Vegas Day 1

I got into vegas at about 12:30 local time, I was supposed to arrive at 11:45 however my flight got delayed in denver due to the cold, something about the plane being frozen. I was a little frustrated at the delay but when I found out that the plane was equipped with TVs for every passenger, all was well, the added purk allowed me to catch the new poker show - poker after dark, very entertaining.

When I arrived, I met up with Griffin at the airport, he had gotten in at about 11:45 - after the manditory greetings we hustled to get out of there, we we're both tired but still wanted to get in a short session. Unfortunetly there was a small problem, my bag was nowhere to be found... We ended up having to stay an extra hour at the airport. It seemed my bag had been left in Denver, they would send it to me in the morning... no big deal I guess. We decided to just get some food and head back to the hotel, better to be rested for the long session the next day.

We woke up at around 9am and headed over the convention center, I had agreed to help with the setup of the Sennheiser booth at CES(Consumer Electronics Converntion). It was pretty boring but they did feed us and give us access to open bar... so I can't really complain.

When I arrived at ceaser's poker room it was already 7:00, alot later that I had hoped to get there but I was still thrilled to finally get the chance to play some poker in vegas. I really liked that you could come in for as much as $500 in a $1/$2 game at ceaser's, I've always felt that I was at my best with a big stack in ring games(not so much tournaments). Anyway, I take a look at the stacks on the table and decide to buy in for $200. There we're a few large stacks at the table and I didn't want to put so much money at jeapordy with limited information. After I got a feel for the table, I put $300 more behind.

I was pretty card dead but I did manage to make the most of my opportunities.

Hand #1:

Im dealt AQo in the small blind.

Two players limp in and the most aggresive player at the table make its $12 to go from the cutoff. I decide that I probably have the best hand and raise to $35 strait. He quickly calls.

Flop comes 10/7/4 rainbow.

I check and the CO makes it $35. I think for awhile and flat call. I had decided that I was going to represent a big hand here, I felt that he was weak and that I could take this pot off on a later street.

Turn is a brick.

I check once again hoping that he will fire again, he does - $45 strait. Talk about a week bet, once again I think for awhile but this time I come over the top for $135 and he instantly mucks his hand. We both had another $350 behind so he would have needed Aces or Kings to stick around. Griffin at the other end of table says something along the lines of "Way to flop top set", I smile and say "you know me too well, i flopped then nuts". Later on I told him that It was a stone cold bluff, I still don't think he believes me.

Hand #2:

I'm dealth K/Qo in the small blind with $550 behind.

UTG comes in for $10 strait, 5 players call, not common, I decide to see a flop - I was not going to play with one pair but if I hit big I saw the pottential to win alot of money since many of the players had me covered.

Flop comes Jh/9c/8h.

I check hoping to get a free shot at my gutter, I realized that if a 10 hit I was going to crush anyone else holding a Q and maybe even get some money out of a 7. Everyone checks.

Turn 10s.

Gin. I lead out at the pot for $65 into $72. I wanted to set an expensive price if someone wanted to draw to the clubs, any other Q was going to pay me off no matter what I bet. I realized that this bet would probably scare off sevens but I was willing to give up a little in this spot. The button calls me after a little though.

Turn is a complete brick. At this point I had to make a decision, do I move all in and hope he calls me with a Queen or do I put more of a value bet in. Generally this would have been an easy push but the player at the end of the table was very loose and there was a possibility that he had called me with something other than the strait. I decided to make it $210 strait. He quickly called and I turned over my hand. He said "there's no way I could give you that hand - I had the Q" and he mucked his hand. At first I was upset because it seemed like I had missed some money but later griffin told me that he saw his hand and that he only had the 7. Ship it.

My stack got grinded away as I called with more marginal hands trying to stack some of the deeper players at the table buy I was unable to hit any flops. At 11am, I cashed out of the cash game so that I could sign up for the $70+10 tournament. The blind structure wasen't great but it wasen't completly attrocious either. You start with 2500 in chips and blinds start at 25/50 with 30 minute levels. Tournaments seemed to attract much worse players which easily made up for the luck factor. Unfortunely when we hit first break my stack was down to 1000 with blinds of 100/200 and 25 ante, did I mention that I was going to be UTG+1 on the next hand. I had decided that I was pushing it with any two. UTG limped and I was dealt 8/10o, I was very happy to put all my chips the button made the call and everyone else folded. He turned over 9/8s... I laughed out loud, I had him dominated. He missed and my stack was up to 2700... not bad!

Two hands later I was dealth 9c/4c, everyone folded and the small blind completed. Flop came Q/J/8 with two clubs, a very solid board for me. The small blind lead out for 600. One of the players who had folded accidently turned over the hand and it included a Q so I figure that she was probably only on a J. I pushed in. She though for what seemed like an hour before calling. she showed Q/10... not what expected, especially with all the time she took. I didnt improve and went back to the cash games.

I remained card dead, not seeing any premium hands. I finally decided that it was best to call it a night, I had been running on red bull/vodka/jagger for about an hour and it was 3:30am... When all was said and done I was up $100 in the cash game making me $20 for the night, nothing to be ashamed of considering what I had to work with.

Happy Holidays

Just wanted to wish everyone happy holidays. Im gonna be heading to Florida for a week and then directly to las vegas so expect some interesting content when I get back!

How disgusting is this...

FullTiltPoker Game #1406993864: Table Buckwood (6 max) - $5/$10 - No Limit Hold'em - 2:40:15 ET - 2006/12/14
Seat 1: Iplay2ManyHands ($1490)
Seat 2: gma01 ($205.50)
Seat 3: seekerzero ($1012)
Seat 4: razorbacker ($1189)
Seat 5: what a donk ($1276)
Seat 6: Smart LAG ($1370)
razorbacker posts the small blind of $5
what a donk posts the big blind of $10
The button is in seat #3
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Iplay2ManyHands [7d 7h]
Smart LAG raises to $20
Iplay2ManyHands raises to $75
gma01 folds
seekerzero folds
razorbacker folds
what a donk folds
Smart LAG calls $55
*** FLOP *** [7c Ts 3s]
Smart LAG checks
Iplay2ManyHands bets $130
Smart LAG raises to $430
Iplay2ManyHands raises to $1295
Smart Lag calls $1295, and is all in
Iplay2ManyHands shows [7d 7h]
Smart LAG shows [Tc Kh]
*** TURN *** [7c Ts 3s] [3d]
*** RIVER *** [7c Ts 3s 3d] [Th]
Smart LAG shows a full house, Tens full of Threes
Iplay2ManyHands shows a full house, Sevens full of Tens
Smart LAG wins the pot ($2740) with a full house, Tens full of Threes

Holdem Hi: 990 enumerated boards containing Ts 3s 7c

cards  win   %win  lose  %lose  tie  %tie     EV
7d 7h  974  98.38    16   1.62    0  0.00  0.984
Tc Kh   16   1.62   974  98.38    0  0.00  0.016




Well... I guess variance had to hit me at some point,
I went on a heater and won about $1000 in two days
playing 0.50/1.00 6 max on full tilt. I really would
have wished that variance could have hit me on a
smaller pot...
I can beat that game, I know it... I just
need to not get crushed by brutal beats when I take shots.
Last time I took a shot at
that level, I lost a pot of the same size all
in preflop with pocket aces vs. jacks, of
course J on the turn... Shoot me.

Trial By Fire

I just finished a run of 250 "10+1, 10-handed" SnGs on Ultimate Bet. I tracked my results, taking note of place finished, and amount won. I've used this information to calculate average amount won, average place, etc.

Places:
Total 1sts: 33
2nds: 28
3rds: 39
4ths: 42
5ths: 29
6ths: 30
7ths: 22
8ths: 18
9ths: 6
10ths: 3

Average Place: 4.33
Average Won: $13

So out of the 250, I cashed in exactly 100 or 40%.

I played in sessions of 25, of these I won in 7/10 and lost in 3/10.

Throughout the experiment I finished 4th more than anything else, and I largely attribute this to marginal situations where I was jockeying for a cash. I tend to take more risks when there are four left because I want to win. I feel like its a waste to play for 3rd. That being said, there were more than a few times that I may have made mistakes in these situations and could have had more cashes if I was a bit more careful.

For example, I had a situation today where I had AQ and 4000 chips (15000 total chips in play). There was another player with 6000 and two shorter stacks, one with 2000 and one with 3000. I raised in first position and the 2000 chipped player in the SB moved in. The blinds were 100-200, I had raised to 500. So with the 300 in the blinds, plus my 500, plus his call (400) and raise (1500), there was 2700 in the pot. I had to call 1500 to win 2700. So I was getting a bit less then 2:1. Clearly 4 handed I have a monster. BUT with a almost guaranteed cash if I fold I probably should fold everything but AA, KK, QQ, and maybe AKs. Its good to play for 1st, but you shouldn't throw away a good situation. 2nd chip position with high blinds is a great situation to avoid CALLING big raises and reraises. You can simply wait to be the raiser. Especially if people are generally folding.

Of course I ended up losing the hand to TT. But regardless of the result, when I call there the best case is that I will win 75% of the time. So in the best case, 25% of the time I become a super short stack, and am going to get 4th a lot of the time. Why bother making a play here when you can just wait for someone else to take this sort of risk. Or even better, you can steal or bluff your way into a cash. Calling is just not the same as raising.

What I did find generally was that if I could get to three handed with a decent stack (even short, but not like 3xBB), I had a very strong chance of winning 2nd or 1st. SOOOO it is incrediby important to consider the table situation when 4-5 handed, not in terms of getting the most chips right now, but instead in terms of placing yourself in a place where you can expect to cash those spots a high percentage of the time.

Basically, I tend to play more aggressively if I have the smallest stack - once I pass the other shortest stack I will play a bit tighter. I'm still trying to accumulate chips, but I'm no longer playing hyper aggressively. By hyper aggressively, I mean I will raise or push all-in any time I'm first to the pot and I don't have a terrible hand. The main thing I have noticed is that you get a stigma as the short stack, people are more willing to call that player than any other. So you want make every effort to not be the shortest for as much of the tournament as possible. AND you want your opponents to be the shortest stack when there are fewer players for a greater proportion of the time. This makes it less likely that you will get called, and more likely they will be. Logically, it gives you a smaller chance of going broke (something that has a chance of happening every time you go allin and are called).

Once you are one of the average stacks you still should open up hand requirements, but avoid playing against players who like to call. When you are stealing, you don't want to play too many flops. Even more, avoid players who like to constantly reraise all-in. If you have a really strong hand it might be worth it to raise a bit less than you might normally - you might tempt a reraiser to take a shot when you are willing to call them (AA, KK, QQ, AKs, etc.).

I highly recommend doing Matt's limpin play a lot in the SB when you are average stacked. Its a great way to stay even and grow your stack without taking much of a risk.

When you get a big lead, I tend to play tight, but concentrate on stealing to keep my stack the same size against average/smaller stacked players. When I can see flops cheaply - limping, I like to do that with a lot of hands. I then generally bluff at scare cards a lot. Aces are great cards to lead out at, if you have anything resembling a hand or draw. Players rarely limp in with aces, so when you bet at ace high boards, people have jacks and tens in their hands and will generally fold.

I am going to play another 250 block of these 10+1s starting tonight. I tried playing 20+2s and the gameplay style is much, much harder. Everyone plays very tight. I cashed in 3 out of 10, and each one took much longer. I was the chip leader in all three of the ones I cashed in, and through unfortunate bad beats, I ended up getting all 3rds. Thats a pretty big loss, so I'm gonna get back to what works.

Grind it out...

Time and again I have to remind myself to avoid playing BIG pots in these SNGs. If you wait to see the flop with "decent" cards you can decide to play the pot or not - but if you get all-in, you always have the chance to lose a big pot and potentially be eliminated against a "crap hand."

We've all moved in with that AK or KK to get called with some terrible trash hand like Q9 or A3 and been busted.

What I always ask myself about after this happens is, "Did I need to be all-in that hand?" A lot of times I decide yes, I had say 5-6 BBs left and I really cannot get away from the hand if I raise, so going all-in was the only play. But I often find myself pushing when I could stand to raise and see a flop and then either move in or fold. This middle range, around 7-11 BBs, is a good place to do the stop and go play as well as give yourself a chance to escape if your opponent hits an obvious trump card.

The key is to always avoid the sorts of "marginal" situations where you could afford to see a flop, but instead push and give your opponent the opportunity to get a lot of your chips if they get lucky. I have noticed that a big mistake players make against me is overbetting in heads up. I slowly grind players down, if they bet a lot, I usually fold (unless I think I'm way ahead). Its very typical for players to lock up when they get down to a 5:1 or 6:1 chip disadvantage. In these spots you should put lots of pressure on your opponent, but don't raise/call his all in with J5s or something stupid. I cannot tell you the amount of times my opponents have either A, come back and won when I have made this mistake, and B, made this mistake themselves, doubled me up leading to me winning 1st.

The obvious thing is hold'em is that you can find a lot better situations to get chips then a showdown - especially when you have chips. When you have an opponent who will fold a good percentage of the time you bet (if you are playing reasonably tight) then just grind it out. You don't need to gamble, use your chips as a weapon and play small ball to take home a victory...

Equity changes in an SNG

One thing I am learning a lot about in playing all of these SNGs is that your chips don't have a monetary value and so your equity is no longer the same as in normal poker ring games.

So for example, in a ring game, you have AK on the cutoff. A short stack in early position raises a standard 3x BB raise. You should recognize that AK is probably ahead here and even when its not it stands to win the pot more often than the short stack's hand. (eg they have a small pair - your bet on the flop will often win it). This is a great spot to reraise because you want to push your small margins. If they have AQ or AJ you want them to make a mistake against you here. BUT based on their hand range you probably aren't much more than a 5% favorite before the hand in the long run. This is important to understand. In ring games you push your small margins because in the long run its correct to do so. Putting that small stack all-in now is the best play for making the most money over the million times you have this type of situation...

Now in SNGs the difference is that any given hand means nothing. Your equity on a given hand is less important then the chips you have. Quite simply, if you lose your chips you cannot rebuy - so the long run makes little difference, its all about this hand, whatever result you get, this time only.

Matt and I were recently discussing a hand he busted out on. Here is the situation:

4 players remain in a 5+.50 SNG. Blinds are 120-240. Blind levels will increase in the next few minutes.

Matt was 2nd in chips with ~4000 chips. The chip leader had him covered slightly. The other two players have had ~2000 chips.

Matt is dealt KK. The chip leader, in first position, moves all-in for all of Matt's chips.

What do you do?

Now this was a very interesting hand I think because Matt has a lot of chip equity in this spot. Basically, when you lock up at least 3rd place you've locked up 60% of the prize pool. This means that all three players are guaranteed to win that 2xBuyins at 3rd, and then are playing for 2nd - 1xBuyin and 1st - 3xBuyins. If you lose in 4th, you are out, period. And if you do not bust out 4th, even if you have a small stack, you have the possibilty of winning first.

So getting back to Matt's hand, he called, his opponent showed TT, spiked a T on the river, and Matt was out.

Now, without considering the result - I think that this may be an instance where you should at least consider folding. This is a situation where the only thing that you lose by folding is the blinds, but in the best possible, likely scenario (an underpair) when you do call, you are out of the tournament 1/5 of the time. Lets say we put him on this hand distribution, KK, QQ, JJ, TT, 99, AKs, AK. Poker Stove sets the KK as a 77% favorite in this situation. So the question is which is a better play?

If you fold--- Based on the current chips, lets say that you will get 4th 5% of the time, 3rd 40% of the time, 2nd 40% of the time, and 1st 15% of the time. This would mean 0 + 0.8 + 1.2 + 0.75 = 2.75 is ~ your equity for folding here.
If you call --- Based on the current chips, lets say that you will get 4th 23% of the time, 3rd 7% of the time, 2nd 25% of the time, and 1st 50% of the time. This would mean 0 + .14 + .75 + 2.5 = 3.39 is ~ your equity for calling here.

So it looks like calling is the correct play. :) But I think it is also important to note how close this situtation is - with QQ it might not be correct - or if we move the numbers around a bit based on a weaker table, it very easily could move in the direction of a correct fold situation. The point of this post is to get the idea out there that some of the time its correct to play certain hands differently than in ring games based purely on the fact that if you are out you don't make any money!

Small Ball

Let's be honest here. When you are playing sitngos players don't like to play after the flop. Strangely this is because they A) have little experience post flop and B) they aren't good at it.

So how can you exploit this? I find that I like to play small ball. What I mean is play small pots and lots of them.

I do this for two reasons.

1) Huge implied odds
2) Its hard to make a hand in hold'em

ONE) I know that if I hit a monster my opponents are terrible and will get it all in. This is why the standard strategy (see Matt's post) is - play pps, some suited connectors, but basically just monster hands. The implied odds in SNGs is huge. Most ppl cannot get away from TPTK, so you flop a set, and all their chips are belong to you. There are plenty of times where you can hit other strong hands though. And when you have blinds of 10-20 or 15-30 - that is a lot of lottery tickets. You call that min-raise with Q6s on the button, hit trips, and you might grab a few hundred or even someones whole stack. I've found that if I'm willing to gamble with 1/3 of my chips ealry on, I don't lose very much - and usually I get an above average stack in no time.

TWO) Hold'em is an interesting game. We all know the basic odds of hitting a pair on the flop with two unpaired whole cards is about 2:1 (around 1/3 the time). Most of the time then, ppl miss. If you are in the pot, in position, those are free chips out there. Even more, you will hit some of the time - and those pots are yours too. Even more importantly - when ppl miss most fold to small bets; I pick up the vast majority of these pots on the flop for a 1/2 pot sized bet (or less).

HOW) So what I like to do is play about 3-6 hands per round. I play any suited cards that don't have a 2 or 3 in them. Any connected cards and one-gap connectors (the worst of which would be 78os or T8os). If I'm first to the pot I usually min-raise, but sometimes I put in 3x BB or limp. The key is seeing flops - so I always make smaller pots, so if I am raised I can call some of the time (when its not too much of my stack at risk). Then its pretty straight forward - I bet when I think they missed/are weak and check/fold when I think they are strong/hit. I only play big pots when I have a big hand. A pair is not a big hand.

This is working great for me. I have cashed in my last 7/10 SNGs. Gotten 3 firsts. And the other benefit, I've yet to bust out early. Every bust out has been 5th or better. I highly advocate learning how to play after the flop in these early. Playing any other way, just seems stupid to me.

Unlucky, but above average at SNGs

I played 50 sitngos today/yesterday. Yes, 50. I chose the 10+1 limit of NLHE for this experiment.

Here are my results:

2x 1st
6x 2nd
13x 3rd
6x 4th ---
23x 5th-10th ---

I spent $550 in buyins and won $540. Net -$10.

Now I will say that the high amount of thirds is largely due to getting unlucky many many times during the late stages of three handed play with big blinds. I could easily have had more 1sts/2nds had a few 80-90% hands gone my way, but what can you do.

My average finish is 4.5 and my average amount won is 11 (not sure how that worked out considering I'm down $10).

Anyway, I did get unlucky a lot, but then occassionally I'd get lucky myself so who knows if I can even factor that into my results. I also was stealing short and ran into aces in 4 SNGs in a row. Which equaled a 4/5 finish in all of those. My early knockouts usually happend because of huge coolers, (set over set) or because I got sucked out on (AA vs AQ with a Q high flop - he hits trips on the river after money is in).

My big problem with these overall is that I had an overall above average run in terms of results. BUT I still came up a loser. I do not see how you can be that proftiable playing these. The best expectation I think a player can have is an average finish of 4 and an average amount won of 12.5-14. With those sorts of results you could make about 75-150 per 50 SNGS, but even that seems like a lot of work for very little gain. I would imagine you could also consider moving up stakes to 30+3s or so. But even then. 50 SNGs at that level would be harder to win, and best case (and I mean like the best player in the world) would only win you 450.

Am I missing something? Is it much easier than I think? I cannot see how you can consistently have 1sts as opposed to 2nds and 3rds. Its usually a bit of a crap shoot at those late stages. Yes, you can play better than some opponents in these spots (usually those playing too tight). BUT that doesn't mean that you won't get unlucky a couple times and be out...

Anyway, I was pleased to see that only 3 times I finished less than 6th. And I finished in the money 21 times, which isn't all that terrible - Fischman said that the best player in the world could expect to cash in 40% of the SNGs he/she plays...

I'm gonna try to write up some strategy discussions about these tomorrow. I'm curious how you tend to handle the early/middle/late stages of SNGs and other various situations...

Sit+GO = WIN

I was kinda on a small break from playing ring games when a friend of mine asked me if I wanted to play a $10 sit-n-go on fulltilt... I ended up winning it for a prize of $45 and I have not stopped playing them since then...

It's hard for me to explain how bout some of these players are... I have been able to keep a ROI of 40%+, thats rediculous. If you want to see how well full tilt has been to me please sharkscope me - I'm Bro002 on fulltilt poker, they rate me as a shark!

I started by playing strictly $10 buy-in 9player tables but i've been doing so well that i've started moving up, i'm currently moving my way into the $20 level. I plan to keep going up and up until I hit the wall where it's no longer profitable to move up. I'm also starting to play some of the 18,45 and 90 sitngos.

It seems that most REALLY REALLY bad players want to play sit-n-goes... I though I would let you guys know :) I'm gonna start tackling specific topics in my next post, I know I have been slacking and my contecnt has been somewhat unorganized, i'll make an effort to improve.

Taking a break...

I have been either playing badly or running badly for about 2 weeks. Although I have stopped having large losing days - my winning days are pathetic. I'm at the same $600 I had wittled my poor UB account down to after logging about 100 hours of poker. That is not good. I'm sure I could be playing better - because you can always be doing that. But honeslty, I feel like game quality is becomming incredibly difficult. The games I was destroying have slowly transformed into games where 4-5 of the same solid players are sitting alongside me on every table. I largely blame the new law for this - there just aren't enough fish flooding the poker sites that their once were.

I've finally decided that I need to take a break from poker. Online poker has been my "job" for the past year. Its been very good to me - but I cannot have consistently poor results like I've been facing the past couple weeks if I'm going to make enough money to only play poker for a living. I've banked about 5k in the last 2 months and I figure that will last me at least 3 more. I'm going to apply to some local computer gaming companies in the meantime - and hopefully get a job at one of them.

I'll probably continue to play poker casually or online in my spare time. I'm going to leave my money on UB until its gone or its worth cashing out. But anyway, I'll continue to update this blog as things develop...