2-5 Starts off With a Heater (1/30/2011)

I started mixing in 2-5 games to my live schedule on Thursday.  Thankfully things have started off extremely well.  I went on a bit of a heater this week up around +$1500 in just 25 hours of play from Thursday-Saturday.  Most of the winnings came on Saturday night (+$900 in my 12:00a.m- 6:00a.m session).

I can’t stress how important starting off good was, it takes pressure off big-time.  It would have sucked if 2-5 started off really bad and I had to drop to primarily 1-2 another month or so.

As for the games, they can be just amazing.  There is a lot of money to be made.  There are still plenty of mistakes just like 1-2, only the games are just enormous.  Little mistakes are really magnified on a 2-5 table.  If someone makes a slight error against you in 1-2 you might only win $30.  In 2-5 you can easily win $60-$120 from a small mistake and it’s not uncommon. 

The biggest pot I saw during my session on Saturday was around $2,500.  An aggressive regular who is a bit of a gambler, but better than most players 3-bet raised $120 some pre-flop.  A whale who had been tangling with him all night CALLED.  The pot is now $350. 

FLOP: Tc, 7s, 5c,  

Regular bets $200 on the flop with, whale thinks a moment and calls.  Pot is now $750

TURN:  8h

Regular leads out again, this time around $350, whale calls.

RIVER:  Ks

Regular leads out $500 this time.  The whale CALLS.

BOARD: Tc, 7s, 5c, 8h, Ks

Regular shows T8o off-suit, two pair.  Whale mucks in disgust.

Pot size:  about $2,450.00

The guy who lost was on my immediate right and we got along.  He later told me he had K9.  Yes woof-woof king fucking nine.  His explanation was he didn’t think the regular had shit, then he had a draw, then he thought he was catching a bluff on the river.  The only thing he was right about was the regular did have a very weak 3-bet range in that scenario.  But I know that guy and there is no way he is firing that much money on the turn and river without at least two pair. 

A guy who walked by later struck up a conversation with me about the game, since he saw me in a few big pots and was curios about my hands.  He had been playing at a table close by and watching the action.  He claimed that the whale had A9 on the $2,500 pot because he held his cards up slightly before he mucked, meaning he called the $500 river bet with ace high.  The whale hadn’t lied to me all night, I believed him when he said he had K9.  However, the guy who had been watching insisted to me that he 100% saw the A9.  Either way it was a horrendous play on the flop, turn, and river.  I’d like to believe he at least had K9 with a pair, that would make a little more sense, with the logic that the regulars starting hand was shit and he’s going to catch some bluffs there.

This may all sound a little mind-blowing and it really was.  However, there was a dynamic between the two players, which I won’t really go into now.

This Week

Just getting over the flu completely and want to at least work out twice.  Haven’t done so since I got sick.  I feel great with poker because of the winnings over the weekend.  I’ll resume the live grind on Thursday.  It’s sort of sucked with the girl I’ve been dating.  I’m not sure things are going to work out, but I’ll get over it.

Online Poker

Officially a side-project, even know I’m not going to give up on finding a nitch somewhere and establishing a win-rate.  The bills are getting paid with live poker even know I don’t have many expenses.

The last week I’ve been studying and cross reference my database to plug leaks online.  I lost -1.05 BB/100 during the last 150k hands, so I still have a lot of work to do.  I’m making a lot of adjustments and I’m going to implement them during my next 100,000 hands logged.  After that I’ll analyze those hands and make more adjustments.  Hopefully one day I’ll get it right.

Also we have PokerStars again fucking with the buy-in structure.  The 20-50BB tables are being eliminated and that’s where I’ve primarily been playing buying in for 50BB stacks.  I adjusted my game to play those tables because that’s where the action was.  Most of the hands in my analysis are from 20-50BB tables which will soon be extinct, so it’s really a bad time for the changes, in the middle of my database analysis but that’s life.  Whatever happens I’ll find what tables the action migrates to and make that my new home.  The 20-50BB tables are being replaced with cap tables which is beyond stupid.  Stars has again caved to “pros” (or exclusively 40-100BB pros) whining for format changes, who obviously only want to funnel fish into an exclusively 40-100BB NL format environment.  They want fish in this environment because it’s their personal comfort zone.  Even know everyone hates these tables because it’s the same 6-8 20 tabling robot nits on every table.  I don’t know what is worse, cap or 40-100, guess time will tell.  But yeah now a casual player is restricted from buying in for 20.1-39.9 BBs on a stake of their choice. 

I spent the last few months where 70% of my tables online where 20-50BBs because that’s where the highest percentage of recreational players went.  I adapted and changed my game to follow the action.  Now the 20-50BB is arbitrarily removed without warning.  So yeah I have to say I do feel screwed over.  If you want to play online poker you have to adjust and dealt with NL format popularity accordingly.  Unless you play 40-100BB, then just bitch because your win-rate obviously sucks due to environment changes.   Not even recreational players are stupid enough to sit on your tables.  But Stars will work with you to keep trying to force them into that format, don’t worry!

Anyways this week I’m going to make the final recommended adjustments and log some hours.  But I’m going to try to not beat myself up if it doesn’t go well.  I’ll try to focus on logical things.

Long post, that’s it for now.

-bag

Session Review- Profit/Loss Summary (1/26/2011)

Not sure how much this is going to help.  I’m having some trouble understanding where a lot of my losses are coming from during some sessions.  For example, the session I’m going to look at:

Net Loss:  -$104.90  EV:  -$54.0

-$104 ok.  But I remembered several huge pots won during the 4 hours, so I’m confused what dragged me into the negative.  Is it all blinds?  Am I getting torn up c-betting to much?  Well I decided to break everything down for the last session.  Maybe it can help show a leak somewhere.  After that the next step is figuring out how to look at dollar losses by hand and each position.  I’ll round up or down to the nearest .50 for simplification.  This is going to take a really long time……

Session Overview:

Hands:  2,115

Loss:  -$105.00

Hours:  4

Profit Summary (2,115 hands)

I went through the 2k hands or so and categorized every situation to see if anything jumped out at me.  This took a long time.  I’m not sure how meaningful this sort of break-down would be/was, but I wanted to do it one time at least.  I wanted a feel for the overall percentages of where I’m winning and losing money on a given session.  When I started I came up with 11 categories for the Profit hands.  I later broke it into just 5, which were value betting, PFR limp/ blind collect/ BB free, Cbetting, 3betting, and other.  I’m swapping over from Word/Excel here so my once beautiful chart may not look great:

Profit (2,115) hands Simplified	$	%
Value Betting	453.00	59.8%
PFR limp/blind collect/ BB free	152.50	20.1%
Cbetting	79.50	10.5%
3bet pre	44.50	5.9%
Other	27.50	3.6%
Total	+757.00

80% of my profit came from “Value Betting” and “PFR limp/blind collect/ BB free”

Value betting just refers to when I was holding the best hand, and won money betting for value.  60% here, massive as expected.  The next category “PFR limp/ blind collect/ BB Free” refers to any situation where I made a PFR open or steal and just collected the blinds.  This also included “BB free” where the entire table folded around to me, or I saw a flop for free and ended up winning.  This category makes up a very big % of a possible win-rate at 20%.  This 20% goes into the stats pre-flop area where I still have leaks.  Furthermore, I still need to up by % about 1% overall to be closer to optimal.  Doesn’t sound like a lot, but 1% means I missed an average of 20 spots during the last session alone.  It adds up really fast.

C-betting made up 10.5% of the profit.

I’m guessing this % fluctuates greatly between sessions.  However, as a rule of thumb I cbet too much so it should be interesting to eventually compare how much I LOST with cbet failures, compared to how much I won with cbet successes. 

3-betting pre-flop (only 6%)

This stat can vary and you can still have success.  However, I don’t 3-bet enough, I never really do.  Missing around 20 spots per session can have a huge impact on a win-rate.

Loss Summary (2,115 hands)

Next I’ll look at where I lost money during the last session.  I originally broke it into 19 different categories.  Later I simplified in to 8, which were natural blind losses, cooler/suck-outs, VB/VPIP fail, cbet fail, SD post (shut-down post), Draw (which failed obviously), open 3-betted, and 3-bet failures.

Loss (2,115) hands Simplified	$	%
Natural Blind Losses	-343.00	39.8%
Coolered by Fish/ Suck-out	-174.50	20.3%
VB/ VPIP Fail	-99.50	11.5%
Cbet Failed	-83.50	9.7%
SD Post	-65.50	7.6%
Draw	-48.50	5.6%
open 3 betted	-28.00	3.3%
3 bet fail	-19.00	2.2%
Total	-861.50	100.0%

Natural Blind Losses were 40% of my Loss

This enormous category includes any situation where I lost money because I was in the blinds and had to fold to a better hand (or purposively better).  It was derived from 4 categories which all could be summarized as “natural blind losses”.  It accounts for so much of the loss that I’m going to also list the 4 sub-sets below which made up the -$343.00.

Natural Blind Losses	$	%
blinds opened on	-222.00	64.7%
stolen pre	-49.00	14.3%
BB free (shut down post)	-37.00	10.8%
blinds open fold	-35.00	10.2%
Total	-343.00	100.0%

The biggest category was blinds opened on for -$222 (64.7% of the natural blind loss).  Here our blinds were opened on from the EP, MP, or CO and based on the opponent’s PFR range and our hand strength we decided to fold.  The next biggest was being stolen pre, here we were robbed by an initial open from the SB or BTN, and based on our strength, our opponents steal%, and us being terrified to 3-bet we folded.

BB free (-$37, 10.8%) referred to hands where our opponents generously let us see a flop for free.  However, we still couldn’t connect with anything meaningful and had to give up the hand.  Finally blinds open fold (-$35, 10.2%) referred to hands where it was folded around to us in the SB, BUT OUR HAND WAS SO FUCKING BAD, that we still had to open fold and award the BB villain the free $.50.    

It’s very easy to forget about exactly how much you lose on the blinds during each session.  I often like to look and obsess at the big pots I lost against suck-outs, coolers, fish catching top end of their range, or regulars holding 4 of a kind against my house.  But look above!  All of that bull-shit only accounted for 20.3% of my losses during the last session.  As shown above the most frustrating disappointments of a poker session will almost never out-weigh the natural blind losses.  Not when you’re multi-tabling.

Every player looses on their blind positions, but minimizing those losses even slightly can have a huge impact.  This means always working on your steals.  This means hitting more spots to profitably 3-bet, picking up free money pre.  It also means EXPANDING your PFR range from each position to optimal levels.  This takes experience and a lot of work, but the information is out there and it can be found.  You just have to take collect the raw data, cross reference it, and work on applying it to your game.  This is what I have to do AGAIN.  I haven’t done a really in depth analysis since the end of last year, but it’s time for another.  It’s time to complete this before I log another hand online.  And I’ll make adjustments to my game and hopefully lose a little less money.  And after all the analysis and adjustments, I’ll play 100,000 more hands.  And I’ll do the analysis again.  And hopefully one day I’ll kind of get things right, and profit as a result.  Maybe not, but I will keep trying.

Coolered by Fish/ Suck-outs  (-$174.50, 23.3%)

Here we have the category that causes us to throw $300 headphones across the room and question our purpose in life.  Last session in 2k+ hands it accounted for 23.3% of my money lost.  It’s a stat that fluctuates greatly from session to session, but there is a point.  IT’S ALMOST NEVER accounting for as much of your overall loss as you think.  The natural blind loss category above is far more neglected and important.  The coolers and suck-outs are the ultimate stressor, but you really have no control over the situation.  Analyze the fish catching the top 1% of his range and stacking you instead of neglecting other areas, go ahead it’s pointless.

VB/VPIP fail (-$99.50, 11.5%)

This includes hands where I thought I was in a value-bet situation post, but had to abandon the hand.  Based on a few factors I determined that I was behind.  This is an incredibly complicated category that digs into post flop skills.  It has to be looked at on a hand for hand basis to find any leaks.  I think you improve here with experience.  You can also improve here by studying and reviewing some hands by players who are better than you.  Yes there are players who are better than you, a lot of them.

SD Post/ Draw (-$114, 13.2%)

For the time being I’m going to combine these categories.  Again, they both have to do with post-flop skills.  Shut-down post includes situations where I was VPIP or PFR, but had to shut-down later post.  So now we have over 20% of our losses under the category of post-flop skills.  You may have played everything right, probably not.  But anyways this sounds about right on the percentages.

Cbet failed (-$83.50, 9.7%)

Failed cbets accounted for about 9.7% of my losses during this session.  This is huge.  Keep in mind that’s more than I won from cbetting (only $79.50).  I have a decent leak cbetting to much and it may be showing here.  I’m throwing a guess out that I probably c-bet about 10-15% too much.  This again ties into post flop skills, which is now tied to over 30% of what I lost during the last session.  This is a very complicated subject.  It gets into reading board texture.  What is your opponents range?  How do you think that range interacts with the flop?  How likely is he to call with a moderate holding?  If he calls what is your plan for the next streets?  Are you going to fit and fold like usual?  Or are you actually going to man up, put him on a range, stick to your read, and make a serious range play on him?  This stat is going to fluctuate madly per session.  But it’s something to keep in mind, are you improving here?  Like the other post-flop skills this gets better with experience and study.

 Open 3 betted (-$28, 3.2%)

Notice it’s really frigging low.  Further evidence of why you shouldn’t be afraid to expand your PFR and collect dead money.  When you do get 3-bet off a hand it’s frustrating and sticks in your mind.  But you are never losing as much money as you think when it comes to opponent’s  causing you to fold out your opens with 3-bets pre.  Most of the time they aren’t 3-betting your open, and almost never “making a play on you” for that matter.  He woke up with a monster, just get it out of your head and move on to the next hand.

3 bet fail (-$19, 2.2%)

This will usually be higher, but for me it made sense last session.  I didn’t 3-bet enough.  Notice you don’t lose a lot when your 3-bets fail compared to the overall scheme of things.  You have to up the 3-bet stat to take off some of the natural blind loss pressure.  I want to start by working on my 3-bet from the blinds and buttons, I miss too many spots. 

Some Points of This Exhausting Review

A)  When mass multi-tabling the most frustrating disappointments of a poker session will almost never out-weight the natural blind losses from a dollar-loss perspective.

B)  The natural blind losses represent the largest amount of money lost during each session (40% for the session above).  It’s normal for the blind losses to be around double the amount you lost to suck-outs and coolers.

C)  Focus on working on areas that you truly need work on.  This means not stressing over suck-outs and coolers.  For example, focus on improving open PFR leaks, work on stealing, look at cbet success rates, and study post-flop spots.

D)  Leak:  I’m still too tight pre-flop.  This is not optimal and you lose money from it each session.  You know how to go about improving this.  It’s annoying but has to be done.  It’s time for another pre-flop position report.  Cross reference your stats and make adjustments.

E)  Leak:  Your 3-bet % is still way to low and you aren’t re-stealing enough.  This will be covered in the position report as well.  Start by focusing on the blinds and button spot.

F)  Leak:   You c-bet too much.  Keep studying and making note of sticky post flop situations weekly.

G)  When you have a bad session keep in mind the main areas where money is lost each session.  Ask yourself what could have been done from each area.

Concluding…

So it took a while to pick apart the session above.  I normally wouldn’t post it on the blog, just a general report that took me some time.  If I need it it’s saved in an accessible place as well.  I think it was worth it to further understand the money flow % (positive and negative) by category for a typical session.  I understand the percentages for categories are going to fluctuate a lot during some sessions, but hopefully this was a good starting point for a general understanding.  I might do another session win/loss break-down review like this and compare the differences eventually.  But right now I have a lot of database work to do before I log another hand.  After that I’m going to make some adjustments, apply to my game, and repeat the analysis process after another 100k hands or so.  I have at least 10 hours of analysis/study work before I log another hand online.  I’m far from where I want to be.

-bag

Live Tournament Busto (1/24/2011)

One of my goals at the beginning of the year was to start playing tournaments more.  Specifically, at least one $200+ buy-in per month.  Well I filled that obligation tonight.  I entered a winter open event at the Borgata and busted out in just 3 hours.  Wasn't a big deal, cost about $180 to enter.  Remembered why tournaments are such b.s most of the time.  Really nothing I could do, didn't make any mistakes, but went bad.

The best hand I was dealt was AA once, which was dealt on literally the first hand of the tournament.  There were only 5 people at the table at that time, took down a small pot.  A big situation came up later when my stack was about 12-14 BBs.  Just a big enough stack where I didn't want to go all in pre, but pretty much only had enough for a PRE raise and one move on the flop.  So I'm dealt QQ UTG, raised 4x or so preflop.  The guy of course calls, and heads-up flops the ACE holding AK.  The same idiot talking about how he won an event early, I can't even imagine someone this bad winning a tournament.  I saw him make some pretty big mistakes in just watching him 50 hands or so.  Action is on me with QQ heads-up with the atocious flop: 

A, 8, 3 (I believe) 

Anyways, here I priced it so I could fold if he raised on the ace flop, which I did.  I figured any sort of resistance against my C-bet and he has the ace.  I raised just under half the pot, he raises of course, I fold, and he showed the AK.  I know luck-box, but thanks for the show.  At this point I only have about 5-6 BB's left and it's red-zone.

Eventually I shove the remaining 3,500 in chips (just over 4 BBs left) with 66 MP.  I run into KK like usual.  No help on the flop, turn or river.  Christ you think I could at least find a coin-flip situation there.

I had fun though, it was a good experience.  The play was a little worse than I expected.  Location wise, I had a great seat despite getting no playable hands in any sort of meaningful situation.  There was a drunk MEGA-DROOLER to my immediate right, he even doubled up.  I just couldn't get one hand against this guy.  He eventually stacked off holding T7s on a J, J, 7 board.  Yeah the other dude had AJ or whatever.

I think there is a lot of value in touranments like these and I should keep them in my schedule at least once per month.  Then again any tournament like this is 30%+ luck no matter what you do, so when I enter something like this losing the buy-in can't mean anything, which it didn't.

Tournaments need to be kept at a minimum though.  I consider myself one of the more unlucky people on the planet, so how the hell am I going to cash in a tournament when there is 30%+ luck no matter what?  I need money in with my opponent's down to two outs, and even then I expect to lose.

That's all for now.  Off to make dinner and put in some online volume later, maybe 3-6 hours.  The poker room at the Borgata is insane.  NINE 2-5 games going on a Monday night, eleven 1-2.  Pretty mind-blown.  Some of the 2-5's looked very crazy and deep stacked.  There's a duplicate event tomorrow, but I think I'll pass.  Wasn't really trying to dump $400 on tournaments this week, but $180 was scheduled.

-bag

Decent Weekend Live (1/23/2011)

Live went decent this weekend.  I put in limited volume (feeling terrible most of the time) and won over $600 total.  Tonight I forced myself to leave the casino.  As in I won over $200 and just left after a 4 hour session.  I really wanted to finish off the weekend logging a decent win and feeling good.  Also I'm just starting to feel better from the flu, so I wanted to get a good sleep tonight.  It ended in me swiping out around 1 a.m and the floor person responding "WHAT???? ALREADY??"

So I became a quota player tonight for perhaps the first time ever.  Ok actually I almost went back and played another 2-3 hour session after dinner.  I flipped a coin and told myself if it landed on heads I would play another small session.  It landed on tails, giving me another reason to leave for once.

On 1-2 I eeked back over the 6k profit mark, which means I'll take a shot at 2-5 the next time I play.  I'm not sure what my buy-in will be.  Probably around $250-$300.  $250 would be a nice short advantage, but I'll probably need around $300 to give myself the implied odds to play hands that I want.  Most of the players on 2-5 tables seem to be sitting there with $500-$2000 stacks.  I'll gladly be short and take my mathematical advantage.  I think there is great value in buying in "shorter" on massively deep stacked 2-5 games.  Just double, win $250-$300, leave and come back whenever.  Though if I lose the pending 2-5 session I may go back on 1-2 until I get back over the 6k mark.  I'll keep repeating the process until I bink a 2-5 win, eventually I'll earn the freedom to play whatever limit I want live.

Not sure what the plan is tomorrow.  I wanted to get in some volume online, but I might have to hang out with the girl later.  Things are going well with her.  If we end up hanging out I'll probably only get in 3 hours max.  If we don't hang out I'll try to get in at least 8 hours.  That's about it.  Lots to look forward to live, meanwhile online is still somewhat shaky.  I just need to hang in there and keep working hard until I clear another bonus.  And not flip out.

-bag

Flu (1/18/2011)

Really not a lot to update here.  I went to a doctor yesterday and it turns out I had a pretty bad flu.  I probably left my bed a combined 6 hours from Friday Night- Monday night.  During that time I had to force myself to do simple things like walk down the stairs and such, it was pathetic.  I feel somewhat better today and will try to force some online sessions.  I normally don't get sick like this so pretty bizare.

I was planning to go to NY Thursday, but I'm going to have to cancel the trip due to my lack of playing volume.  I didn't expect to miss an entire weekend with the flu.  I also don't feel like traveling this exhausted, it would be more of a struggle, not much fun.  Hoping this cold is on the final days and I can get back to the full grind soon.

-bag