Check-raising on FT

So I've made an observation. Most players on FT have a 4+ agression factor post flop.

This generally means that if you check to them - they bet.

I was noticing that I was missing out on a lot of money because I was nearly always betting on flops. I mean always betting - like I'd bet second pair and flush draws and straight draws - or even stone bluffs. I'd always bet my strong hands too. So top two pair or sets or TPTK, etc.

Now the first group of hands I mentioned are good spots to bet. Often betting out hands that may have you beat is a great thing to do - and is a very profitable play.

However, the second type of hands - the times you are strong - its much, much better to check-raise most flops instead. I do this with overpairs, top pair, sometimes second pair, or my super strong hands.

Advantages to this strategy:

Gives strength out of position. Its so hard to play hands like middle pairs and AK out of position, but if you check-raise with made hands a lot of time, your checks will get more checks behind them, giving you free shots at turn and river cards to make your hand.

Aggressive players like to bet. When you check to an aggressive player, they nearly always bet. However, most won't put any more money in pots with hands like middle pairs or AK when they miss the flop if you bet first. By check-raising you get money in the pot that you wouldn't if you led out. Aggressive bluffers will bet half to pot sized bets on nearly every flop you check, and those bets are just free money, when you check-raise and take the pot away.

Extra information in multiway pots. Aggressive players love reraising in multiway pots with very good hands. Checking lets you see what the players behind you do. Many times it will go raise - reraise, and you can get out of a medium strength hand without losing a dime.

Confuses / misleads opponents. Most players won't put you on a very strong hand if you check the flop. This can lead to extra money won later in the hand. I find that if I check the flop, I like to be more aggressive throughout the rest of the hand. You'd be surprised the types of hands will try to catch you bluffing the turn/river.

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Now, its important to note that I'm absolutely not advacating a 100% of the time check raise strategem. What I am saying is when you are out of position and you have a semi-strong to strong hand AND you think its unlikely you will win any more money by betting, checking is the better tactic.

Thoughts? Opinions?

Crossed to 1K threshold!

Since its all the rage on this blog, I'm going to be trying to change $500 into $5K.

I have started data mining heavily - and am playing .50/1.00 tables at full tilt.

After about 3500 hands in I'm up to $1051. Mind you, $80 is bonus money, but not too bad. I had two pretty "lucky" hands where I won pots of $200+ and I've only lost 4 buyins (or near buyins) in all those hands.

Apparently I play like a little girl though - stats:

VP$IP: 15.8
PFR: 8.3
AGR (Total): 1.61

Not sure where I need to be more aggressive. I rarely ever call other than preflop - and thats when I have PPs (calling for a set) or am trapping - OR if its a limped pot and I don't mind seeing a flop. But - I'm thinking about starting to make my raises always the same - like Matt and I recently talked about. Always raising say 3 or 4 x the BB every time I raise - no matter my hand. I currently vary my bet based on position ala Phil Gordon. I raise 2.5 x BB up front, 3x in middle/late and 3.5 on the button, cutoff, or blinds.

What do we think of this hand?

FullTiltPoker Game #2040403322:
Table Morgan (6 max) - $0.50/$1 -
No Limit Hold'em - 21:40:33 ET - 2007/03/21

Seat 1: ScratchPlayer ($53.30)
Seat 2: HERO ($106.55)
Seat 3: kew1076 ($100.35)
Seat 4: jasoncho83 ($188.40)
Seat 5: mammamia1355 ($89.20)
Seat 6: Paul Coffey ($96)

kew1076 posts the small blind of $0.50
jasoncho83 posts the big blind of $1
The button is in seat #2

*** HOLE CARDS ***

Dealt to HERO [Ac 8c]

mammamia1355 calls $1
Paul Coffey calls $1
ScratchPlayer folds
HERO calls $1
kew1076 foldsjasoncho83 checks

*** FLOP *** [2s 3c 7c]

jasoncho83 checks
mammamia1355 bets $4.50
Paul Coffey raises to $12
HERO has 15 seconds left to act
HERO calls $12
jasoncho83 raises to $187.40, and is all in
mammamia1355 calls $83.70, and is all in
Paul Coffey calls $83, and is all in
HERO calls $93.55, and is all in

jasoncho83 shows [2d 2c]
mammamia1355 shows [Kd Kh]
Paul Coffey shows [3h 3s]
HERO shows [Ac 8c]
Uncalled bet of $81.85 returned to jasoncho83

*** TURN *** [2s 3c 7c] [9c]

*** RIVER *** [2s 3c 7c 9c] [Ad]

jasoncho83 shows three of a kind, Twos
HERO shows a flush, Ace high
HERO wins side pot #2 ($21.10) with a flush, Ace high
Paul Coffey shows three of a kind, Threes
HERO wins side pot #1 ($20.40) with a flush, Ace high
mammamia1355 shows a pair of Kings
HERO wins the main pot ($354.30) with a flush, Ace high

First:
When the action first reaches me - is this is a raise, call, or fold situation? Notice two players are acting behind me, and one of them has already raised - all four players are deep stacked.

Second:
When the action reaches me for the second time - is this a call or fold situation?

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The first situation I viewed as a poor spot for sure. I figured I probably was beat because the flop was pretty bland and so I almost for sure am up against at least top pair and an overpair. I figure I could also be up against a set of any of the ranks on board. So, I looked at my opponents' stack sizes and decided that if I called, I might encourage the other player to call, and then I would be getting a great price to catch my flush. I also figured that if it got reraised by the initial raiser and called by the reraiser, I could call the all-in because of the price I would be getting to see two cards. The large stack sizes would mean that if I did hit my flush I might be able to win a couple more large bets (possibly a player's whole stack) from a set or two pair.

I don't like reraising because if you are up against a set you are an underdog and you need to hit your hand - reraising in this spot would almost certainly be a push or near push. I will also mention that I had very little info on the reraiser - so I had to value his reraise here as a very strong hand - like two pair or a set.

Folding seems a bit silly to me here. The only "bad spot" you could get your money in would be if it got back to the initial raiser who pushed all-in and the reraiser folded.

Okay so, then when the action reaches me again the pot is HUGE, I only have to call $87 to win a $354 pot. So I'm getting about 4:1, and I'm about 3:1 to hit my hand - poker stove puts my equity slightly better at 29%. This is an easy call.

Lucky me - for once.

Poker and Drunk Idiots

Before I get into the details about the ridiculousness which was yesterday I'm gonna get the poker stuff out of the way. I managed to get 4,176 hands in today. I started off on fire, shooting up about 5 buyins on the day... that did not last, after getting coolered on a couple of hands (Set over set, OESFD missing, etc... ) and playing a couple of hands horribly I managed to get myself down to about even. I don't want to say that I was tilted but I was definatly not very happy, mostly at myself for playing like a monkey on meth. Anyway, so I managed to battle back towards the end, finishing up two buyins... which adds up to about 2.5PTBB/100.

Hand 1- This hand was really tough. I hate folding with an overpair to a min raise but I think if I call i'm just going to leak a bunch of chips... I could raise it but I don't think i'm getting my money in ahead of anything thats calling... even if he only has the 8d... i'm still not in very good shape. Have I mentioned how much I hate the min raise?

Hand 2 - I have absolutly no idea what this guy was thinking... he cannot beat anything but a 100% pure bluff... such a donk. I hate getting my stack in with only one pair, but these players are just so bad...

Hand 3 - I'm not sure how well I played this hand, I can't really think of any spot where I could have gotten away from the hand. I dont think I can fold when gaf1704 makes it $5.30 more and then on the turn the pot is $50 and jreezy only had $9.75 in his stack, I'm going to call that so I figured I might as well put him in. The only thing I could have done was possibly check the flop because then they would have gotten it all in and I would have had a chance to fold. Then again, maybe jreezy checks behind me, gaf1704 bets and then I raise and i'm even more commited to the pot. Tough spot... I think this is just one of the times your going to get stacked.

My PT stats for the day

So yesterday I wake up at around 10:30 to get ready for the party me and my buddies had purchased tickets for a week earlier. The big thing about this party was that there we're going to be 3,000 coldshots and it's all you can handle... In retrospect, that sounds like a formula for disaster but none of made that connection at the time. After a hardy breakfast at McDonalds(I haven't been awake early enough for MD's breakfast in years so this seemed like a no brainer), we headed out to the party. We arrive at 11:15, a little late but not many people had shown up yet... Someone comes up with the great idea that we should wager who could drink the most before they ran out(if they ran out)... I think we can all see where this is heading. So we all shotgun our first 5 coldshots in about 20 minutes. For those who don't know, to shotgun a beer if when you make a small hole in the bottom of the can then pop it open and watch all the beer goodness flow into your mouth.

What happend from this point on is kinda blurry... I can tell you this much for certain, after 15 beers, I vommited into the sink... which really hurt me because when you vomit, your beer count gets knocked down 3 which put me on twelwe and since my buddy kyle had just hit 18, things we're not looking good. But fear not, I rallied and managed to tie him with 18 beers... I would like everyone to recognize that this was all in a 2 hour span.

Obviously at this point we we're all very drunk and things started getting out of control... Kyle began ripping off the cabinet doors, I'm not quite sure why but my guess would be that he thought they we're looking at him the wrong way. Eric was urinating in the corner of the room... there we're 300 people in the room. Tom has slipped on the floor and smashed his head on the refridgerator, he later went to the hospital to get 5 stiches on his skull. I was suprisingly doing pretty well... I make an exectutive decision and decide we are leaving for the following reasons - a) Kyle is unable to stand anymore and is falling everywhere
b) We are going to get our faces punched because of Kyle breaking the cabinets and Eric urinating in the room
c) Most important reason of all, they ran out of beer.

The walk home from the party is not long, especially considering we are going to a friends place which is even closer. I would estimate it to be about 400m door to door. About 3/4 of the way there, Kyle decides that he cannot use his legs anymore and collapses. I have included two pictures of us trying to carry kyle... I'm not gonna bother writing anymore about the remaider of the day because I think those two pictures sum it up pretty good.

Happy St-Patricks day.

Had the nice suprise of my roomates showing up in my room with beers so that we could chug them as soon as midnight hit... Chugging beer and 8 tabling = leak money. hehe...

Anyway, so I started working on my challenge today and I must say, things are going pretty well. I din't run very well over my first 4127 hands but it din't really matter, the players we're just so bad that I was winning anyway. At one point I was up 8 buyins which would have been huge because I would have been able to move limits much earlier than anticipated however I took a couple of really bad runner runners and it knocked me right back down. I managed to take in about 4 buyins today which means that at this pace I should be able to move up limits in 5 days. Here are my PT stats for the day:

Poker Tracker Stats

You can see that i'm playing about a 14/10 which is really really tight... Frankly, I don't think i've ever played this tight... in my life. I don't regret it at all though, the players at this limit have absolutly no concept of table image so there's no point playing LAG like I normally do. Not only that, it allows me to play more tables. I can play 8 6-max tables with confort which would be impossible if I was playing my standard 22/20.

Today is St-Pat's so theres no way I'm going to be able to get hands in - my friends and I are waking up at 10:00 to head over to a party to see who can drink the most cold shots(6.0 cans of beer) before they run out(there are 3,000 waiting for us when we get there). I expect to me hospitalised around 5:00pm... actually, who are we kidding... I would be lucky to make till 2:00.

Poker Tracker?

I'm looking to start data mining to get some info about my opponents without playing hands with them. I remember hearing about a program that Bruno mentioned that allows you to do something like this. Now that the games are a bit tougher - I think exploiting opponents is the main way to earn money online. I have had much better results lately playing two 6-max tables and using poker tracker and gametime. I was curious if there was a program that basically just opens tables of a certain limit, and allows you to record the hands, then you can put them in poker tracker for use in gametime.

If you had say 1000+ hands of most of your opponents, it would be quite easy to take advantage of their play styles. AND it would also point out players who are fishy or "hobby" type players.

Idealy, I'd like to data mine for a couple weeks 8-10 hours a day, maybe even 16+ if I let it run at night too. Then I'd sit down at a few tables and really have a HUGE advantage over my opponents.

Along these lines - I was curious if any of you have given much thought into the best ways to take advantage of players with various stats. I'm gonna try to really focus on the best ways to beat players with a certain W$SD or VPIP.

$500 to $5,000

I've been kinda slacking with my bankroll management latly, I've been playing very well but have been unable to really keep growing my bankroll for two reasons:

a) I've been taking shots at higher limits when I have really good sessions.
b) I've been donking it up in too many tournaments, normally this would not be a problem but the buyins keep getting bigger and bigger and my bankroll has noticed.

I was talking with a friend of mine and we decided that if we had a goal, something tangable, we would be much better off. Not only is this something to shoot for, I can be held accountable for my results. I've been telling myself "Oh, your just running badly" way too much latly. I need to be accountable, there are hands you sometimes can't get away from, but it's way to easy to simply chalk it up to bad luck.

The goal is to run $500 into $5,000 in two months... we're gonna start at the 0.25/0.50 level and we hope to play about 2,500 hands a day. I think having someone doing this with me will definatly keep me focused down the road.

The timing for this is pretty good because i've been meaning to rollover alot of my bankroll into stock(namely: KAT on the TSX) so while i'm doing this my money won't be idling away. I'm going to use this blog to chronicle my progress.

Here we go...