Star City and Pokerstars $1 Million Turbo Takedown

It has been a big weekend of poker with 2 live sessions at Star City and a crack at winning a Porsche Cayman S in the Million Dollar Turbo Takedown.

I went straight from work on Friday night and managed a 10-hour session straight. Sat in the $5/$10 Limit table with 5 or 6 to every flop, capped or not. I decided to play high cards, pocket pairs and suited connectors. In theory, this should be a pretty lucrative game and I'd be interested to see how lucky/unlucky I was using PokerEV. Long and short of it was that I dropped $300 in first 3 hours by coming 2nd each time and having been rivered more often than not. Then I had 2 hands in a row that I won and I was back to all square. Hovered there for another hour and could feel boredom creeping in so I moved to a 80-100NL game.

My 2nd hand of NL, I find KK in the BB. Maybe 6 limpers for 2 dollars so I made it $20 to go. UTG+1 called and everyone else folded. Flop came with 3 low cards, so I c-bet for $20 thinking that it would be enough or tempt a chase by AK etc. Turned a low club making 3 clubs on board so I pushed the remaining $40 into a $90 pot and villain took forever to call. River blanked and I thought I was good, but he turned over a baby flush. Like the Limit table, I recovered this over the hours ahead and cashed in at 3am exactly even to the $. In hindsight, I made the most of the situation with very little to get my teeth into.

In Australia, P-platers can only take one passenger after 11pm which is a really good law. My daughter needed to get to the Presets with her friends, so I scored an unexpected econd session on Sunday night as chauffeur. Exact same story played out. Second hand of NL, KK UTG+1. I make it $10 to go and get 2 callers when the SB makes it $35. Fearing a strong hand, I called to see if an A would flop and attract a couple of other callers too. The flop came A55r 3-ways. SB checked and with only $45 in front of me it seemed like a reasonable play to push it in. Call, All-in and I was in bad shape. Yip, SB had AA, nh sir, bugga. My Limit seat came up and I still struggled with coming 2nd on the odd occassion I got in a pot. At 10pm with 1 hour of play left, I decided to give the NL a go again and lo and behold, I cashed in at 11pm for a total loss of only $6.

Whilst I played my own cards reasonably well, my reads were well off and I couldn't put anyone on hands. If I'm not raising peflop, I fail to define how others play against me. The regulars change gears depending on how everyone is playing. Over time, I'll need to pick up this skill. More thought required.

The Stars Turbo Takedown was a tough little tourney as the blinds rise quite quickly. I had 2 maniacs at an otherwise passive table with 2 dead no-shows to my right attracting aggressive blind stealing and c-betting. With my wings clipped early, I stuck to solid ABC poker. When the bubble eventually burst I was in approx 1700th position with an M of 7, which was above average. They dropped like flies from 10,000 with the payout structure very flat, another $5 for 500 spots or so.

I played fairly solid hoping to double up or steal as the opportunities presented themselves which I did. Critical hand was the SB shoving on me and I had A8o and decided to gamble. The wider his range, the better off that I am and I decided that with the blinds and antes about to eat in for us both this could well be a steal so I called. Alas, he had AKo and the flop of AK7 had me on the rail in 5972nd for $55.

In retrospect, I'd do the same again because of blind pressure on each of us and the fact that the real money requires a top 100 spot at least, more like final table. I probably forfeited $10-20 of ladder climbing equity for a tiny crack at the Porsche. It's important to dream to keep poker fresh!

Pocket Pairs in Small Stakes Hold'em

Optimal maths poker isn't natural or intuitive for many and the math is only one aspect of poker. The requisite to fold for equity rather than chase for excitement is also unnatural psychologically.

Sometimes I miss my Limit Hold'em and as I learn other games I find that I struggle to win at it now. I used to win at $5/$10 consistently (when the games were much softer) and have played up to $20/$40 occassionally. But Adam's suspended blog got me thinking when I watched his hands play out. It reminded me how frustrating the game can be if you don't have the confidence in your own actions and focus on getting it in good.

Today, there appears not to be much wrong with Adam's play. He has recently posted about a new LAG approach though which inherently incurs more variance and attracts action so you will take more bad beats. That aside, I read a snippet last night in "Small Stakes Hold'em" by Ed Miller (I recommend it). The maths seemed so wrong that I was going to check it out. Turns out (no surprise with Sklansky and Malmuth at the helm) that it was spot on.

Using PokerStove Monte Carlo simulation(www.pokerstove.com), with 5 opponents willing to take a flop with 40% of their hands {44+,A2s+,K2s+,Q5s+,J7s+,T7s+,97s+}, which doesn't seem to be unreasonable looking at what reaches showdown with Adam.

The book states that with AA you should be jamming on a dry board with almost 50% equity, but with TT in this spot you should be calling because your equity is closer to 21%. I was amazed! I extended the simulation to see the spectrum. The inter-pair gap gets greater with higher pairs, for the record -

AA thru 22 is 42.3%, 33.2%, 27.5%, 23.6%, 20.4%, 18%, 16.5%, 15.3%, 15.7%, 14.9%, 14.2%, 13.9%.

My interpretation is something that I've experienced and posted about before. When playing against 5 loose opponents willing to get to showdown with marginal hands and draws:
- QQ thru 99 are really middle pairs; (Adam inspired this insight)
- 88 is the cut-off where you are becoming a dog.
- 77 thru 22 are set mining hands with implied odds - flop or stop.


BRAINTEASER : I've run the simulator a few times ... why does it always deliver the pre-flop equity for 77 to be 15.3% while 66 is 15.7%, at first glance an anomaly?

TRUST IN MATHS? Even if you "knew" all the other players starting range was 40% (and the maths above), would you ever prefer 66 preflop over 77?

Shortstacking and moving from Limit to NL

The Blindman had this blog entry today ...

http://raisingtheriver.blogspot.com/2008/10/am-i-playing-wrong-game.html

This was my response which I feel contains a few important points worth considering ...

There is no doubt that short-stacking is mathematically an advantage. Philosphically though, there is a poker economy that is enjoying a boom, but can be subjected to various threats online cheating, bad PR, legislation, abusive chat etc.

IMHO, short-stacking can fall into this category. There is probably nothing wrong with the individual financial instruments that caused the current financial crisis, but the net effect is dramatic.

The prevelance of short-stacking and the ease with which the strategy can be multitabled negatively skews the online environment.

Thankfully to combat this we are seeing the introduction of 50bb min BI tables. This is a positive move for those that really nejoy the game in its purest sense.

In terms of game selection, after 6 months, I really feel that I am starting to get a feel for NL. The transition is incredibly difficult and for me, expensive.

I jumped into NL200 from $20/$40Limit where $200 pots were commonplace. The step up was a quantum leap, so as you transition I'd recommend start micro and play full stack as mastering the game is the goal, not eeking out a few artificial mathematical dollars.

Finally, if you take the time to read the Law School Dropouts blog you'll be very keen to transition sooner rather than later. That was my inspiration, but it was Harrington that provided the key to holding my own.