A Tale of Two Limits

So August has come and gone, and for once I'm actually impressed with the progress my poker game has made. The results were poor overall, but I feel that my game has gotten significantly better throughout the month.

We'll start by looking at tournaments.

Number played: 56
Number of cashes: 9
Total Profit/(loss): (94.69)
ROI: (38.32)

Blah, run bad and I stopped caring at the middle of the month. Downswings in tournaments suck. I was playing very well in my opinion and just running bad at the wrong times.

So instead of playing tournaments in my newly acquired excess spare time, I started focusing more on cash games especially around mid-month. I had the highest volume month of my career in 6-max cash, which felt good. I actually moved up to NL25 for a fair bit, which is where the title of this post comes in. We'll start by looking at NL10 for the month.

Number of hands: 7,148
Profit/(loss): $163.15
BB/100: 11.41

I am very pleased with this result, and felt that my post flop game was doing very well this month. I still need work on my preflop game though, I'm just way too tight still. Opening up will make my long-term winrate better, and that is obviously a primary goal of mine.

With the positive out of the way, lets take a look at NL25.

Number of hands: 4,781
Profit/(loss): ($204.65)
BB/100: -8.56

Obviously my stint at NL25 didn't go as well as I'd hoped. I played just about the same as I do at NL10, but variance had it out for me, as the largest downswing I've ever encountered (8 BI) met me in my step up the limits. I've dissected many of the major hands pretty thoroughly, most with the help of 2p2, and the general concensus is that I've largely been running like shit. That said, I was displeased with some of my tilted play. I called down in a number of very poor spots. If I had played my A game throughout the downswing may have only been 6 BI. Oh well, it's over now, and it game me renewed vigor and focus.

The biggest area of concern in my game at the moment is my PF range. I have run 15-16/12-13 for as long as I can remember and that's simply way too nitty to be any good moving up. I will be making a concerted effort to get those numbers closer to 22/20 to 24/21. I have to work on post-flop as well, sure, but you don't get post-flop without having a sound pre-flop game, so it suits me to start there.

Also of note is that I made a pretty good run at getting silverstar status this month. I managed to collect over 900 of Pokerstars VIP Player Points where 1200 get's silverstar status (basically extra free stuff). I was collecting 2x FPP's all the time thanks to an online survey I filled out for Stars in July. So I was able to get a new book from the VIP store and still have nearly 2k FPPs for future use.

I'll be moving back to NL25 sometime in September. Since I lost ~200 dollars there, I'm planning on making that back in NL10 before trying again. So far I've knocked out about 70 in 2k hands since moving back down. I've been table selecting very well of late, it seems every table I'm on has at least one, usually two or more 40+/<5s. It's fantastic.

Goals for September:
20k hands of 6-max.
8+ BB/100 at NL10
6+ BB/100 at NL25
Reach Silverstar Status

Notably there are no tournament goals this month. I'm basically fed up with them. Sure I'll play them again, but hopefully not until I buy into them with FPPs. : )
The Sunday Million costs 13,500 fpps, and that very well may be my next tournament, unless I play a few to warm up for it.

A Bad River Call

I haven't been posting enough humiliating hands in this blog. That was one of the blog's original purposes, so I will rectify that now. In the following hand I make a pretty terrible river call.

Villain in this hand is at 3 of my tables, and is running 17/12 IIRC. Seems pretty solid. About 3 orbits prior to this hand he lost a buyin when his 44 lost to AQ on a A42A board. River 2. I've 3 bet him a few times, but this is the first time he's 3-bet me. On to the hand:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.10 BB (6 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

saw flop | saw showdown

UTG ($10.15)
Hero (MP) ($25.55)
CO ($14.45)
Button ($25.40)
SB ($12.25)
BB ($10)

Preflop: Hero is MP with A, K
1 fold, Hero bets $0.30, 2 folds, SB raises to $1.30, 1 fold, Hero calls $1

Flop: ($2.70) A, 3, 8 (2 players)
SB bets $2, Hero calls $2

Turn: ($6.70) Q (2 players)
SB checks, Hero checks

River: ($6.70) 10 (2 players)
SB bets $5, Hero calls $5

Total pot: $16.70 | Rake: $0.80

Results:
SB had A, A (three of a kind, Aces).
Hero mucked A, K (one pair, Aces).
Outcome: SB won $15.90

The hand seems pretty standard until the river. Basically, since this is the first time I've seen him 3-bet through ~100 hands, I'm putting him on a pretty tight range. Something like TT+, AQs+, AKo sounds right. That is probably too loose for most at $10NL, but he seemed fairly decent, so I'll give some credit. Anyway, This is a WA/WB situation on the flop, significantly favoring the WA (1 combo of AA left, vs 3 of KK, 6 each of QQ-TT). So I'm comfortable just calling, since he's not putting in any more money unless he has the AA. He has at most 2 outs, and I might get another bet out of his pairs on the river. Turn and river are very bad cards for my hand, since it improves his range's equity against my hand. I was mentally prepared to call a bet of up to $3.5 on the river before the T came off.

IMO, he never makes this size of a bet with KK or JJ. So I'm essentially calling vs his river range of TT, QQ, AA, and maaaaybe AKs, AQs. I'm losing to all of these but the AK (and even with that hand I think he checks the river most of the time).

At the time, I had been making a number of hero calls at several tables that had all turned out right (for pretty siginificant financial gain), and so I guess I just wanted to keep it going. I thought about the call for nearly 30 seconds before making it, but clearly in retrospect its a terrible call given his range.

Otherwise the day turned out very well. I was able to run at +18 PTBB/100 over 540 hands. If I am able to fold this river, that turns into +23 PTBB/100. At least I know I won't be making the same mistake again soon.

lol donkaments

Some days it seems like there is just nothing you can do. Been true for a couple days now... Case in point:


PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, 5.5 Tournament, 125/250 Blinds 25 Ante (9 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

saw flop | saw showdown

UTG+1 (t7410)
MP1 (t6590)
MP2 (t4570)
MP3 (t2545)
CO (t30600)
Button (t15840)
SB (t18635)
BB (t9775)
Hero (UTG) (t11182)

Hero's M: 18.64

Preflop: Hero is UTG with Q, Q
Hero bets t750, 4 folds, CO raises to t2250, 3 folds, Hero raises to t11157 (All-In), CO calls t8907

Flop: (t22914) 8, A, J (2 players, 1 all-in)

Turn: (t22914) 7 (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: (t22914) 4 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: t22914

Results:
Hero had Q, Q (one pair, Queens).
CO had Q, A (one pair, Aces).
Outcome: CO won t22914

Losing 70/30's all over the place. And coolers when I'm not. Ex: AcKc @15/30 raise pre, call min3bet. Get it in on a flop of 3h8c7c, expecting between 9-15 outs, and probably averaging at least 12. Not this time, his AA holds. Blah.. F Tournies.

It's Just Business

This month it's bad news and bad news. Poker went meh, as you'll see. In addition, however, I have been layed off from the internship I've held for two years. I won't go into too many details, as I'd like to keep potential options open at the company for future employment. But I will say this, it was not based on my performance, or lack thereof, "it's just business." Maybe things will have turned around by the time I graduate.

As for poker:

Tournaments:

# Played : 48
Avg Buyin : $4.88
Total Cashes : $151.37
ROI : -35.45%

Down about $80 in tournaments this month, nothing significant to say, other than it felt like I was playing pretty well. Standard tourney downswing, nothing to get excited over.


Cash Games:

Hands Played : 2,332
Profit/(Loss) : ($12.75)
PTBB/100 : (2.73)

This is the more concerning result, if over 2,332 hands you can get concerned about results. I was up over $30, had a 6.5 BI downswing, then recovered about $20 to get where I finished. Hard to say if I was playing very well. There were a couple standard cooler spots, but I think if I were on top of my game, fully focused and playing as well as I could have been, I may cut the downswing in half. On the flip side, I think I'm starting to get a bit better at making thin river calls:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.10 BB (5 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

saw flop saw showdown

SB ($22.65)
BB ($10)
Hero (UTG) ($12.40)
MP ($6.40)
Button ($13)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with K, K
Hero bets $0.30, 1 fold, Button calls $0.30, 1 fold, BB calls $0.20

Flop: ($0.95) 2, 9, 10 (3 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $0.80, Button calls $0.80, 1 fold

Turn: ($2.55) 8 (2 players)
Hero bets $1.50, Button raises to $4.30, Hero calls $2.80

River: ($11.15) 10 (2 players)

Hero checks, Button bets $7.60 (All-In), Hero calls $7 (All-In)

Total pot: $25.15 Rake: $1.20

Results:
Button had Q, 9 (two pair, tens and nines).
Hero had K, K (two pair, Kings and tens).
Outcome: Hero won $23.95

Villain was running 46/0/2.2 over 40 hands to this point. The overall read I had developed in this time was that he was hyper-trappy/passive with big hands. Example is that he checked down 99 OOP on a 94667 board, after the turn put a 3 flush on the board. He didn't try to get one street of straight value. In other hands he was playing pretty aggressively postflop, considering he had never opened pre.

At the time of the call I was very unsure about the hand, and contemplated posting it on 2+2. I think now that this is a pretty good call down based on my read and the following reasoning:

First, his flop call means little. His turn raise, on the other hand, tells me he is repping the flush or maybe a straight with a flush draw (QJo , but certainly not 67o). Unless he has a weak flush that calls the flop bet, a raise here does not fit what I've seen of his playing style with made hands. Further, no straight and flush draw gets there on this specific turn other than QJs and 67s. He may be raising the 67s, but again, based on what I've seen of his playing style he's flatting here with the Q high flush.

Two thoughts enter my head on seeing this raise: 1) I've not yet seen him raise with the nuts before the river. 2) There are few other hands that make sense for him to have, outside of QJ, and maybe 67s.

River pairs the top pair on the board, making the board even scarier. He shoves his remaining stack in after I check. First thought in my head: God playing OOP sucks. Then I start thinking; he's not doing this with bare trip tens, my call on the turn would have scared him too much with three hearts out, and he has significant equity in the pot without turning his hand into a bluff. He could be doing this with any made flush, and any full house, but his turn play would still be suspect based on my reads of him at the time. At this point, my hand is a bluff catcher, since I beat none of his value shoving range. But getting a little over 2.5:1, I only need to be good about 29% of the time for this to show a profit (call 7 to win ~18 before rake). In this spot, based on my read from previous hands, I estimate his bluffing frequency to be near 40%, if not higher. So I called, and was right this time.

In the past, I'd fold this hand on the turn or river. I'm not sure if that means I'm getting better as a player, or if it means I'm rationalizing a bad call that turned out correctly this time. In any case, there were other questionable hands this month, but I think this was the most interesting.

Until next time.