Hand analyis from this weekend

You can take into account that I was drunk while playing these hands, so my decisions may not have been 100% logical.  But I figured I could go back now and do some analysis on these hands to look at what I did and what the optimal play might have been on these hands.

Hand 1 : First hand when I sat down at the table.  I bought in for $300.  My wife and I could have waited 1 hand and got in for free.  However, she decided to buy the button, and I decided to straddle her buying the button.  I don't even think that is possible, but they let me do it, and I had to buy the button next hand.  :-)

Lady in middle position opens for $20.  I've seen her before - middle aged lady, probably playing somewhat tight.  She has probably $250.  One guy calls in late position, maybe on the button.  My wife calls.  I look down at A-J.  I raise it to $85.  Everyone folds, I win.  Maybe I'm oversimplifying here, but this seems like a pretty good play.

I think the lady might be raising like AQ+, AJs+, 88+.  Maybe looser than that, but let's say that's what she is raising with.  5.88% of hands.  That is a REALLY tight range when I look at it percentage-wise.  So she might even be opening wider, in fact she probably is, but let's say she is raising only this.

What are the others calling with?  It's a 1/3 game and their ranges would be really wide, with a ton of speculative hands.  Probably 22-TT, any 2 suited broadway, any suited connector, probably would call instead of raise with AQ.  I'm guessing the first person would typically reraise with AK or AA-JJ, but maybe not.  Probably AA/KK, maybe not the others.  And my wife is getting a decent price so her range is super wide.

I think that the two callers are going to have a SUPER hard time calling my raise, so I'll just assume they basically can never call it (unless the first lady calls).  What can she call me with though?  She will probably only proceed with AK+, QQ+.  I think with pocket jacks she would probably just fold.  Even AK she might fold, but let's say she'll call.  That is 2.56% of hands.

Actually I just remembered, I have an ace.  So that takes away from a lot of combos of AA, AK she can have.  I removed those and now she is down to 2.19%.  That is a substantial difference, like 15% less combos just with that one ace.

So in the pot was $66 before my bet.  I put in $85 to win $66.  How often do I have to get people to fold to immediately be profitable?

I don't generally do this kind of math.  Let's see.  I guess to determine how often I have to win to be immediately profitable, I have to assume that any time they don't fold, I lose.  Or I think that works anyway.  So it would be something like:

(66 * everyoneFoldsPct) = (-85 * (1 - everyoneFoldsPct))

Is that breakeven?  Let's see what that works out to:

85/19.  4.47.  What the fuck does that mean?  Damn it.  I clearly don't know how to do math.

Well, OK, I don't understand how to do the breakeven math.  But if my assumptions above are true, she raised with 5.88% of hands, and will call or reraise with 2.19% of hands.  So she will call or reraise 37% of the time.

66 * .621 + (-85 * .379) = 10.13

So if my calculations are correct, my move was worth $10.13.  Not bad!  I think those assumptions are reasonable overall.

Hand 2 : Some guy straddles for 6.  There are about 5 limpers.  I decide to raise to $40 with 4-2 offsuit.  One of the limpers goes all in for $67 more.  It folds back to me and I am last to act.  Call or fold?

This one was interesting.  I thought it would be pretty tough for most people to call a big raise after limping.  So I tried to steal with 4-2 offsuit.  Granted, this is probably not necessary.  But I did it.  And again, I was drinking a lot at the time.

So let's say 5 people limped.  That's $30 in the pot, plus $6 for the blind.  I put in $40, bringing the pot up to $76.  Now he goes all-in for $67 more.  Call the $40, so the pot is now $116.  And put in the additional $67, so the pot is $183.  If you want to get technical you can take out the rake (which will be taken out if I call) bringing the pot to $179.  And I have to call $67.

I have to win 37% of the time to break even.  I called, figuring that if he has two overcards I am getting the right price.  But let's see what his range could be and what my equity is.

Even vs AK, I only have 34.1% equity.  So it's close but a loser.  If I just say any two suited broadway, AJ+, KQ, it's about the same - 33.5% equity.  And if I add in 99-55 (assuming he would have open-raised with tens or better, and he might fold 44-22), I'm way worse - 28.3%.  So that was not a good call.

Or was it?  I flopped a 2, and BOOM, 2 on the turn.  Ship it all day.  :-)  At the time I actually thought this was the right play, so I'm glad I did the research.

Getting tired of this poker talk, so I'm off to bed.  See ya!

Poker energy

I (obviously) haven't been blogging as much about poker lately.  I haven't been playing as much poker lately either.  Online poker is now here in Nevada, and the novelty has sort of worn off on me already.  I was hoping it would be some sick gold mine where I just turn on the computer and watch the number roll up like it was the national debt clock.  Unfortunately that hasn't really happened.

I'm not sure if I've written about this or not, but one thing I noticed about my online play is that I'm still WAY overvaluing overpairs.  In fact, here is what I think is happening.  If you play a game like Starcraft you know that you have units with energy.  That energy can be spent on things like cloaking or other special abilities, and it adds up over time.  But once you run out, you're out.  I feel like I have an energy pool of solid play where I don't overvalue hands.  At the start of a session, it is somewhat high, although it probably depends on my mood.  If I'm in a good mood and good state of mind, it's high.  If I've played 10 days in a row and just feel like "I'm going to grind today" and the only objective on my mind is leaving with more money than I came with, I have an entitlement problem and any losses affect me worse.

So I start with some level of energy.  Throughout the session, if I lose a pot or take a bad beat, my energy drops some amount.  Bad beats might make it drop more.  But at the start of a session, I'm 100% fine in my head.  The bad beat just rolls off my back.  Haha, I'm fine with it, I'm such a good poker player, this shit doesn't affect me.  And if I win pots, my energy meter goes up.  Probably goes up a VERY little amount if I win a small pot, goes up a decent amount if I win a huge pot, and honestly it probably goes up a TON if I bad beat someone.  Because I fucking LOVE THAT SHIT.  Haha.  Sometimes if I win a pot where I think I could or should have won WAY more, that might actually take my energy meter down.  Like if I make a huge hand but mess up the betting, even if I win my energy might go down.  And unlike in Starcraft, I don't think my energy necessarily goes up over time.  I don't know that it goes down either.  But it might just stay even.

There might be a floor to the energy where it just bottoms out at some level.

So I thought about this for a while.  It really makes sense that this is how my brain works and it explains why I can start out playing so good, but eventually lose some giant pots and play stupid. I drew up an example of the graph I'm talking about.  Check it out.

Sample Energy Graph

This example could have been better for sure, but it more or less shows what I'm talking about.  I start my session at 85% max energy or so.  Again energy here does not mean physical energy, like I'm somewhat tired.  It just means my pool of stored energy I can use to play good poker.  I get in there, win a small pot and my energy goes up a bit.  Raise AK and miss, and my energy drops just a little.  Lose a decent amount with Q-Q where I fold an overpair, and it drops a lot.  Then I fold pocket jacks preflop (probably 3-bet it, and fold to a big 4 bet where I'm obviously beat).  Great fold on my part, but my energy continues to drop.  Now my energy starts slowly declining... time is passing, I'm not winning pots, why the fuck did I even come out to play tonight, I want to win just so I can break even and get out of here, etc.  Now I play a flush draw aggressively.  Not bad, but aggressive.  Maybe I put in a big raise on the flop, get all-in and miss, or maybe I check behind on the turn and miss.  Either way I just lost more money than I wanted to with this hand.  Please note that I did not play this hand poorly - I just lost it and was not happy about it.

At this point, my energy drops below the "do stupid shit threshold" line.  I flop another flush draw.  I know I'm not getting odds, but fuck you I call, and I lose again.  Then I win some small to medium size pots (maybe playing them well, maybe poorly) and I start to crawl back.  But I'm still under the bad play threshold.  Now I get in a spot where I raise preflop with K-Q, flop a queen on a pretty dry board, and can't get away from it when a guy raises me for a lot on the turn.  Maybe he has J-10 (when if I think about it, he most likely wouldn't play J-10 this way or it's not worth it in the TINY percentage chance he is).  So I call, he flopped a set of 3s, and I lose the rest of my money.

If my energy level was above the bad play threshold with the flush draw, I would have just folded.  And with the last K-Q hand, I would have known I was beat, and it would have cost me some energy because I would have hated losing, but I would fold there as well.  Since I was below the threshold, I ended up losing way more than I needed to with both of these hands.

Things to note about the graph:

• The Y axis is not physical energy (tired or not tired), it's not money or stack size or buy-ins so far.  It's the imaginary pool of "energy" that I spend on each loss/bad beat/annoyance, and gain with every pot I win or thing that makes me happy at the table.
• The amount of energy I start with at the beginning of each session has to do with the state of mind I'm in when I enter that session.
• The "do stupid shit threshold" also has to do with the state of mind I'm in when I enter a session.  When I'm feeling entitled to a win or I'm in a bad mood, it will be higher.
• The X axis is not time, or at least the energy doesn't increase/decrease at a steady state over time.  Individual events make it drop or increase instantly.  
• Events do not have to be related to poker at all.  Maybe some asshole I hate won a big pot.  Maybe the cocktail waitress messed up my drink order.  Maybe the conversation at the table is pissing me off, or the lack of conversation and company at the table is upsetting me for some reason.  It could be anything.

I think this happens to me quite often.  Sometimes it's unpredictable, but sometimes I could predict it as well.  I know when I'm getting frustrated.  

I had a session the other week at Wynn.  I was playing 1/3 and was waiting for a table change.  My table SUCKED, it had a couple of good regulars there, and it was shorthanded.  I was getting super tilted because I wanted to move really bad and I didn't really want to play with these guys.  I think based on my follow-up play, I was already beneath the bad play threshold because I just knew I didn't want to play with these guys and I knew it was a bad idea to play with them.

Then I won a really big pot in a pretty ridiculous situation.  These guys were raising a lot preflop. I raise K-Q on the button.  One of these guys (probably the best guy at the table) 3-bets me.  I think, he's probably going to do this a lot and he probably thinks my range is wide because I'm on the button, so I call.  Granted, I don't really know what his perception is of me, and I have only played with him a small number of times.  The "information" I'm basing this on is that this guy seems to play pretty aggressive and smart, I see him winning a lot, and he hangs out with these other regulars that clearly play for a living (ie. are 24 years old, share an apartment, and grind out rent/party money playing 1/3 and 2/5).  I think I made it 15 or 18 preflop, he made it 45, and I called.

So I call with my K-Q.  Flop comes something like 9-9-2 with 2 diamonds.  He leads out.  I think "that's a good board to c-bet" although I know nothing about this guy's true c-bet frequencies.  So I think "he's probably going to c-bet this board 100% of the time" and I call.  Like I have no choice but to call.  He bet 60 and I called.

Turn is a diamond, like the 7 of diamonds.  It gave me a diamond draw.  And he checks.  Now I bet out 75.  Not a bad idea to bet, but the pot is huge compared to my bet.  So he calls me.  I should have bet like 130 or something.  But of course I didn't think it through at all, I just bet and he called.

River is the king.  Bang.  He checks.  I figure I probably have the best hand now.  I shove the rest of my stack, 250 or so.  He tanks for a little while and folds.  Yay, I won a big pot.  

But I still KNOW I got myself into huge trouble in that hand, I should have never played it in the first place, and I NEED TO GET OFF THIS FUCKING TABLE!!!!  My energy level may have even dropped with that hand.  Even though I won, I just played it ridiculously and got super lucky.  Guy was probably calling me with like 4-4 or something and I was just lucky to hit.  

So I'm still below the threshold.  Then I pick up Q-Q in the blind.  Few limps, guy raises, I CALL (WHYYYYYYYY) and others call.  Flop something like 8-3-3, I check to him, he checks.  Turn 10.  I check to him again (still 5 way pot).  He bets something like 35 or 40.  Next guy calls.  I raise to 150.  Raiser calls, other guy folds.  River is a blank.  I shove for $350 or $400.  He insta-calls.  I say "You got it" and show the Q-Q, and he says "yeah I do" and shows the 10-10.  I go home stuck $500 or so.  Super pissed off and hating life.

Now, why did this happen?  My play was terrible on all streets.  Should have reraised preflop and normally would.  But I was already in this tilt zone where I just couldn't function.  Then after he calls my raise on the turn, what could he POSSIBLY have... even J-J is folding there, plus J-J would bet the flop, oh, I'd say 8 billion percent of the time.  And that's the only hand I realistically can beat after I check-raise that flop.  Sigh.  So fucking stupid.

What is the point of this ridiculously long rant?

I need to control my tilt better.  I need to play less frequently, and with better intentions and higher quality play.  If I'm not in the mood to play, I should not play.  If I'm not in the mood to play, maybe I should study.  I can read, I can write this blog, I can deal out two hands on the poker table upstairs and think about how I would play them on certain board textures and think about different options on each street. 

I don't want to get into an even more giant rant, but regarding studying, I do not study enough.  Well, you could say I don't study AT ALL.  I used to study a lot.  Granted, it was at lunch every day, but at least I was doing it.  How often now, if I have the option to play poker or study poker, do I study?  I think I do it about zero percent of the time.  I was listening to a podcast (The Tournament Poker Edge - AWESOME podcast) where they had Daryl Jace on.  Apparently this guy dropped out of school in the 7th grade and he has been playing online poker ever since.  He played it obsessively, all day nonstop.  But he also studied a LOT.  And he said that a lot of the growth in his game was spent away from the table, thinking about hands, thinking about crazy ways to play hands or contemplating different ways to play.  He said that he studied about 14-16 hours a week.  A WEEK!!!!  When I was "playing for a living" *groan* I think I probably played 120-150 hours per week max.  And studied about zero hours per week.  And now look at me - on the rail, working for the man, game has not improved substantially in the 7 years since then.  That is a pretty sad state of affairs.  

This blog was more just a release than anything else.  But what I should do is spend more time analyzing hands.  On the TPE podcast I mentioned above, they go into DEEP analysis of poker hands, on EVERY street.  They contemplate each option at each street, even if it initially seems ridiculous.  Talk about bet sizing.  Talk about what the opponent's range is.  I need to do more of that.  

I could go play tonight.  But I'm going to go outside and run, hopefully run at least 6 miles.  Will I play tomorrow?  Maybe.  But I also need to spend some time studying.  Maybe when I get home tonight I can think of a recent hand I played and go into seriously deep analysis on it.  Or think about some other poker concept.  

My blogs might get pretty abstract if I decide to stop just dumping money and playing poker robotically in my 2003 poker style, and start trying to ACTUALLY improve and think about the game.  If that happens, I apologize.  But I hope you will stick through it with me on the journey to better poker.

I mean honestly, my poker career/evolution could not be going any slower.  I am basically making zero money playing.  My bankroll has been stagnant and over the last 8 months I'm up about $2500.  But I was up $2500 in a week at one point.  It's just going nowhere, and that is because my game and my poker abilities are also going nowhere.  I've put in no work and expect to get paid for that.  That makes no sense.  

Thanks for reading.  Please contribute any comments you have below, I'd love to hear them.

Ultimate fail

I haven't been playing a ton of poker lately.  The poker I have been playing has been online.

Screenshot shows me involved (or dealt in) to the 970,000th hand at Ultimate Poker.  I folded QJhh, would have flopped the world and turned the nuts, and won $200 in bonuses (plus a giant pot, probably).  Sigh.  Milestone hand.

Played a little more tonight, lost over $100.  AK vs 34, flop 25Q, turn 7, river ace, guy check raises me all in.  It's hard to fold when you are playing 50bb deep.  Sucks.

Overall I'm down $12 on Ultimate.  It's fun, but I wish I was doing better.  What can you do.  Next week I'm going to have a lot of time on my hands and I'll be able to play a ton.  Looking forward to it.  I hope I can put together some wins.

Online so far

Only have a couple minutes so I'll keep this short.  I'm down about $12 online so far.  Lost about $10 the first day, then won $70.  Last night I played the most so far, about 4 hours.  Maybe a bit more.

I started out huge and ran my $360 up to about $540.  Then it came crashing down to $290ish.  I have made some mistakes online for sure.  My biggest ones have been - no surprise - not getting away from overpairs.  Lost a $100 pot last night where I got $50 in with K-K on a 8-4-4 2 flush board.  Raised pre on the button, both blinds called.  Flop they both check to me, I bet $5, small blind calls, big blind raises to $22 or something, I shove, he calls with 7-4 suited.  But I should have just gotten away from it.

Had some coolers too to be sure.  Flopped top set on a J-T-7 board, turn king, guy had A-Q.  Very last hand I got dealt last night was K-K vs A-A with both of my suits covered.  What can you do.

I deposited $300 initially.  I think what I'm going to do now is deposit another $700 bringing me up to $1k total online.  I have been playing anywhere from 1/2 NL to 5c/10c NL.  I figure between 1/2 and 25c/50c is what I want to play.  Last night I couldn't buy into some additional rooms just because I didn't have enough money on there, which was frustrating.  So I figure I'll fix that by throwing another $700 in and I won't have any bankroll issues for a while.

Online poker so far

Today was the first day I was able to play LEGAL online poker!  So awesome.  Definitely an exciting day and something I've been waiting for for a long time.  It's awesome living in Las Vegas and being able to play live poker, but online poker is a different animal and something I've been dying to get back into.  Being able to play so many more hands in a single night is very tempting, and also TOURNAMENTS!!!  Live tournaments are awful.  They take forever, the rake is terrible, and you have to tip.  Not so online.

The Client and Setup

On Tuesday night I came home, fired up my Mac, and tried to download the client.  Unfortunately I realized that there is no Mac client yet.  Luckily for me I have VMWare and Windows 7 on my work computer, so I downloaded and installed it there.  

Setting up my account was pretty straightforward.  You have to enter your social security number which seems a little sketchy, but I guess it's a gaming regulation and probably tax thing.  You also give them your mobile number, they text you, and you have to text back.  Triangulating your cell phone signal to determine that you are actually in the physical borders of Nevada is something they do and that's why the texting part needs to happen.  You give your consent to be located.

Deposit

First hand dealt to me.  And I won!  :)

They said that you can deposit and withdraw right at a Station Casinos cage, which is amazing.  After work on Wednesday I went up to Green Valley Ranch to deposit.  Waited in line at the cage, and gave the lady $300 and a piece of paper with my email and username (Bluff Meat) on it.  She also asked for my ID.  It looked like this may have been the first time she did an online poker deposit because she had to ask her manager some question.  Overall it went smoothly though.  I received a receipt showing that I deposited $300 into my account, and I was off to the races!

Play

I got home and fired up the client.  Logged in, and sure enough my $300 was there.  Sweet.  

Started looking at the lobby.  The amount of games going was pretty pathetic.  Only a few games at each level.  Right away I notice that there is no way to join the waiting list for a table either, so you just have to watch the lobby and jump in when you see a seat.  There were a TON of things like this that I think will be noticed and complained about immediately that they will fix soon, I'm sure.

I started jumping into few rooms.  5c/10c NL, 10c/25c NL, 1c/2c NL.  Just trying to play whatever I could.  I also registered for a couple of sit-n-go tournaments.  All they had were 1 tables and heads up sit-n-gos.  No multitable tournaments going.  They have one every night at 7 PM I think for $50, but there weren't going to be any more MTTs that night.

The client itself isn't that great.  Here are some things I noticed first day.

• No auto-rebuy on cash game tables.
• Can't resize tables, so I could only fit 4 tables (if I didn't want to overlap) on one big monitor.
• Very clunky if you want to click and type in a bet size.
• Clicking on the bet slider went up in weird increments, like 2 BB instead of 1 BB like I would have preferred.
• Auto-posting blinds is enabled by default which is SUPER annoying because it will post for you out of position if you don't unclick it.
• Rebuy button is present even in non-rebuy tournaments, which is confusing.
• No hand histories whatsoever, so there is no way to use a HUD (which I don't really care about) or track your hand histories so you can analyze play later (which I really want to do).  A rep on 2+2 said they were working on this.
• You can only buy in for 50BB max (20BB min) in cash games today.
• No way to add custom pictures, but you can choose from a set of 20 or so (pretty lame) avatars.
• When the flop comes out, you see the door card first and the other cards slide out which is AWESOME seriously - so much fun to sweat the flop coming out.  :-)

First Day Results

Multitabling

I played for a couple of hours and ended up losing $12.  I played 2 tournaments (a $2 and $5 sit-n-go) and got 2nd in the $5 tournament for $12.50.  Biggest hand I played was when I stacked off my 50BB stack in a 25c/50c NL game with J-J on a 2-4-5 board.  Guy flopped a set of 4s.  Not good but honestly I was pretty overwhelmed playing 6 tables at once, being away from online poker for so long.

First bad beat!  All in preflop.

I also had to do a CAPTCHA during play to verify I was a human being.  Super annoying to do while 6 tabling.  It was one of those standard CAPTCHAs where they display 2 words (well, "words", some aren't even real words) and you have to type them in.  Tried once, failed, worked on the second attempt.  Really hard to keep up with while you are playing.  I have never had to do that on any other poker sites.  I hope that doesn't happen on a regular basis.

Overall I think the client isn't that great, but I'm sure it will improve over time.  It was a lot of fun getting back into playing online poker, and I'm super excited about it.  Looking forward to some fun this year online!