playing a three-way pot holding AhTc. The flop was a glorious KQJ – but with two hearts. The new player and I checked the flop, the player on the button fired a big bet, and the newbie stunned me by check-raising all-in with the remainder of his $400 stack. I obviously called with the nuts . . . he showed 9h7h . . . a heart hit the turn . . . I had a redraw to the nut flush . . . and missed it.
I re-bought at that point, thinking I had a great shot at getting my money back from this donkey. He took another $400 from me, nearly halving my bankroll. That exchange set me off on mega-monkey-tilt, and I lost my entire Mansion roll. The blow was softened somewhat because my initial investment had only been $50, but I was still quite devastated. Since then, I’ve largely stuck to tournaments, with only an occasional cash game backslide.
THE UPSWING
A happier story was that of my biggest score to date. In 2008, a friend in the local poker community hooked me up with a free seat in a $220 super-satellite prior to an annual tournament series. The event drew 596 players, and paid out 30 prize packages worth $4,000 (entries into a $3,000 and a $1,000 tourney later in the week). I managed to run just good enough and play just well enough to finish in the money. Since I wasn’t able to stick around for the weekend tourneys, the casino was nice enough to pay me out in cash. I used that money to pay off my car, which had a couple more years’ worth of payments, and to finance my honeymoon. It’s a great memory, and I’ll try to track down the column I wrote at the time and post it to this blog.
SETTLING IN
Online, after more or less exhausting the third-party thing, I settled at PokerStars. A big part of the reason was, it was easy to deposit funds. Canadian banks were (and I believe they still are) leery about allowing VISA deposits to poker sites – I remember spending hours trying to find a loophole to get some cash on Ultimate Bet, which I’d heard had the best tourney structures.
PokerStars offered an e-cheque direct deposit option, which worked for me. Plus, the player base was huge, and the sit-n-go structures were better than what Full Tilt and Party Poker had to offer.
I mainly played $5 and $10 single-table SNGs on Stars for a couple years with great success, before finally nutting up a year and a half ago and moving up in stakes. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that my bankroll ballooned from $500 to $6,000 at that point.
This is the first time I’ve managed to build up my bankroll to a reasonable level without spending it. According to sharkscope.com, my total profit from tournaments on Stars is exactly $6,774 at the moment. Obviously I’ve spent a bit of it. But I’m focused on protecting it and investing it wisely.
I'm not raking in Ivey-like sums by any means, but all in all, poker is a fun and profitable hobby for me.
That notion led me to separate my poker bankroll from my personal finances waaaaay back when my game was in its formative stages in university. Even then, I wanted to make certain I was a winning player. The best way to do that, in my mind, was to keep all the poker winnings separate – squirreled away in a rubber band like Mike McD in Rounders. I worried that if I were to reach into my bank account to pay for every tournament I wished to enter, I would likely lose track of things, and my hobby could end up being a slow drain on my finances without proper oversight.
THE BEGINNING
My initial investment was a $5 bill, slapped down on a table at the University of Regina’s School of Journalism during a friendly sit-n-go tournament one evening. I won, as I recall, or at the very least I cashed for a nominal sum.
I built up the roll playing $5 and $10 home-game tourneys with my buddies. When I made the leap to online play in 2005, I had enough for a $50 buy-in.
In those early days, I registered to a series of poker sites via a third-party website, with the goal of clearing bonuses to earn prizes. The way it worked was, if you deposited $50 and played a certain number of raked hands, you’d win a prize from the third-party promoter. That’s how I got my poker chip sets, and bunch of poker books and DVDs, my poker table-top, and even a 32-gig iPod.
As I was collecting prizes by putting in the time on each poker site, I was also padding my bankroll - $50 here, $150 there. I had the most success back in the day on Absolute Poker. I generally played limit cash games to clear the bonuses, but then as now, single-table sit-n-go’s were my bread and butter. It seems to me that back in 2005, there were a lot more donkeys at the virtual tables. At any rate, I ran my $50 up to $800 on Absolute, and I used that money to cover about 20 per cent of the cost of my wife’s engagement ring. I love that I can point to that ring and tell her that poker helped pay for it.
THE DOWNSWING
I do have one uber-tilt story from this period. I built up a nice bankroll at Mansion Poker, back when it was a relatively small site. I think I was at around $400 on that site when I decided to take a crack at the $2-$4 no-limit cash game and went on a heater. I was up to $2,000 at one point, and was thinking this could be a real nice secondary income for me.
I still remember the pivotal hand. Towards the end of a winning session, a new player sat down at our table. We were playing short-handed, and I was planning to play a couple more free hands before the big blind reached me and then pack it in for the night. I ended up playing a three-way pot holding AhTc. The flop was a glorious KQJ – but with two hearts. The new player and I checked the flop, the player on the button fired a big bet, and the newbie stunned me by check-raising all-in with the remainder of his $400 stack. I obviously called with the nuts . . . he showed 9h7h . . . a heart hit the turn . . . I had a redraw to the nut flush . . . and missed it.
I re-bought at that point, thinking I had a great shot at getting my money back from this donkey. He took another $400 from me, nearly halving my bankroll. That exchange set me off on mega-monkey-tilt, and I lost my entire Mansion roll. The blow was softened somewhat because my initial investment had only been $50, but I was still quite devastated. Since then, I’ve largely stuck to tournaments, with only an occasional cash game backslide.
THE UPSWING
A happier story was that of my biggest score to date. In 2008, a friend in the local poker community hooked me up with a free seat in a $220 super-satellite prior to an annual tournament series. The event drew 596 players, and paid out 30 prize packages worth $4,000 (entries into a $3,000 and a $1,000 tourney later in the week). I managed to run just good enough and play just well enough to finish in the money. Since I wasn’t able to stick around for the weekend tourneys, the casino was nice enough to pay me out in cash. I used that money to pay off my car, which had a couple more years’ worth of payments, and to finance my honeymoon. It’s a great memory, and I’ll try to track down the column I wrote at the time and post it to this blog.
SETTLING IN
Online, after more or less exhausting the third-party thing, I settled at PokerStars. A big part of the reason was, it was easy to deposit funds. Canadian banks were (and I believe they still are) leery about allowing VISA deposits to poker sites – I remember spending hours trying to find a loophole to get some cash on Ultimate Bet, which I’d heard had the best tourney structures.
PokerStars offered an e-cheque direct deposit option, which worked for me. Plus, the player base was huge, and the sit-n-go structures were better than what Full Tilt and Party Poker had to offer.
I mainly played $5 and $10 single-table SNGs on Stars for a couple years with great success, before finally nutting up a year and a half ago and moving up in stakes. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that my bankroll ballooned from $500 to $6,000 at that point.
This is the first time I’ve managed to build up my bankroll to a reasonable level without spending it. According to sharkscope.com, my total profit from tournaments on Stars is exactly $6,774 at the moment. Obviously I’ve spent a bit of it. But I’m focused on protecting it and investing it wisely.
I'm not raking in Ivey-like sums by any means, but all in all, poker is a fun and profitable hobby for me.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Bankroll management: Opening rant
As a relative minnow in the poker pond, it boggles my mind to hear tales/rumours about high-profile pros like Mike Matusow and T.J. Cloutier going broke.
Such stories are incredibly common – the phenomenon is the product of the challenging variance of poker, and an inability on the part of individuals to effectively manage their bankroll. Case in point: Jean-Robert Bellande (pictured above). The former Survivor contestant’s brutally honest tracking of his bankroll swings has earned him quite a following on Twitter. His handle is @BrokeLivingJRB, which offers a hint at his loosey-goosey financial philosophy.
On the face of it, winning at poker seems much tougher and more intellectually challenging than managing the spoils of victory. But it’s the opinion of many winning players that bankroll management is as important, if not moreso, than mastery of the actual game itself.
So . . . If poker is a skill game, and I believe it is, shouldn’t there be a corresponding way to skillfully manage a bankroll?
I say yes. My basic bankroll philosophy is hardly exclusive to poker. It’s essentially the same conservative style of money management that my parents drilled into me as a kid. Basically, it amounts to “Don’t spend money you don’t have.”
It sounds obvious, but our society’s relentless refusal to apply common sense and fiscal prudence is at the root of the current economic downturn. Folks in developed nations tend to have a sense of entitlement. If they can’t afford something, they simply put it on their credit card, expand their line of credit, or borrow against the equity in their house. We have a standard of living we envision and believe we deserve, and we’re determined to get there by any means necessary.
That last paragraph may have been a bit of a digression from the poker-bankroll theme of this post, but I tend to believe that society’s warped financial mentality can’t help but grease the skids for poker players on the way to the poorhouse.
I realize I’m rambling a little bit. So I’ll break this bankroll rant into three parts. Tomorrow I’ll tell the story of how I built my bankroll, and offer some general guidelines for poker players the following day.
One big qualifier: It’s probably true that it’s easier for a recreational player like myself to manage a bankroll. I’m not dealing in massive sums. But I feel like I’ve got some solid bankroll fundamentals, so take ‘em for what they’re worth.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Quick poker snapshot
The end of January seems like a good time to update the poker exploits.
There's nothing massive to report since my last post, and that's a good thing, I think. After an atrocious two-month run, I've won back all I've lost. Factoring in the live score I had on New Year's Eve, I'm up $1,000 over the past month-plus-a-day. I'd lost $900 in November/December.
Additionally, as I mentioned in my last post, the only reason I was even taking my broken-down game to the online tables was, I was intent on earning enough frequent player points for a $250 electronics gift card. Mission accomplished. Bonus.
I was up a few more bucks, before enduring a little $200 downswing. But I've won more than half of that back, and my game is stable and sound.
Bankroll: $6,000. It's good to be back.
There's nothing massive to report since my last post, and that's a good thing, I think. After an atrocious two-month run, I've won back all I've lost. Factoring in the live score I had on New Year's Eve, I'm up $1,000 over the past month-plus-a-day. I'd lost $900 in November/December.
Additionally, as I mentioned in my last post, the only reason I was even taking my broken-down game to the online tables was, I was intent on earning enough frequent player points for a $250 electronics gift card. Mission accomplished. Bonus.
I was up a few more bucks, before enduring a little $200 downswing. But I've won more than half of that back, and my game is stable and sound.
Bankroll: $6,000. It's good to be back.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
In poker, patience is a virtue
Turns out, I didn’t lose my poker game forever. I just misplaced it temporarily.
And what a relief that is.
The live score I bragged about in my previous post was the spark that renewed my confidence online. Since the start of January, I’m up $400. Sweet.
The only reason I’m even playing these days is, I’m just 1,000 PokerStars frequent player points short of earning a $250 Future Shop gift card. (At this point, I have to kind of chuckle. When I started this blog, I was talking about paying off my mortgage. These days, I’m just trying to nurse a few bucks in my PokerStars account long enough to win a freaking electronics gift card. For sure, that whole dream-big routine has given way to more modest goals.)
In order to get to my points goal, I’m being very consistent about my sit-n-go sessions, playing one $22 and one $33 single-table tourney at the same time. Sometimes I just play one of these dual sessions; some evenings I’ll bang out a couple of ’em.
At any rate, I’m nearly two-thirds of my way to the 1,000 points I need, and I’ve profited the aforementioned $400 in the process. Once again, sweet.
The biggest difference between my play this month and my ridiculously unprofitable November-December run is, I’m being much more patient. In retrospect, my mindset at the virtual tables gradually slipped too far to the aggressive end of the spectrum. The edge between winning and losing poker is razor-thin, and while aggression can be a profitable tool when applied correctly, the calibration of my game was just slightly off. I got in far too many marginal situations.
To be philosophical about it, I think sometimes poker players make the mistake of assuming the play at the table revolves around them. It’s a product of the individualistic mentality that our culture breeds in us. In poker, at least for me, that manifests itself in trying to prove I’m the best player at the table by trying overly tricky plays. That’s a high-variance strategy. I’m finding success by keeping it simple in the early going, in accordance with Collin Moshman’s excellent instructional manual, “Sit ‘n Go Strategy.”
The sickest/best thing about this positive uptick in my bankroll is, I haven’t even run particularly well. I’ve had countless SNGs where I’m suppressing a bad word after some donkey sucks out on me. If I were running well, I could be up $700. If I were running real hot, I’d be up $1,000. I’ve put myself in position to win a lot of tournaments, and I haven’t been converting at the rate I’d usually expect. But it’s a far better feeling to bust in unlucky circumstances than to bust while playing badly. My mood is vastly more upbeat when I know I’ve played well.
Bankroll = $5,900. Loving poker, loving life.
And what a relief that is.
The live score I bragged about in my previous post was the spark that renewed my confidence online. Since the start of January, I’m up $400. Sweet.
The only reason I’m even playing these days is, I’m just 1,000 PokerStars frequent player points short of earning a $250 Future Shop gift card. (At this point, I have to kind of chuckle. When I started this blog, I was talking about paying off my mortgage. These days, I’m just trying to nurse a few bucks in my PokerStars account long enough to win a freaking electronics gift card. For sure, that whole dream-big routine has given way to more modest goals.)
In order to get to my points goal, I’m being very consistent about my sit-n-go sessions, playing one $22 and one $33 single-table tourney at the same time. Sometimes I just play one of these dual sessions; some evenings I’ll bang out a couple of ’em.
At any rate, I’m nearly two-thirds of my way to the 1,000 points I need, and I’ve profited the aforementioned $400 in the process. Once again, sweet.
The biggest difference between my play this month and my ridiculously unprofitable November-December run is, I’m being much more patient. In retrospect, my mindset at the virtual tables gradually slipped too far to the aggressive end of the spectrum. The edge between winning and losing poker is razor-thin, and while aggression can be a profitable tool when applied correctly, the calibration of my game was just slightly off. I got in far too many marginal situations.
To be philosophical about it, I think sometimes poker players make the mistake of assuming the play at the table revolves around them. It’s a product of the individualistic mentality that our culture breeds in us. In poker, at least for me, that manifests itself in trying to prove I’m the best player at the table by trying overly tricky plays. That’s a high-variance strategy. I’m finding success by keeping it simple in the early going, in accordance with Collin Moshman’s excellent instructional manual, “Sit ‘n Go Strategy.”
The sickest/best thing about this positive uptick in my bankroll is, I haven’t even run particularly well. I’ve had countless SNGs where I’m suppressing a bad word after some donkey sucks out on me. If I were running well, I could be up $700. If I were running real hot, I’d be up $1,000. I’ve put myself in position to win a lot of tournaments, and I haven’t been converting at the rate I’d usually expect. But it’s a far better feeling to bust in unlucky circumstances than to bust while playing badly. My mood is vastly more upbeat when I know I’ve played well.
Bankroll = $5,900. Loving poker, loving life.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Wrapping up the poker year on a winning note
One of my new year's resolutions is to update this blog more often.
The reasons I went without posting during the month of December are varied. For starters, I was exceedingly busy, both at work and in my private life. After a long day of writing at the office, coming home and doing even more writing didn't seem like a fun use of my time.
Additionally, my heinous poker slump continued, blunting my desire to write on the topic. It felt as though I'd forgotten how to play the game. Confidence = Shot. My bankroll, after peaking at $6,000 at the end of October, shrank to around $5,100 when I wisely decided to take a break from PokerStars a week before Christmas.
On the last day before 2010 expired, I finally managed to put together a positive result. I went to Cascades Casino in Langley for a New Year's Eve rebuy tournament, and had a reasonably smooth trip to a $465 payday. Sweet.
I was basically in for the minimum - the initial $50 buy-in, plus a $20 add-on at the end of the rebuy period. I played a simple, snug game, and was fortunate enough to triple my stack during the first hour of play.
On the key hand, I called a 300-chip raise in late position holding AQ, and saw a flop of A86, two hearts. The small blind led out for 400 and was called by the initial raiser. I started the hand with about 2,500 in chips (starting stack was 3,000), and just decided that if I was beat, I could always rebuy. I stuck all my chips in and was called by both players. The small blind had A-10, and the middle-position player had 4h6h. I managed to dodge all their outs to earn a big stack.
I kept it snug with the big stack, and built up steadily en route to the final table. I ramped up the aggression early at the final table, stealing a series of blinds and antes to build up to 39,000. That left me in second or third place.
I hit a speed bump at that point. I was in the big blind (1000-2000) when the chip leader limped under the gun, and the small blind completed. I looked down to see AK, and I decided to raise another 6,000. The chip leader called, the small blind folded. The flop came 568, two spades. I continuation bet 8,000, and the chip leader called in position. The turn was the four of spades - a terrible card for me if there ever was one. I contemplated firing another bullet, but decided discretion was the better part of valour. I check-folded to my opponent's 12,000 bet, which would have crippled me, and he showed 77 for the straight.
I retrospect, it might have made sense to check preflop. Given the size of our stacks, and the likelihood the chip leader would call in position, keeping the pot small and seeing a free flop might have been wise. It's a play I make in certain situations online, and I considered it in this spot. Another way to go might have been to raise all-in, but our stacks were too big in relation to the blinds. Checking would probably have been the way to go.
That hand cost me nearly 40 per cent of my stack, and the blinds quickly carved away even more of my chips. I was down to 16,500 with the blinds at 2,000-4,000 when I finally picked up some hands worth raising with, and took down some crucial blinds and antes.
Only four places paid (the tournament had 30 starters), but the prize pool was around $2,300 due to all the rebuys and add-ons. With six players remaining, we started talking about a chop, and the second-largest stack said he'd consider it in three hands, when the big blind hit him.
The very next hand, I found As10s under the gun, and raised to 9,000. The big blind said, "Well, I'll make your decision easier," and shoved his stack of about 19,000 into the middle. I started the hand with around 30,000, and though losing would have crippled me, I decided I had too much invested, and called. I was stunned when he showed KhQh. What was this dude thinking? We were talking chop, and he decides to put his tournament life on the line in a ridiculously marginal spot.
Fortunately, the board ran out with nothing but rags, and I vaulted into second place. The very next hand, the short-stacked small blind shoved on me for 9,700 total. I looked down to find A8, and even though I knew his range was very small, I decided I probably needed to call, getting 3-to-1 odds. He showed AA, which made perfect sense. Rockets was probably the only hand he was shoving with - clearly he was a wiser player than the dude who was just knocked out. He obviously doubled up.
With no distinct short stack, and with the chip leader in a hurry to make it to another appointment, we decided to chop up the prize pool on the money bubble for $465 apiece. That was better than third-place money, and I was all too happy to do the deal. I wasn't eager to get into a coin flip or another marginal spot on the bubble when I could score a nice little payout.
So at the end of 2010, my bankroll is at $5,500. That's about $5,000 more than it was in September 2009, when I started playing the higher buy-in tournaments. It's about $2,000 more than when I began this blog experiment back in June. Sweet. And it's hard to overstate how nice it is to end the year with a great live result.
That said, my poker confidence is still rather low at this point. I'm not eager to play on PokerStars these days; the only factor that might get me playing in January is, I'm just 1,000 VIP points short of earning a $250 gift card from Future Shop. That's about one month's worth of play, and it might be worth my while.
But I'm really feeling moved to dial back my online poker hours; thus, the poker/bankroll/mortgage premise for this blog might take a back seat in 2011. I'll still be updating this site regularly, but I imagine fewer of my posts will relate to poker exploits. Please continue to visit. I promise to be interesting.
To all five of my regular readers, I wish you a wonderful and blessed 2011.
The reasons I went without posting during the month of December are varied. For starters, I was exceedingly busy, both at work and in my private life. After a long day of writing at the office, coming home and doing even more writing didn't seem like a fun use of my time.
Additionally, my heinous poker slump continued, blunting my desire to write on the topic. It felt as though I'd forgotten how to play the game. Confidence = Shot. My bankroll, after peaking at $6,000 at the end of October, shrank to around $5,100 when I wisely decided to take a break from PokerStars a week before Christmas.
On the last day before 2010 expired, I finally managed to put together a positive result. I went to Cascades Casino in Langley for a New Year's Eve rebuy tournament, and had a reasonably smooth trip to a $465 payday. Sweet.
I was basically in for the minimum - the initial $50 buy-in, plus a $20 add-on at the end of the rebuy period. I played a simple, snug game, and was fortunate enough to triple my stack during the first hour of play.
On the key hand, I called a 300-chip raise in late position holding AQ, and saw a flop of A86, two hearts. The small blind led out for 400 and was called by the initial raiser. I started the hand with about 2,500 in chips (starting stack was 3,000), and just decided that if I was beat, I could always rebuy. I stuck all my chips in and was called by both players. The small blind had A-10, and the middle-position player had 4h6h. I managed to dodge all their outs to earn a big stack.
I kept it snug with the big stack, and built up steadily en route to the final table. I ramped up the aggression early at the final table, stealing a series of blinds and antes to build up to 39,000. That left me in second or third place.
I hit a speed bump at that point. I was in the big blind (1000-2000) when the chip leader limped under the gun, and the small blind completed. I looked down to see AK, and I decided to raise another 6,000. The chip leader called, the small blind folded. The flop came 568, two spades. I continuation bet 8,000, and the chip leader called in position. The turn was the four of spades - a terrible card for me if there ever was one. I contemplated firing another bullet, but decided discretion was the better part of valour. I check-folded to my opponent's 12,000 bet, which would have crippled me, and he showed 77 for the straight.
I retrospect, it might have made sense to check preflop. Given the size of our stacks, and the likelihood the chip leader would call in position, keeping the pot small and seeing a free flop might have been wise. It's a play I make in certain situations online, and I considered it in this spot. Another way to go might have been to raise all-in, but our stacks were too big in relation to the blinds. Checking would probably have been the way to go.
That hand cost me nearly 40 per cent of my stack, and the blinds quickly carved away even more of my chips. I was down to 16,500 with the blinds at 2,000-4,000 when I finally picked up some hands worth raising with, and took down some crucial blinds and antes.
Only four places paid (the tournament had 30 starters), but the prize pool was around $2,300 due to all the rebuys and add-ons. With six players remaining, we started talking about a chop, and the second-largest stack said he'd consider it in three hands, when the big blind hit him.
The very next hand, I found As10s under the gun, and raised to 9,000. The big blind said, "Well, I'll make your decision easier," and shoved his stack of about 19,000 into the middle. I started the hand with around 30,000, and though losing would have crippled me, I decided I had too much invested, and called. I was stunned when he showed KhQh. What was this dude thinking? We were talking chop, and he decides to put his tournament life on the line in a ridiculously marginal spot.
Fortunately, the board ran out with nothing but rags, and I vaulted into second place. The very next hand, the short-stacked small blind shoved on me for 9,700 total. I looked down to find A8, and even though I knew his range was very small, I decided I probably needed to call, getting 3-to-1 odds. He showed AA, which made perfect sense. Rockets was probably the only hand he was shoving with - clearly he was a wiser player than the dude who was just knocked out. He obviously doubled up.
With no distinct short stack, and with the chip leader in a hurry to make it to another appointment, we decided to chop up the prize pool on the money bubble for $465 apiece. That was better than third-place money, and I was all too happy to do the deal. I wasn't eager to get into a coin flip or another marginal spot on the bubble when I could score a nice little payout.
So at the end of 2010, my bankroll is at $5,500. That's about $5,000 more than it was in September 2009, when I started playing the higher buy-in tournaments. It's about $2,000 more than when I began this blog experiment back in June. Sweet. And it's hard to overstate how nice it is to end the year with a great live result.
That said, my poker confidence is still rather low at this point. I'm not eager to play on PokerStars these days; the only factor that might get me playing in January is, I'm just 1,000 VIP points short of earning a $250 gift card from Future Shop. That's about one month's worth of play, and it might be worth my while.
But I'm really feeling moved to dial back my online poker hours; thus, the poker/bankroll/mortgage premise for this blog might take a back seat in 2011. I'll still be updating this site regularly, but I imagine fewer of my posts will relate to poker exploits. Please continue to visit. I promise to be interesting.
To all five of my regular readers, I wish you a wonderful and blessed 2011.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Final thoughts on the final table
The 2010 edition of the World Series of Poker main event final table will go down in history as perhaps the most dramatic and entertaining WSOP final tables of all time. I’ve had a couple weeks to digest how it all went down; here are my thoughts.
OH CANADA!
Congrats to Montreal native Jonathan Duhamel (pictured above) for becoming the first Canadian to win the main event. He didn’t play the best poker at the final table (more on that in a minute) but he got lucky in some big spots, and then finished things off with overwhelming aggression.
Certain members of the poker media have wondered aloud whether Duhamel’s win will cause a poker explosion in Canada, similar to what happened when Chris Moneymaker won in 2003. I tend to think that’s not going to materialize. The thing is, Canadians already love poker. The game has been well-exposed in Canada on TV, and most of those who might be inclined to play, already do.
If there’s a poker explosion, it’ll be in Quebec. The French-speaking media apparently loves Duhamel – RDS, the francophone arm of TSN, sent a camera crew down to Vegas to document the 23-year-old’s every move leading up to the final table. How to you say check-raise en francais?
I WAS RIGHT ABOUT CHEONG (SORT OF)
Back in July, I predicted Joseph Cheong would win the main event. I really admired his perseverance and sharp play in rebuilding his stack after Filippo Candio gave him a sick beat leading up to the final table.
By and large, Cheong’s performance at the final table justified my faith in him. He looked awesome on TV during the early stages, and from reading various hand-by-hand blogs after watching the telecast, he absolutely dominated the table to an extent that wasn’t really reflected in the TV coverage. I was particularly impressed with the way he induced Matthew Jarvis to bluff off half his stack on one of the early hands.
What folks are going to remember Cheong for, unfortunately, is one of the all-time great blow-ups. He built his stack from 23.5 million at the start to over 100 million when it was down to three-handed between himself, Duhamel and John Racener. Racener was short-stacked, and it seemed like just a matter of time before Cheong and Duhamel locked horns heads-up.
But then Cheong decided to six-bet all in against Duhamel with A7o, and was called by the Quebecker’s QQ. The queens held, crippling Cheong, and he was eliminated a couple hands later.
I listened to audio of the post-tourney media scrums with the players, and Cheong basically said he made a read and went with it. He said he’d probably do it the same way if he found himself in the same spot again. Obviously it was an epic mistake, but I respect that the guy has so much confidence in his reads. If you’re not confident in poker, you’re screwed.
Part of Cheong’s thinking was, he felt he could get Duhamel off a hand like QQ. And honestly, if I’d been in Duhamel’s shoes, I would have been hard-pressed to call off my chips in that spot. In his post-match interview, though, Duhamel said it was an “easy call” – which implies that because of Cheong’s constant aggression, he didn’t give him credit for a big hand. Failing to consider his table image was Cheong’s biggest error, in my mind.
It says a lot about Cheong’s skill that even after he blew off such a huge stack, the folks at ESPN.com were still blown away by the clinic he put on prior to that.
MIZRACHI BLEW IT
The most recognizable pro at the final table was Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi. After starting the day seventh in chips, he grinded his way up to the chip lead at the dinner break. He had the biggest stack when play got to five-handed, but he managed to bust in fifth place.
Grinder’s tournament came down to three crucial hands – two of which he played badly, and one of which he got unlucky on. On the first key hand, he open-raised with A8 suited, and then the short-stacked Racener shoved all in. Racener had been playing tight all day, but Grinder decided to take an ill-advised shot at him. Racener had Mizrachi dominated with AK, and his hand held to take a big chunk out of Grinder’s stack.
Later on, Racener gave Duhamel a sick beat when his AQ sucked out against AK, all in preflop. The very next hand, Duhamel raised in the small blind with A9o. Mizrachi shipped it from the big blind with 33, and after humming and hawing for a long while, Duhamel called off his stack. I think this was a brutal call by Duhamel – the best he could have hoped for there was a coin flip, and he could have easily been dominated. Mizrachi had an incredulous look on his face when Duhamel showed A9. At any rate, Duhamel was extremely fortunate to flop a nine and double up.
The eventual champ executed a lovely trap to knock out Mizrachi. Duhamel limped in the small blind with AA, and the Grinder checked with Q8o. The flop came queen high . . . Duhamel checked . . . Grinder bet . . . Duhamel check-raised . . . Grinder snap-shoved . . . and Duhamel called. Two cards later, Mizrachi was busto.
When Mizrachi took the lead at the dinner break, everyone expected him to run over the table from that point. That he managed to blow off all his chips in short order was quite stunning.
TIGHT PLAYERS HAD THE RIGHT IDEA
Racener and Candio were by far the tightest players at the table, and I have to give them both a certain amount of props for that. It ain’t sexy to play snug, but there’s something to be said for moving up the pay scale. Candio netted just over $3 million for fourth place, and runner-up Racener won $5.5 million for essentially sitting there and waiting for everyone else to beat each other up.
John Dolan, who began the day second in chips with 46 million but busted in sixth, might be a richer man today had he played as conservatively as Racener and Candio.
From donkey to genius
To summarize my crazy November poker run, I basically forgot how to play the game for a minute there . . . and then I remembered.
To be more specific, I made a $1,000 profit during a stellar October, and then managed to blow off $900 of it in the worst single downswing of my tournament career (such as it is).
The way I look at it, the first $200 of the downswing was just the natural variance of poker. I got moderately unlucky in a couple sit-n-gos, no big deal. The next $500 was entirely on me - I played like a donkey. I completely lost my confidence, and every move I made was wrong. If I made a continuation bet, I was definitely getting check-raised. If I had the chip lead on the money bubble, I'd find a way to be the next guy eliminated.
At that point, I decided to buckle down and play some decent freaking poker. I've found that the best way to regain my poker mojo is to play 27-player sit-n-gos as opposed to single-table SNGs. For some reason, the multi-table format tends to encourage me to play simple ABC poker, as opposed to making fancy (often low-percentage) moves. And when I'm playing poorly, a little ABC poker is just what the doctor ordered. From there, I can add bluffs back into my game gradually - only picking the most obvious spots at the start, and opening things up a bit as I regain my confidence.
This tactic probably would have worked, but I ran horrendously bad and managed to bleed off another $200. I lost in all sorts of sick ways: KK vs. QQ, KQ vs. QT, AK vs. AQ, etc. I couldn't catch a break, but I felt like I was playing well again.
The circumstances of my inevitable upswing were kind of interesting. I came down with the flu today and had to stay home from work. As I lay on the couch, chugging ginger ale and sipping chicken soup, I decided to take a shot at one of the big multi-table tournaments. I hit up one with a $20 buy-in, and ended up finishing seventh out of about 1200 people for $671. Pretty sweet on some levels - I got a big chunk of my bankroll back in a big hurry. Of couse, first place was $3,800, so once again I came up just short of a real big score.
Ultimately, I was pleased with my play. I was very patient, navigating my way past the money bubble with a stack that was just a couple bucks below average. Then I was fortunate enough to catch KK against a big stack's QQ, and scored a nice double-up.
I doubled up a second time in fascinating circumstances. The player to my left and I both had very deep stacks of around 50,000, and I think the blinds were around 500-1000. I limped in the small blind with KJ (after everyone else had folded), and he made a bigger-than-usual raise out of the big blind. I just felt like he was robbing me and didn't want any action in that spot. So I shoved, and he snap-called with A9o.
My hand was obviously caught in the cookie jar, but he made a ridiculous call in my opinion. Sure, he had a better hand than me, but that's a very marginal spot to call off all your chips. He's only 60 per cent to win there. Anyway, I flopped a king, and it held to give me one of the biggest stacks in the tournament with about 50 players remaining.
I rode that stack down to the final two tables, at which point I opened up my game and got some timely resteals.
I arrived at the final table with just over 300,000 in chips, which was good for fifth place, just below average. The top five spots paid at least $1,000, which is what I was sort of aiming for, and I decided to be patient. I was rather unlucky not to finish higher - the short stacks kept sucking out and doubling up. It was kind of gross. I only caught one big hand - AA in the big blind - and wouldn't you know it, everybody else folded to me. So sick.
This final table was slow going, and my 300k stack ended up shrinking in relation to the blinds, which rose to 12,500-25,000. I ended up busting in seventh when the chip leader made a small raise from the button, and I felt my AhTh was good enough for a resteal. He called with AQ, and my suckout didn't materialize.
At the end of the day, I'm really happy with both my play and the result. One of these times, I'll get the win.
Bankroll = $5,700
To be more specific, I made a $1,000 profit during a stellar October, and then managed to blow off $900 of it in the worst single downswing of my tournament career (such as it is).
The way I look at it, the first $200 of the downswing was just the natural variance of poker. I got moderately unlucky in a couple sit-n-gos, no big deal. The next $500 was entirely on me - I played like a donkey. I completely lost my confidence, and every move I made was wrong. If I made a continuation bet, I was definitely getting check-raised. If I had the chip lead on the money bubble, I'd find a way to be the next guy eliminated.
At that point, I decided to buckle down and play some decent freaking poker. I've found that the best way to regain my poker mojo is to play 27-player sit-n-gos as opposed to single-table SNGs. For some reason, the multi-table format tends to encourage me to play simple ABC poker, as opposed to making fancy (often low-percentage) moves. And when I'm playing poorly, a little ABC poker is just what the doctor ordered. From there, I can add bluffs back into my game gradually - only picking the most obvious spots at the start, and opening things up a bit as I regain my confidence.
This tactic probably would have worked, but I ran horrendously bad and managed to bleed off another $200. I lost in all sorts of sick ways: KK vs. QQ, KQ vs. QT, AK vs. AQ, etc. I couldn't catch a break, but I felt like I was playing well again.
The circumstances of my inevitable upswing were kind of interesting. I came down with the flu today and had to stay home from work. As I lay on the couch, chugging ginger ale and sipping chicken soup, I decided to take a shot at one of the big multi-table tournaments. I hit up one with a $20 buy-in, and ended up finishing seventh out of about 1200 people for $671. Pretty sweet on some levels - I got a big chunk of my bankroll back in a big hurry. Of couse, first place was $3,800, so once again I came up just short of a real big score.
Ultimately, I was pleased with my play. I was very patient, navigating my way past the money bubble with a stack that was just a couple bucks below average. Then I was fortunate enough to catch KK against a big stack's QQ, and scored a nice double-up.
I doubled up a second time in fascinating circumstances. The player to my left and I both had very deep stacks of around 50,000, and I think the blinds were around 500-1000. I limped in the small blind with KJ (after everyone else had folded), and he made a bigger-than-usual raise out of the big blind. I just felt like he was robbing me and didn't want any action in that spot. So I shoved, and he snap-called with A9o.
My hand was obviously caught in the cookie jar, but he made a ridiculous call in my opinion. Sure, he had a better hand than me, but that's a very marginal spot to call off all your chips. He's only 60 per cent to win there. Anyway, I flopped a king, and it held to give me one of the biggest stacks in the tournament with about 50 players remaining.
I rode that stack down to the final two tables, at which point I opened up my game and got some timely resteals.
I arrived at the final table with just over 300,000 in chips, which was good for fifth place, just below average. The top five spots paid at least $1,000, which is what I was sort of aiming for, and I decided to be patient. I was rather unlucky not to finish higher - the short stacks kept sucking out and doubling up. It was kind of gross. I only caught one big hand - AA in the big blind - and wouldn't you know it, everybody else folded to me. So sick.
This final table was slow going, and my 300k stack ended up shrinking in relation to the blinds, which rose to 12,500-25,000. I ended up busting in seventh when the chip leader made a small raise from the button, and I felt my AhTh was good enough for a resteal. He called with AQ, and my suckout didn't materialize.
At the end of the day, I'm really happy with both my play and the result. One of these times, I'll get the win.
Bankroll = $5,700
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Random thoughts, Episode 2
I enjoyed writing my last "Random Thoughts" post so much, I'm going back to the well.
--> My homeboy Conan O'Brien is back on TV. After being exiled from NBC, he's back with a new latenight show on TBS. As a longtime CoCo fan, his Monday night debut had me pretty stoked. The ginger-haired comedy genius seemed hyper, nervous and excited all at the same time during his monologue, which was both understandable and interesting to watch. But the skits were excellent - both the video recapping his last six months, where he was repeatedly shot Godfather-style by a band of machine gun-toting mafiosos, and the Ricky Gervais guest spot. Conan had two particularly memorable lines. More or less the first words out of his mouth were, "Welcome to my second annual first show." Later on, he dropped the following gem: "It's not easy doing a late-night show on a channel without a lot of money that viewers have trouble finding. So that's why I left NBC." Bazinga.
Here's an interesting look at the impact of O'Brien's debut, via the L.A. Times: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2010/11/conan-obrien-grabs-42-million-viewers-in-tbs-premiere.html
--> After Week 1 of the NFL season, I set the over-under on when Dallas Cowboys head coach Wade Phillips would be fired at 3.5 games. If you took the over, you made money - Phillips lasted seven more games before Jerry Jones axed him following Sunday's 45-7 debacle against Green Bay. In the end, my line was a little aggressive, but I definitely had the right idea.
--> Just how much do I despise B.C. sports teams? Consider the following: I was actively rooting against my favourite CFL team, the Saskatchewan Roughriders, when they were playing the Edmonton Eskimos this past Saturday. My logic, such as it was, was that a Riders win would knock the Eskimos out of the playoff race, thereby paving the way for the B.C. Lions to claim the third and final postseason slot in the West. My wife and I actually had a mild argument about this - she felt I should have been supporting the Riders, because they needed to snap their four-game losing streak prior to the playoffs. I just couldn't set aside my anti-B.C. bias. And wouldn't you know it, my Riders screwed me, beating Edmonton to let the Lions in the back door. You better believe I hate Saskatchewan's chances in the West semifinal vs. B.C. this Sunday.
--> The whole saga surrounding Randy Moss's release by the Minnesota Vikings last week was amazing and surreal, and nobody was more entertained by it than I was. Reason being, I had traded Moss in my fantasy football keeper league two weeks prior, netting a pair of high picks in next year's draft. Moss had been one of my keepers for four seasons. We'd had some good times, even celebrating a fantasy league title together (in a manner of speaking), but I picked the perfect time to cut bait with the head-case wideout. Not that I don't think that Moss will be an impact guy in Tennessee - in fact, I think he will - but he's officially entered the stage of his career where he's not a keeper in our pool. He's entered the Terrell Owens zone - diminishing talents, and too tempermental to be reliable on a week-to-week basis.
--> I went out of my way to avoid finding out any results from the World Series of Poker main event final table, in order to enjoy Tuesday night's broadcast in a greater way. I unfollowed PokerNews on Twitter. I turned off the radio every time they mentioned the WSOP. Then on Sunday I went to ESPN.com's front page, and right there near the top was a headline naming the two players who had gotten to heads-up. Thanks a million, ESPN. I have since found out who ended up winning, but I won't reveal that in this space yet, in case some of you were saving it for the broadcast.
--> If you read my last post, you might recall I won $1,000 grinding sit-n-gos on PokerStars in October. Well, I blew off half of that in the first week of November. I can't even complain I ran bad. I just played awful - as awful as I've played in the last couple years. I definitely got unlucky at times, but the bigger problem was, I rarely put myself in a position to win. So many decisions I made were wrong. Motivation-wise, I was often playing just for something to do, not because I was stoked to compete. At times like these, I really believe God is telling me to take a break from poker. So that's what I'm doing, at least until Friday. On the bright side, I finished second at my monthly home-game tournament. But online, I'm playin' like a donkey. A break is just the ticket.
Bankroll = $5,500
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Random thoughts
--> When you read Bill Simmons’s excellent and entertaining columns on ESPN.com, you assume they’re written by a man’s man. Someone who watches football in a tricked-out man cave. Someone who speaks in a deep baritone. Then you hear his podcast, and he’s got this high-pitched, nasal voice. It’s both jarring and hilarious. It’s like taking a sip from a cup that you assume is filled with orange juice, and it’s milk.
--> NBC aired a “Women of Saturday Night Live” special this week, and it reminded me that Rachel Dratch is easily the most underrated performer in SNL history. Take that hyperbolic statement for what it's worth - I’m too young to remember a lot of the old-school SNLers. But during my era, Dratch was, to steal a poker phrase, the nuts. Only thing keeping her from proper recognition: She’s kinda funny-looking. But that’s part of what makes her hilarious! Do yourself a favour: Go to YouTube and type in “Debbie Downer” in the search bar. You're welcome.
--> I was looking at a print ad the other day that made reference to “faves.” As in, “My faves include skinny jeans and cargo pants.” It occurred to me that the only place I’ve run across the word “faves” is in ads. I’ve literally never heard anyone use that word in conversation. Granted, I’m not exactly hip to all the slang kids are using these days, but I figure I would have come across it once or twice if this was a word people used. To quote a venerable cinema classic (Zoolander), I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!
--> So the other day I was listening to the soundtrack for the movie “Magnolia,” which mainly consists of tracks by the understated-yet-excellent Aimee Mann. It occurred to me that it would rule to hear the White Stripes cover Mann’s “Save Me.” Super-weird mix of artists, but a good song is a good song. I want to hear it with a metal/blues twist. Get it done, Jack White.
--> A couple months ago, on this very blog, I went on the record with a prediction that Joseph Cheong (pictured right) would win the World Series of Poker main event. With the final table set to play out next week, I stand by that. I also stand by my offer to wager even money on Cheong (third in chips) and Michael Mizrachi (seventh in chips) against the rest of the final table field. ESPN.com’s Gary Wise recently wrote a really insightful feature on Cheong. Here’s the URL: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/poker/columns/story?columnist=wise_gary&id=5757063
--> Speaking of poker, October was quite literally a grand month for me. I turned a $1,000 profit on PokerStars, marking the third four-digit month in the past year or so. I was just playing aggressive, trusting my reads, and crushing folks. My ROI, roughly calculated, was around 45 per cent – just plain sweet. Bankroll = $6,000.
--> NBC aired a “Women of Saturday Night Live” special this week, and it reminded me that Rachel Dratch is easily the most underrated performer in SNL history. Take that hyperbolic statement for what it's worth - I’m too young to remember a lot of the old-school SNLers. But during my era, Dratch was, to steal a poker phrase, the nuts. Only thing keeping her from proper recognition: She’s kinda funny-looking. But that’s part of what makes her hilarious! Do yourself a favour: Go to YouTube and type in “Debbie Downer” in the search bar. You're welcome.
--> I was looking at a print ad the other day that made reference to “faves.” As in, “My faves include skinny jeans and cargo pants.” It occurred to me that the only place I’ve run across the word “faves” is in ads. I’ve literally never heard anyone use that word in conversation. Granted, I’m not exactly hip to all the slang kids are using these days, but I figure I would have come across it once or twice if this was a word people used. To quote a venerable cinema classic (Zoolander), I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!
--> So the other day I was listening to the soundtrack for the movie “Magnolia,” which mainly consists of tracks by the understated-yet-excellent Aimee Mann. It occurred to me that it would rule to hear the White Stripes cover Mann’s “Save Me.” Super-weird mix of artists, but a good song is a good song. I want to hear it with a metal/blues twist. Get it done, Jack White.
--> A couple months ago, on this very blog, I went on the record with a prediction that Joseph Cheong (pictured right) would win the World Series of Poker main event. With the final table set to play out next week, I stand by that. I also stand by my offer to wager even money on Cheong (third in chips) and Michael Mizrachi (seventh in chips) against the rest of the final table field. ESPN.com’s Gary Wise recently wrote a really insightful feature on Cheong. Here’s the URL: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/poker/columns/story?columnist=wise_gary&id=5757063
--> Speaking of poker, October was quite literally a grand month for me. I turned a $1,000 profit on PokerStars, marking the third four-digit month in the past year or so. I was just playing aggressive, trusting my reads, and crushing folks. My ROI, roughly calculated, was around 45 per cent – just plain sweet. Bankroll = $6,000.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Live poker is fun
Poker-wise, I’m rolling pretty well right now.
Since returning from New York City three weeks ago (travel blog coming up, I promise), I’m up $650 on PokerStars. I’ve gone back to my roots, playing fewer multi-table tournaments in favour of good old-fashioned sit-n-gos – of both the nine-player and 27-player variety. And frankly, I’m crushing ‘em.
Thus, I was full of confidence on Saturday night when I went to a live charity tournament. I’m not generally a big fan of charity events – unless I really buy into the cause – because they typically take half the prize pool. I hate to go all Grinch here, but it’s honestly not a great poker investment. But I went to this tourney, which was in support of a women’s hockey team, because a friend of a friend was involved. And I was kind of craving some live poker.
Organization-wise, this tournament was kind of a gong show. The tourney director obviously wasn’t a hardcore poker player. She’d raise the blinds at random times – they were supposed to be half-hour levels, but then she’d bump them up after five minutes because “the tournament is running too long, and there’s still too many players in.” LOL.
More concerning to me is that the buy-in was $50, there were 55 players, and the total payout was only $850 – $500 for first, $200 for second, $100 for third and $50 for fourth. That means the hockey team kept two-thirds of the prize pool, rather than the traditional 50 per cent. Nothing worth griping about. Just sayin’.
At any rate, I discovered that there’s a tradeoff for the team taking most of the prize pool – the vast majority of the people there weren’t poker players. Or at least, not experienced poker players.
At my six-handed starting table, there wasn’t a single tight-aggressive player among them. Everyone was uber-passive, whether loose or tight. There was a ton of preflop limping, and no one bet – and I mean ever – unless they had at least top pair. No creativity at all, plenty of calling stations obviously, but it was kind of fun to play a tournament where there’s not a single tough decision to make. No one’s putting pressure on you. They might as well have been playing with their cards face-up. It was a very relaxing, fun atmosphere.
That said, for the first four hours, I never had an above-average stack. I won a few pots, lost a few, saw a ton of flops, but just couldn’t make any hands. I was pretty content to play mistake-free, small-ball poker against my table full of calling stations.
I managed to grind my way to the final three tables, making a couple of hands at opportune times to stay out of the danger zone. Then, with the blinds 200-400, I shoved in middle position for 3,300 with JJ. The big blind, who had a slightly smaller stack than me, made an utterly inexplicable call with Q8 offsuit. Then the flop came down 988. Of course. But the turn was a 10, and the river was a 7 to make me a glorious straight.
A couple hands later, my buddy Neil moved to our table. Neil’s nickname is “The Gouger” for his penchant for constantly raising the price of poker with aggressive raises, and he had easily the largest stack in the tournament. I was in the big blind at 300-600 when he raised from the small blind to 1800. I looked down at Ac7c, and just knew I had the best hand. I shoved for 5,500 total, which actually gave him pretty compelling odds to call at 2-to-1. But I managed to talk him out of it, and he told me he laid down QdJd. I told him I had AQ. LOL once again.
Immediately after that hand, we moved to the eight-handed final table. The blinds were 500-1000, and I started with 7,500, which was actually about average. I quickly had 1,500 carved out of my stack by the blinds, but at that point I went all short-stack ninja. I must have moved all in at least a half-dozen times without a showdown, managing to actually increase my stack as we burst the money bubble to four players.
At that point, the short stack moved in on the button, and I called from the small blind with A7. He showed A5, but hit his 5 on the turn, crippling me to 2,000. For you mathematicians in the crowd, that’s two big blinds.
Then, something wild happened. The very next hand, I picked up JJ in the small blind, and doubled up against the big blind’s 76 offsuit. Then I picked up KsJs on the button, and doubled against the big blind’s J4. After a successful blind-stealing shove, I doubled through Neil, flopping a set with 99 against his KJ. And just like that, I was the chip leader. Madness.
After the player to my left busted in fourth place, we negotiated a chop. The three of us were guaranteed $250, with an extra $50 left to the winner. I ended up getting to heads-up with Neil, but with the blinds at 2000-4000, we only had about six big blinds apiece. He ended up winning when his QdTd out-raced my 55.
This tournament wasn’t the WSOP by any means, but it was a blast. Good camaraderie, good food, and it helps when you leave with an extra $250 in your jeans. I also felt like I played pretty well. There’s no way to put this without sounding arrogant, but it felt kind of funny to be in a spot where I was so much better than my opponents. More than anything, the result is just another confidence-builder.
My main online bankroll is currently at $5,650. Poker is fun again.
Since returning from New York City three weeks ago (travel blog coming up, I promise), I’m up $650 on PokerStars. I’ve gone back to my roots, playing fewer multi-table tournaments in favour of good old-fashioned sit-n-gos – of both the nine-player and 27-player variety. And frankly, I’m crushing ‘em.
Thus, I was full of confidence on Saturday night when I went to a live charity tournament. I’m not generally a big fan of charity events – unless I really buy into the cause – because they typically take half the prize pool. I hate to go all Grinch here, but it’s honestly not a great poker investment. But I went to this tourney, which was in support of a women’s hockey team, because a friend of a friend was involved. And I was kind of craving some live poker.
Organization-wise, this tournament was kind of a gong show. The tourney director obviously wasn’t a hardcore poker player. She’d raise the blinds at random times – they were supposed to be half-hour levels, but then she’d bump them up after five minutes because “the tournament is running too long, and there’s still too many players in.” LOL.
More concerning to me is that the buy-in was $50, there were 55 players, and the total payout was only $850 – $500 for first, $200 for second, $100 for third and $50 for fourth. That means the hockey team kept two-thirds of the prize pool, rather than the traditional 50 per cent. Nothing worth griping about. Just sayin’.
At any rate, I discovered that there’s a tradeoff for the team taking most of the prize pool – the vast majority of the people there weren’t poker players. Or at least, not experienced poker players.
At my six-handed starting table, there wasn’t a single tight-aggressive player among them. Everyone was uber-passive, whether loose or tight. There was a ton of preflop limping, and no one bet – and I mean ever – unless they had at least top pair. No creativity at all, plenty of calling stations obviously, but it was kind of fun to play a tournament where there’s not a single tough decision to make. No one’s putting pressure on you. They might as well have been playing with their cards face-up. It was a very relaxing, fun atmosphere.
That said, for the first four hours, I never had an above-average stack. I won a few pots, lost a few, saw a ton of flops, but just couldn’t make any hands. I was pretty content to play mistake-free, small-ball poker against my table full of calling stations.
I managed to grind my way to the final three tables, making a couple of hands at opportune times to stay out of the danger zone. Then, with the blinds 200-400, I shoved in middle position for 3,300 with JJ. The big blind, who had a slightly smaller stack than me, made an utterly inexplicable call with Q8 offsuit. Then the flop came down 988. Of course. But the turn was a 10, and the river was a 7 to make me a glorious straight.
A couple hands later, my buddy Neil moved to our table. Neil’s nickname is “The Gouger” for his penchant for constantly raising the price of poker with aggressive raises, and he had easily the largest stack in the tournament. I was in the big blind at 300-600 when he raised from the small blind to 1800. I looked down at Ac7c, and just knew I had the best hand. I shoved for 5,500 total, which actually gave him pretty compelling odds to call at 2-to-1. But I managed to talk him out of it, and he told me he laid down QdJd. I told him I had AQ. LOL once again.
Immediately after that hand, we moved to the eight-handed final table. The blinds were 500-1000, and I started with 7,500, which was actually about average. I quickly had 1,500 carved out of my stack by the blinds, but at that point I went all short-stack ninja. I must have moved all in at least a half-dozen times without a showdown, managing to actually increase my stack as we burst the money bubble to four players.
At that point, the short stack moved in on the button, and I called from the small blind with A7. He showed A5, but hit his 5 on the turn, crippling me to 2,000. For you mathematicians in the crowd, that’s two big blinds.
Then, something wild happened. The very next hand, I picked up JJ in the small blind, and doubled up against the big blind’s 76 offsuit. Then I picked up KsJs on the button, and doubled against the big blind’s J4. After a successful blind-stealing shove, I doubled through Neil, flopping a set with 99 against his KJ. And just like that, I was the chip leader. Madness.
After the player to my left busted in fourth place, we negotiated a chop. The three of us were guaranteed $250, with an extra $50 left to the winner. I ended up getting to heads-up with Neil, but with the blinds at 2000-4000, we only had about six big blinds apiece. He ended up winning when his QdTd out-raced my 55.
This tournament wasn’t the WSOP by any means, but it was a blast. Good camaraderie, good food, and it helps when you leave with an extra $250 in your jeans. I also felt like I played pretty well. There’s no way to put this without sounding arrogant, but it felt kind of funny to be in a spot where I was so much better than my opponents. More than anything, the result is just another confidence-builder.
My main online bankroll is currently at $5,650. Poker is fun again.
Monday, October 18, 2010
I'm still alive
If you're one of my five loyal readers, I'm sure you've been devastated at my utter neglect of this blog over the last few weeks. My humblest apologies for that. I've simply been too busy since returning from vacation, and it's been hard to get back into the swing of blogging.
Here's the Cliff's Notes on what's been going on lately.
-- I mentioned in my last post that my wife and I were headed to New York City for a week. That trip happened, and it was amazing. I intend to blog about it in detail in the very near future.
-- My fantasy football team has been struggling, so I made a blockbuster deal with the future in mind. I swapped Randy Moss and Antonio Gates to a front-runner for a trio of premium draft picks in 2011. That's the beauty of a keeper league - you can pull the plug on the current season and become a major contender the next year.
-- I'm playing some pretty freaking solid poker right now. I'm up a modest amount (about $250), and I could be ahead even more if a couple cards had fallen differently. I went deep in a couple of massive MTTs, but didn't make it into the seriously large money. But the more important thing is, I'm playing with a ton of confidence, blending aggression with patience, and I'm feeling on the verge of a monster run.
Bankroll = $5,250
Here's the Cliff's Notes on what's been going on lately.
-- I mentioned in my last post that my wife and I were headed to New York City for a week. That trip happened, and it was amazing. I intend to blog about it in detail in the very near future.
-- My fantasy football team has been struggling, so I made a blockbuster deal with the future in mind. I swapped Randy Moss and Antonio Gates to a front-runner for a trio of premium draft picks in 2011. That's the beauty of a keeper league - you can pull the plug on the current season and become a major contender the next year.
-- I'm playing some pretty freaking solid poker right now. I'm up a modest amount (about $250), and I could be ahead even more if a couple cards had fallen differently. I went deep in a couple of massive MTTs, but didn't make it into the seriously large money. But the more important thing is, I'm playing with a ton of confidence, blending aggression with patience, and I'm feeling on the verge of a monster run.
Bankroll = $5,250
Thursday, September 23, 2010
A winning month, the ugly way
Poker is such a sick game.
For the better part of the last two months, my results have been mediocre overall, and downright atrocious for extended stretches. I barely broke even in August, and as recently as Monday, I was $300 in the hole for September.
Then Wednesday night happened. The only reason I was playing was, I needed to play $150 worth of sit-n-gos to qualify for my monthly VIP level on PokerStars. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have opened the laptop. I was straight-up sick of the game.
Over the previous couple of weeks, I'd run so bad that I'd lost confidence that I was remotely capable of winning any tournament I entered. I made a few mistakes, sure. But I also lost when I did everything right. I lost holding AA vs. QQ, all in preflop. I lost with KK vs. 87o, with the money going in on a J84 flop. I can't count how many times I lost with AK vs. AQ. If I got my money in the pot in that spot, it was a certainty that there would be a queen on the flop.
The above paragraph might sound like a donkey's lament. But I'm not trying to say I played perfect poker. Far from it. Honestly, I did run pretty freaking bad. It's hard to continue to make the correct play when you're not getting rewarded. It's a vicious psychological cycle that can cause your game to deteriorate. It might seem easy to chalk it up to the natural variance of poker, but it's also hard to keep perspective in the middle of a run like that.
But I digress. We were talking about Wednesday night.
My hot streak actually started on Tuesday, when I won a $30 27-player SNG. On Wednesday, I ended up entering five SNGs, winning three and cashing in a fourth. I won two 27-player events - a $10 and a $30 - and also won a single-table $30.
Woot woot, back on track! My beautiful Wednesday allowed me to finish the month of September $300 to the good.
To review, my September looked like this: $300 upswing . . . $600 downswing . . . $200 upswing . . . $200 downswing . . . $600 upswing. Like a freaking yoyo. I'd prefer that my bankroll grew in a more stable fashion, but at least it's growing. It's better than the alternative, for sure.
Obviously, there are a few more days left in September. But I'm booking a $300 win this month, because I'm headed to NYC - that's right, the Big Apple - on vacation until Oct. 1. So no blogging for a couple days, but I'll tell you all about it when I get back. Spoiler alert: I have Yankees-Red Sox tickets. Booya!
Bankroll = $5,000
For the better part of the last two months, my results have been mediocre overall, and downright atrocious for extended stretches. I barely broke even in August, and as recently as Monday, I was $300 in the hole for September.
Then Wednesday night happened. The only reason I was playing was, I needed to play $150 worth of sit-n-gos to qualify for my monthly VIP level on PokerStars. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have opened the laptop. I was straight-up sick of the game.
Over the previous couple of weeks, I'd run so bad that I'd lost confidence that I was remotely capable of winning any tournament I entered. I made a few mistakes, sure. But I also lost when I did everything right. I lost holding AA vs. QQ, all in preflop. I lost with KK vs. 87o, with the money going in on a J84 flop. I can't count how many times I lost with AK vs. AQ. If I got my money in the pot in that spot, it was a certainty that there would be a queen on the flop.
The above paragraph might sound like a donkey's lament. But I'm not trying to say I played perfect poker. Far from it. Honestly, I did run pretty freaking bad. It's hard to continue to make the correct play when you're not getting rewarded. It's a vicious psychological cycle that can cause your game to deteriorate. It might seem easy to chalk it up to the natural variance of poker, but it's also hard to keep perspective in the middle of a run like that.
But I digress. We were talking about Wednesday night.
My hot streak actually started on Tuesday, when I won a $30 27-player SNG. On Wednesday, I ended up entering five SNGs, winning three and cashing in a fourth. I won two 27-player events - a $10 and a $30 - and also won a single-table $30.
Woot woot, back on track! My beautiful Wednesday allowed me to finish the month of September $300 to the good.
To review, my September looked like this: $300 upswing . . . $600 downswing . . . $200 upswing . . . $200 downswing . . . $600 upswing. Like a freaking yoyo. I'd prefer that my bankroll grew in a more stable fashion, but at least it's growing. It's better than the alternative, for sure.
Obviously, there are a few more days left in September. But I'm booking a $300 win this month, because I'm headed to NYC - that's right, the Big Apple - on vacation until Oct. 1. So no blogging for a couple days, but I'll tell you all about it when I get back. Spoiler alert: I have Yankees-Red Sox tickets. Booya!
Bankroll = $5,000
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
