Man cannot exist on FPPs alone

So, this six max thing - what's all the fuss about? Having taken Friday off and played a ton of over the weekend, I have now clocked up 10,000 hands of six max at $50nl. I have managed to do what I do best, which is run a long way above expectation (see garph, above). Probably for this reason, I have rather enjoyed the my switch to a new game. It certainly has a ton of benefits over heads up games - the variance is lower, I seem to tilt less (probably due to the whole game being a lot less personal), there is no hit and running, you can start and end sessions whenever you want - the upsides seem endless, although a lot of the games seem reg-infested. I tend to jump tables fairly ruthlessly instead of sitting in zero-sum games with a bunch of nitty regulars (which is probably where a lot of the mass tablers fall down).

I watched some of the CitizenWind "99 Problems" Cardrunners series, which was very useful. I think the best thing in there, which I have been trying to remember at all times, is don’t level yourself, as it is a really expensive habit. I think I have cost myself at least 4/5 stacks when I should have lost a lot less where I have had a moderately strong hand (overpair or whatever) and villain has been repping something massive, I have clicked call on shove, he has turned over aces or whatever and I have thought "yeah, that was about what I thought he had." Which begs the question, why didn't I fold?

The other thing was that people seem to love getting out of line with each other for absolutely no reason whatsoever. CitizenWind's point was that if you can get someone to react and start three betting you from the blinds a lot, at some point you're going to pick up a hand and get them to commit a lot of money with something second best - so at the point they start getting overly aggressive out of position, you have won the game. Whilst I like to project a somewhat loose/spewy image pre-flop, I tend to play relatively snug post flop (I think people look and go "this guy is 25/22, he's nuts" and react accordingly) and am trying to c-bet a lot less (or at least a lot more selectively). Anyway, overall it has gone really well so far. I'm bound to spew a ton of money back fairly soon, but the challenge will be in controlling that and not getting tilted.

I had a look at some of the other $50nl regs PTR winnings. There are a lot of guys out there that have played a ton of hands and haven't made any money whatsoever - I assume they're just playing for Supernova/SNE. In fact, very few of the regulars are winning at any substantial rate at all over some pretty enormous samples.

Elsewhere in Poker: 1) Full Tilt's response to this thread shows how their reputation for customer service is well deserved.

2) I haven't heard it, but the Donkdown radio with Joy Miller was meant to be hilarious.

3) A drunk Phil Ivey and the wierdness of French Canadians leads to some amazing photoshopping. West Ham got their annual dicking up at Bolton on Saturday. Having played reasonably well of late the performance was very disappointing. Next week's game at home to Villa is a must win, but I can't see us doing it. Good luck at the tables.

P.S. I'm thinking of signing off these crappy posts with "Godspeed" instead from now on, it's slightly less clichéd and makes me feel more like someone in Apollo 13.

That's a Fact

After a lot of deliberation I have decided to take the plunge and switch to six max. I found the lack of action at the HU tables quite frustrating and not a good use of my time given how little I play, so being able to jump into a few tables, play for an hour or so and then jump out without any of the bullshit about hit and running etc. makes for a nice change. Over a whopping sample size of 1,500 hands I am up around $500 at $50nl. Obviously I run sick good, so long may that continue.

My initial observations comments (I have been playing on the fast tables on Stars) are as follows:

1) Whilst rakeback is nice, boy do you pay a ton less rake on Stars, and you get to play a lot more hands and benefit from a bigger player pool.

2) My natural game is really quite LAG pre-flop.

3) People suck and I have been the recipient of a couple of massive spews in deepish pots (including flopping the nut flush in a limped pot 180bb deep and somehow managing to get my entire stack in vs. a flopped overcard and 9 hi flush draw which turned third pair and rivered two pair).

4) I find hand reading and range analysis a lot easier than I did HU. 5) Regulars generally tend to play fairly straightforward and as a result I think it is generally easy to make a disciplined fold a lot of the time when the action gets hot. I have also found it easier to control tilt, although having not been coolered or outdrawn very often (in fact hardly at all) then this is a lot easier.

I basically jumped in without doing any learning at all, but over the weekend I read a large chunk of Baluga Whale's "Easy Game". I spent most of it thinking "I'm going to need to read this again" - this isn't a bad thing, more that there is a lot of information in there (which many regular 6m players will probably find standard but I don't) and that I really haven't got enough game time under my belt to have a lot of practical examples to apply it to.

The whole Sebok/UB thing rumbles on over on 2+2. For me, it's clear that Joe doesn't have any of the answers and UB has had ample time to send a rep over there (which really needs to be Leggett) to start providing some proper answers. Given that they haven't done so in the last three years, I can't imagine they'll change their mind now. Joe clearly likes whatever UB are paying him, but he's an asshat for taking it and can't really be annoyed with all the grief he gets. I saw his "I tried…" on Twitter - Joe, you might have tried, but it was a dismal effort and all the unanswered questions are still there. If you don't know the answers to most of the questions yourself then you can't trust your employers, and either way you should stop making out like it's 2+2 that's in the wrong here and not UB.

I have had a couple of pretty decent weekends, watching West Ham play out a thrilling 0-0 at Spurs last Saturday, which had everything but a goal. Whilst Spurs had plenty of chances I thought our defending was outstanding (Jacobsen and Bridge were immense) whilst Rob Green pulled off a world class save to tip Bale's free kick onto the bar. We also had three or four very good chances ourselves. This is the first time this season I have seen us dig in for 90 minutes and battle, which leaves me feeling a little more optimistic, despite our difficult run in.

This weekend I was in Paris. The weather was awesome, the city is amazing and even the Parisians were a lot more tolerable than I have found them before. My French was pretty shit, natch, but we managed to get by. Some things were disappointing (the Sacre Couer is an amazing building but the hordes of people trying to flog you shit outside there drove me nuts and was better when we went before when it was quieter). Lots of the city also smells of piss. Le Louvre was amazing, although totally overwhelming in both the size and amount of stuff in there (it would apparently take 9 months to see every bit of art in the museum).

Anyway, enough of all this shiz, good luck at the tables.

Before A Fall

Having been so happy with how things were going, I moved up to the $/£/€ 100nl tables. This proved not to be the best move from me, and I have run like total AIDS. I'm down $1,600 for the month, around $1k below AIEV. I'm not overly concerned by my play, but I could have done without getting God moded. The most fun experience was at the end of a stinking session getting AA in against KQ 200bb deep at €100nl on a QTx r flop and losing against a retarded that couldn't fold top pair if his life depended on it. Still, enough moaning, I'm not overly downhearted about the situation, I just need to get on with it and I have played nearly 7,000 hands this month.

There has been some awesome poker gossip going on of late, principally:
1) Sebok doesn't like it when people are nasty about UB.
2) Poker isn't fun when you suspect people of playing on each other's accounts according to Prahlad.
3) Pocket money discussions could get interesting.

For anyone that knows Wayne (Wonderflop), he has had a bit of a difficult time in recent months. Anyway, he is now playing for a living, and things seem to have started off well enough. Good on him, he deserves a break, and he should probably ship me half of his manies for the good luck wishes.

West Ham got beaten by Stoke in the FA Cup quarter final. I think the best side one, although Mike Jones clearly got intimidated at half time by Pulis and fell for a lot of their snide tactics. They're a set of cunts and nothing would please me more than to see Pulis, his nonce cap and his horrible, ugly side get relegated. I can't see it happening though.

We're away at Tottenham tomorrow. I can't see us getting anything, but I'm looking forward to going to the game, it is only a short bus ride away. I'm not a fan of lunchtime kick-offs, but this one suits me as I am around at a friend's house that night (sadly he is a Spurs fan).

The stag do in Liverpool was fun, and featured one person being kicked out of a bar, one person getting knocked out and three people so ill after the first night that they didn't make the second. Classy.

I'm off to Paris with her indoors next week - I'm such a romantic. I quite like Paris, it is wasted on the French, but fucking expensive. I hope they have resolved the dog shit problem there too.

Good luck at the tables.

P.S. I watched the excellent Hoop Dreams on DVD on Sunday. For those that haven't heard of it, this is a documentary following two young American basketball hopefulls in Chicago. It is a fascinating insight into inner city life and the American education system, as well as a gripping story where you find yourself really rooting for the two subjects of the documentary (who both come across as genuinely decent kids). It's quite sad watching William speaking to the camera and saying "People always say to me, ‘when you get to the NBA, don’t forget about me’. Well, I should’ve said back, ‘if I don’t make it to the NBA, don’t you forget about me’." If you can get your hands on a copy I'd recommend taking the three hours to watch it, it certainly beats the crap out of X-Factor on a Saturday night.

Dissecting an Opponent

After very little play during February, a week into March and I have already played 4,500 hands, for a gargantuan profit of $20 (although I think I’m due around $150 in rakeback). My sick level of run hot seems to have disappeared (if anyone finds it, please contact me so I can collect it), having been set over setted in a 200bb pot by a pretty terrible villain, which is bollocks as I should be set over setting people, always. I was down around $600 at one point, however thanks to one villain, I’m now back to even.

I sat in yesterday at a few tables and it is pretty hard finding fish on a weekday morning. Having struggled to find any regs to play, I stumbled across a guy that I had played before. He is a winning player but pretty awful as I remembered, so I sat in and three tabled him. His playing style is as follows:

In position:
1) Open around 85% of buttons.
2) Only c-bet around 40% (this appears to be the top 40% of his hands).
3) Often two barrelling (c. 60%), which makes sense given that he seems to be mainly c-betting his strong hands, so he is often going to follow up.
4) Folds to three bets around 60% of the time, but isn’t massively tricky in three bet pots.

This isn’t terrible, but obviously it is massively exploitable and he folds to lots of turn bets when the flop checks through.

Out of position:
1) He plays around 40% of hands, three betting around 12% (this goes up when he’s tilted and is lower a lot of the time).
2) Folds to c-bets around 40% of the time and to second barrels around 60%.
3) Check raises around 10% (this is really low, for most regs this will be 15%-20%).

Overall, his pre-flop game isn’t awful but he’s really passive and massively exploitable. When I look at my stats against him, I’m playing really aggressively (three betting often and c-betting a lot of flops in three bet pots, because I get folds so often), two barrelling quite a lot in single raised pots when good barrel cards arrives (if you simply do the maths, this is really profitable given how often he folds to c-bets and second barrels) and folding anything but very strong hands when he check raises. He also gets very stubborn with top pair, which isn’t unusual at these limits.

He dumped off a good amount to me yesterday over two sessions, which is awesome. The lesson is that you can be as exploitable as you like, as long as you aren’t actually being exploited, and to always be able to adapt when you’re getting worked over (and if you can’t adapt, quit). This probably applies to heads-up way more than any other form of poker because villain’s playing styles can vary so widely.

This guy has now become my second most profitable opponent in my database. At some point he’s going to stop giving me action (which might be the next time I sit him), however guys like this don’t come around too often and people should be lining up around the block to play him (I’d imagine that most people see his PTR and give him a miss).

I should be able to play a good bit more poker this week – my wife is out for part of tonight, tomorrow and Thursday (fistpump.jpg), so I’d like to get in at least another 1,000 – 1,500 hands. My cash bankroll is now at nearly $12k, so I need to be less of a wuss and play more $100nl.

Elsewhere in poker, there are lots more UB shenanigans (shame on you Joe Sebok), suspicious UB player xblink is now taking on all-comers on Full Tilt, Erik Seidel crushes live souls in 2011 by winning the heads-up donkament on top of lots of other things and probably lots of other stuff that I can’t think of right now.

I went up to Liverpool for a stag weekend and missed West Ham beating Stoke 3-0. We’re right on form at the moment, and given how the league is shaping up we’ll need to keep this going until the end of the season. I’ll give the Scousers credit (which is a first), they were a pretty decent bunch. We take on Stoke again next week, this time away in the FA Cup. It is something of a distraction but hopefully we can keep the run going and book a semi-final at Wembley.

Good luck at the tables.

Appetite

After a break from poker during the majority of February, I have returned reinvigorated. It’s surprising how much easier I am finding playing when it is something that I want to do, instead of something I feel obliged to do because I have some spare time or whatever. I think I’m at around 3,000 hands for the month (sick grider, eh?) and around $600 profit (weeeeeeeeeeee!). I’ve run pretty damned well (having held up in two 150bb pots with AA and KK vs. QQ both times), but I think my general level of play has been decent too. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again – playing fish is really absurdly profitable.

For those that don’t play heads-up games, you tend to get hit and run. A lot. This used to bother me, however I’ve tried to let it go – it is nothing more than an occupational hazard. I am now a bit more ruthless with who I am playing – against various fish I tend to play a max of three tables (with a different player on each), however if my fourth table gets filled with a full stack fish and one of the others only have 25bb left I’ll ditch the shorter stack and move on to the guy that is deeper. Getting action against regs is virtually impossible right now, which is amazing given that I’m not that good.

I have been watching the UB stuff developing of late. The whole thing is totally amazing and it is good to see things prompting more discussion on it again. Given the lies that have been told and the fact that the company is still in operation, I think it is important that this is not forgotten.

West Ham turned in their best display of the season to beat Liverpool 3-1 yesterday. I thought we dominated large stretches of the game, created the better chances and ran out deserving winners. Demba Ba and Thomas Hitzelsperger were both excellent and Upson’s return alongside Tomkins at the back was timely, both played very well. Given how other results have gone for us of late this was a timely win and makes staying up look like something of a possibility. Keeping the back four fit will be key.



The cherry on the cake on Sunday was seeing Arsenal’s failboat crash onto the rocks against Birmingham. It looked like a pretty decent game of football and I never tire of enjoying seeing Arsenal lose.

Good luck at the tables.

Back in the Saddle

I’ve had probably as long a break from internet poker, bar when I have been on holiday, as I can remember. I have quite enjoyed the time off. I’ve vowed to try and play more when I want to play, instead of when I feel obliged to do so. So far I feel a lot better about it – my life probably isn’t particularly well suited to meeting volume targets.

I played a bit over the weekend, went on a massive heater (helped by having some fish dump 3BI to me at €50nl) and some decent play by me at times (seriously). I made a few mistakes which I didn’t get punished for, but I was happy to have thought that I’d done something wrong. There is a quick line check thread in HUNL on 2+2, which has been really useful – I rarely post it but the hands and thoughts that people get are great, and it means that “standard” hands get discussed (which is where I think I’m falling down). Thus far I'm up around $600 in February after 1,500 hands. MBN etc.

I have caught up on some of the gossip/stories that have been doing the rounds of late. Some of these bits are quite awesome:
1) Somewhat old and not really poker, but $75k is a pretty epic rolling. It starts getting good around page 30, before that it is largely penix pictures.
2) Sorel Mizzi is allowed to play on FTP again. Don’t worry though folks, as Sorel has started cheating in the live arena instead.
3) There's a lot of bullshit going on with PeachyMer. Cliffs at post 3426, epic Slicknasty rage comic at post 3377.
4) The whole UB thing might get interesting again, with Travis Makar calling into Donkdown Radio with a whole bunch of shit. I listened to the interview, I thought he was FOS a lot of the time but it’s worth hearing all the same. There is also a pretty good post from Haley in her blog on brainwashdodo (link on the right).

A lot has happened at West Ham since I last posted, not all of it particularly good. Matt Upson seems to be out for the rest of the season, which is a huge blow. We play Burnley in the FA Cup tonight, which should see Thomas Hitzelsperger make his long-awaited debut.

At work we’re about to see a bunch more people laid off this week. We have also been involved in a massive spat with another department, which doesn’t bode well, I’m not really overly bothered as the redundancy terms are fairly appealing.

Good luck at the tables.

Failure is an Option

January finish with me balling out of all control. I managed a stunning profit of $0.86 (that's roughly one shiny new fifty pence piece to British readers) plus rakeback. Pretty sure Antonius and Ivy will be ducking me at $500/$1,000 soon enough. I'm lacking motivation to play much at the moment, which isn't helped by me seeming to really struggle to get action on IPoker at the times of day I usually play at. I'll see how that develops, I might need to considering getting some funds on another network (Entraction?) if it doesn't work out.

The North vs. South HU challenge on RTR has seen something of a change in fortunes, with early luckboxing from the North having been erased by great play from the South. It is now pretty much even, and I have a single game left with Snakey to play. The main problem will be if Amatay fucks off travelling before completing all his games, so I'll probably call Heathrow with a bomb scare to try and prevent this.

Elsewhere in poker:
1) Yet more attempted scamming from the same guys that attempted it at the Partouche Poker Tour.
2) In a fairly awesome final table featuring Moorman, James Keys and Antonius, some bloke I have never heard of won the Aussie Millions main event.

West Ham got dumped out of the Carling Cup, crumbling to an aerial assault lead by Birmingham circus freak Nicola Zigic. For the third time this season. Having done the hard work and got an away goal, I was very annoyed to go out one step from Wembley. Fair play to them, they probably deserved it over the two legs. In a sulk I gave the FA Cup game to Forest a miss, which we won 3-2, and drew Burnley at home in the next round.

I thought we did well enough in the transfer window. Bridge and Keane will definitely improve the first XI, I have never seen Ba play but a German dude I know reckons he is alright. We also signed some kid from Dulwich Hamlet, who could easily be the next Steve Jones or Dean Martin (for anyone old and nerdy enough to remember them). Blackpool away tonight and Birmingham at home on Sunday are two massive games for us, sadly Blackpool signed Andy Reid and James Beattie, both of whom always score against us, the bastards.

I shan't comment on the Andy Carroll or Torres deals, it is fucking boring and gave Sky material to spam their TV channels with. The main thing is that Carroll now has a whole new city of people that he can get into fights with.

Good luck at the tables.