Poker Long Weekend

Our Friday night home game featured the toughest line-up that we’ve ever had and a competitive tough game was had, me being a modest loser for one buy-in, right on the last hand. I was 75c down when I flopped 2-pair and we got it AI against a bigger 2-pair. It happens. No big deal, but, I was running 21 out of 28 winning sessions and was keen to win $1 in that hand, just wasn’t to be. The host introduced two house rules which psychologically helped the game run much more like a casino game – no rabbit hunting and no talking about a hand if not involved. The fine for the occasional miscreant was contributing a couple of dollars into the next pot.

My next outing was a significant buy-in tourney at Star City Casino. I always seem to be seated at a tough table including always sat with Kiwi G at my table, a well-regarded old-time local pro who is a real gentleman. This time he was on my immediate right and to be honest it is something that I love about poker, the ability to be seated at a mini-legend. It’s amazing to watch and learn as he calls a flop bet OOP and instantly seizes the initiative. He and Luca to his right were certainly co-table captains running up against a single foe who held his own.

I built my stack a little before my AA got cracked by 44. MP raised and I re-raised from the CO and we were heads up to the flop of K84r. He was relatively shortstacked with 4000 in front so I bet 1900 to induce the AI which duly came and I called instantly as it was part of the plan. Needless to say his flopped set held up. I was now a shorty and with the Antes kicking in, the opportunity arose with 4 $200 limpers to shove AI for $3000 with the highly speculative A5s to capture $1000 on a fold or get lucky for a double up. Surprisingly only caller had 78s, flop came A78, turned a 5 to re-take the lead and rivered an A, I’m back in action at almost average stack. A welcome table break and in the first orbit I’m dealt AA with 4 limpers, shoved and didn’t get a single caller. Very next hand, 3 limpers and I’m dealt KK. Let’s go ith the crazy image and shove again. One caller with AQs who flopped an A and rivered an A, and I’m gone. Was obviously disappointed but only very little which I think is a good sign. Unemotional poker in terms of being results oriented and tilting is probably a very good thing.

Off to the $200 cash table and I booked a $100 profit before having noodles with a friend at Fat Noodle (highly recommended) and then back for more action at a crazy table with 3 pub players and 4 regulars. The regs must’ve been card dead or just lying in wait to stack of the pubbies but it wasn’t to be. The pubbies hit cards after cards until the lady had $500 in front and the young guy had about $1700. They’d inflicted a lot of damage hitting flush, sets and Full houses with incredible regularity. Then the final hand ensued. Blinds $5/$5. 3 limpers and SB checks. BB with big stack makes it $65 to go. Everyone folds to lady who calls on the Button. Flop comes 2 hearts, Q high - Check, Check. Turn brings a 3rd heart and a possible straight. Young guy leads out for $170 and lady calls. River is a non-heart A which doesn’t really change too much (you’d think). Young guy bets $250 and pub lady calls. Young guy shows AK and lady mucks. Table looks on in disbelief and salivates. I’d said that 10pm would be my limit and had to go 10 minutes later. I’m sure that I’ll hear that the $2k was redistributed around the table not long after.

Online : The training ground for live

Long ago, I realised that I would never make it as an online pro. Thankfully, I've been able to comfort myself with the challenge of staying a winning player, even if it is only a few dollars. Then came PLO and I ran good early (as I've since found out). These days, I am struggling to keep my head above water at PLO100 but just managing too which has always been my goal. Still waiting for the influx of new players to the game which seems to be more of a trickle and the more experienced players. I must say that the standard has got noticeably better over the last 6 months and the CardRunner-type 3-bet aggression has well and truly come to the fore after what was a very passive old school style until recently at the lower stakes.

What has improved with PLO is my thinking about poker in general and this has undoubtedly help improve my offline play. My home games continue to be lucrative beyond what I think can be considered positive variance. That said, the number of hands I will play live in my lifetime is unlikely to exceed the 100k that is needed to be confident in PLO of being a winning player.

I dipped my toes back into pub poker with better results. If you can't beat them, join them, so I take a lot more aggressive lines early in the tourney. Go hard or go home. Luckily, Ive been running good when it matters.

I invested ($12) in Poker Income for my iPhone to track my Live results and the graph is very positive indeed. In BB/100 it is probably well over 100 for the last 60 hours of record keeping. My roll is up to the point where I can comfortably go to the casino within my BR and drop a few BIs if need be and reload. Not playing with scared money is very liberating indeed.

Finally, I am looking forward to the ANZPT which rolls into Sydney this week. I've registered for 3 x $330 tourneys at this stage. Will be disappointed if I get sucked out on early in the PLO, otherwise, I'm just going to give it my best shot to win the $2200 required for a Main Event ticket. Fingers crossed.

PLO variance is brutal

My interest in gambling dates back to primary school. Intuitively, I seemed to have a grasp of risk / reward. For example, we played marbles differently in the UK. Sitting with legs apart, we would line up the target, maybe 4 in a row and allow all comers to try to hit and win. First hit wins. I quickly worked out that by lining 6 or 7 with a slightly longer shot would still attract many takers – much more than 7. That was my earliest memory of free-rolling.

It wasn’t until we studied probability though that I got fascinated with the concept of convergence over a large number of trials. I still walk past roulette tables with a row or reds thinking that a black has to be very soon and that this is an opportunity. The wheel like the cards has no memory, but you know what, it always evens out.

And so it is that my run good came to an abrupt end with a sharp correction of fortune. Following another massive downswing, my AI EV line landed exactly on my $$$s won line for all Omaha hands played on FT, 21K of them. Amazingly, they both landed simultaneously on the x-axis – the ultimate break-even player, eh? Thank goodness for rake-back.

The inevitability of it all didn’t seem to make things feel any better, but I suspect that it did. Being aware in advance that I had run particularly well meant that I couldn’t take myself seriously if I grumbled too hard internally.
The good news is that I dipped down even further before going on another run to “test historical highs” as my charting mentor would say.

In short, PLO Variance is brutal. I’ve been lucky until now to avoid the wild swings of the last few weeks. I now know that the higher limits are much more volatile (betting the strong draws rather than waiting for the nuts). I’ve been getting all in more marginally knowing that the other guy is doing the same. My AI EV line confirms that those were positive plays for the most part. Fingers crossed for the week ahead. Ultimately though, I need to just get much better for which there is plenty of scope.

Friday Night Home Game
Another week, another profit. This week, exactly $500 to the good after 10 hours from 6pm. At 40 hands/hr (no way), that’s 400 hands max. With 25c/50c blinds, that’s an obscene 200BB/100, or more. I didn’t really get going until after midnight when we got shorthanded. I’m easy to push off pots, but when I’ve got the goods it is costly for the other guy. That’s where all of my profits came from. I played extremely passively all night. No risk, profitable poker.

The highlight of the evening came with poker Gods satisfying their penchant for irony. Early, one of our more active players got his AA cracked by T2o. Poker buddies have a warped sense of humour which comes to the fore in these situations. Anyway, a couple of hours later the same players were heads up for a big pot. The original winner pushed AI on the Turn and sure enough, the cracked guy had a flush draw with his T2 of hearts. There’s no way that he was getting the odds to call, but it would make for a great story. If you know the individual involved, he’s never getting away from the buzz of a good story and the required heart duly appeared on the river.

The epilogue was a lot less dramatic but in the early hours, I was dealt T2 when we were down to 4-handed. This was to be the very last hand. I raised and got heads up. C-bet, he wasn’t for shaking. Double barrelled the Turn and he still wasn’t budging. On the river, I had absolute air with $50 in the pot. Last hand, I over-bet the pot for $100 and he folded the winning pair. I’d never have gotten to the flop if it wasn’t for the irony in the timing. Needless to say, we were having so much fun that we played for another hour or so.

Poker Cruise 2

I had a very enjoyable poker cruise on Friday but the result feels like a bit of a non-event; reinforcing the concept of the utility of money and the fact that wins don't bring nearly as much joy as losses bring lows.

Surprisingly on this trip, most people ended up winning, probably 6 winners and 4 losers. Usually, we have a couple of people gather most of the chips by the end of the night (symptom of alcohol, triple-barrelling and a propensity to call massive overbets). For some reason though, the money seemed to circulate more on Friday.

Our land-based host has been having a bad run and on Friday he just seemed to be playing in the moment and played extremely well all night to be a $400 winner. He picked his spots and seemed to be right every time he had to make a marginal decision.

One notable loser on the night was our only "internet kid" who had been looking forward to his first poker cruise and a crack at the rich oldies. No-one was happy at the fact that he was the one that could least afford to lose the money. In reality though, he didn't adjust well to the crazy and often unpredictable nature of our home game. A valuable investment as a lesson learned early in his career. No doubt, he’ll be back.

As for me, things started well on the very first hand with quad Kings almost tripling up. The games are wild and I was relatively card dead for the next couple of hours. I can recall a number of good lay-downs on the flop with 2nd pair, and TPGK etc. With an average of 5 to the flop, it plays like a Limit game with your stack always at risk, where you really do need the best hand at showdown. Massive over-bets get called, so its very difficult to knock people out. Somehow, I managed to play sufficiently tight/weak to slowly leak away my stack over a barren period lasting several hours.

My second buy-in fared better and grew steadily until a critical hand when I managed to limp in with 99 in early position. Flop of Q74r was checked around and then the 9 came on the turn, I led out with a modest $5 bet into $7 or so in the middle, MP raiser made it $50 (which is just the kind of game that it is). I was genuinely afraid of the QQ because the raiser knows that I play fairly tight into multi-way pots, although he did seem tilty on the night. Being a cash game, the AI shove for another $70 was relatively straightforward and if I'm behind, I'm behind. He had Q7 and had let me get there on the Turn which was a costly mistake. My trips held up and I was in a very healthy position to safely pick my spots again. When we docked at 2am, I had booked an uneventful $150 win, enjoyed gourmet sandwiches courtesy of one of the players and laughed all night.

The banter was great as usual, which is what real poker is all about. Roll on the next home game which looks like 3 weeks away.

Freerolling on Pittwater

This was the venue for our latest Home Game on Nathan's boat in Pittwater. We pushed off at 4:30pm and landed again at 4:30am. Picking up on the Blindman's comment on the Durrr stalemate, if we'd been at the casino, the rake would have had us all broke. As it was, I ended up $170 after losing a few pots late on, including a rare significant river bluff with air that didn't come off. Good news is that The Serpent was the recipient and he looks after me. That said, I'd loaned him $50 to get back into the game a couple of hours earlier. He proceeded to turn that into $700, nice score.

Anyway, given the surroundings we were all freerolling and as always, no-one got hurt.

Home game blues

My home game successes came to an abrupt halt on Friday. Good news is that the stakes were a lot lower. I'd also under-estimated the opposition and tried to pick up a stack early. This was costly on two fronts, I was limping in to family pots trying to hit and leaking a few dollars. I was overbetting to protect hands and getting sucked out on.

From there it was downhill as I stayed shortstacked all night and picked spots to gamble on making a stack. I'd get successful my fair share, but never two in a row to allow me to play sufficiently deep for my usual game.

The combination of high expectations, bad play and a relatively cool deck didn't make for a particularly enjoyable evening. The major scalextric track did though.

FATROLL Trying to get back in shape. Pleased to report that my 82kg to 74kg goal is heading the right direction, I'm on 79.5kg after 11 days.