I think I'm a full convert to Zoom. I was very sceptical about Rush, until I realised my prejudice based on the same 'nobody likes change' attitude that characterised live pros' attitude to online poker when it first came about. Being able to sit down and play without hassle, and my current balancey approach to poker suit it well. I'm getting in 1400 hands per hour (it actually shoots way up if u try to go faster by folding quicker!). So far regs seem to be spewing like mentalists too.
Some sums........
1400 hands per hour. 4 hours per day. 31 days (yeh I don't have days off) = 173600 hands per month.
This is around 70k VPPs, which X 3.5 = around 250k FPPs per month which means $4k bonus + probably $1k of EV from the VPPs ladder thing.
So $5k bonus. And a winrate of 1BB/100 = $6920 in cash winnings. So $12k months, with a conservative win-rate.
What can go wrong? Well, we'll see. I'm dedicating the rest of this month to playing 4 hours per day as per the sums. There's 10 days left so that'll be 40k hands. Interesting to see what my winrate will be at the end of that. I think by dedicating myself now, I can address problems and iron out zoom-specific concerns before the 200nl version hits, and also not be behind any curve that might exist. So yeah, I'll post results at the end of this month....
Hope everyone is well.
Wednesday, 21 March 2012
Tuesday, 13 March 2012
Technical Musings
I'm still self banned at max of 200nl for the month. 31k hands in I'm winning at EV 6.29bb, and actual 4.68. I'm happy enough, 2/3 of the month left I'll just keep plugging away on being 100% at the mental game, making technical adjustments, and see what happens.
A couple of technical things........
First of all I'm still wedded to flatting hardly anything, and 3betting almost 100% of my 'facing a raise' range, and then flatting any 4bet with probably 70% of it. I make the 3bets really small too, like $6 to $15 or sometimes $14, occasionally $16 depending on stacksize. Getting squeezed is a huge killer, as is playing without the initiative with a capped range without playing super sick IP and probably making a ton of moves. My BTN 3bet for the month is 14%, my CO 10%, and I'm winning handsomely on each. I'll wait for a decent sample and then post some results.
Facing 3bets when we're OOP.......... there's a lot more 3betting on stars.fr than stars.com, I think. A lot of 2009 FTP style regs. Without doubt the first adjustment to make here is to open much tighter, just no argument IMO. However, hands like QJs, KJs, JTs, KQo etc have been bugging me to death. When we make it $6 and they make it $18, then I've felt like they just had to be defended. Smallish sample, but it hasn't gone too well. Possibly need more discipline in not making postflop moves, but the fact that on a zillion flops we have to fold the best hand is pretty annoying, and indeed the whole reason I 3bet so much IP myself.
So, one thing I was doing for a while with a lot of success, (and weirdly, just plain forgot about) was making tiny 4bets OOP with a depolarised range. So we raise to $6, they make it $18, I make it $34-$36 with nuts and suited broadway type hands. It means we get a cheaper 4bet the times they jam, and means they flat the 4bet relatively often. Now playing a large pot, VS a player whose range is weak, with suited broadways and the iniative, is not a nightmare scenario for me. Other players have told me it's not a situation they love, but for me you can make a pair a lot, make a really small cbet other times, and have room to jam turns when we turn equity.
This seems kinda counter intuitive, because don't we 3bet depolarised ourselves because we love to flat 4bets IP? So, shouldn't we despise being flatted ourself? I think there's key differences in each scenario that make each situation good for us.
The most obvious is that we are actually planning to 3bet/flat and actually planning for our 4bet to be flatted in the reverse situation. We tailor our hand range, choose our betsize, and select the appropriate player in the appropriate spot to actually induce it. We expect it, it's fine. From villain's point of view though they're playing a default style VS us and are forced to adjust with the hand already in progress.
A lot of them are 3betting a polarised range for example, and suddenly they face a tiny 4bet. 'Hmm, they say. I have 86s and little to no experience in playing 4bet pots IP, and no idea of my opponent's range, but he made it soooo small that I'll flat this one time.' We're at a postflop advantage.
And in the reverse example, again we're 3bet/flatting because we planned to do it. We have a range of suited broadways and slowplayed AA. We've picked on a guy who 4bets decently often, who has a wide initial opening range, and preferably someone who is clealy an inferior player to us. He doesn't have experience in playing 4bet pots OOP as the 4bettor. Again, I think the postflop advantage is clear.
And of course in both scenario we just get a ton of raw folds to our 3bet or 4bet. nom nom nom $$$$
I was going to write about backdoor aggression, but this is long enough so I'll save it. Any comments on the above very welcome from all..........
A couple of technical things........
First of all I'm still wedded to flatting hardly anything, and 3betting almost 100% of my 'facing a raise' range, and then flatting any 4bet with probably 70% of it. I make the 3bets really small too, like $6 to $15 or sometimes $14, occasionally $16 depending on stacksize. Getting squeezed is a huge killer, as is playing without the initiative with a capped range without playing super sick IP and probably making a ton of moves. My BTN 3bet for the month is 14%, my CO 10%, and I'm winning handsomely on each. I'll wait for a decent sample and then post some results.
Facing 3bets when we're OOP.......... there's a lot more 3betting on stars.fr than stars.com, I think. A lot of 2009 FTP style regs. Without doubt the first adjustment to make here is to open much tighter, just no argument IMO. However, hands like QJs, KJs, JTs, KQo etc have been bugging me to death. When we make it $6 and they make it $18, then I've felt like they just had to be defended. Smallish sample, but it hasn't gone too well. Possibly need more discipline in not making postflop moves, but the fact that on a zillion flops we have to fold the best hand is pretty annoying, and indeed the whole reason I 3bet so much IP myself.
So, one thing I was doing for a while with a lot of success, (and weirdly, just plain forgot about) was making tiny 4bets OOP with a depolarised range. So we raise to $6, they make it $18, I make it $34-$36 with nuts and suited broadway type hands. It means we get a cheaper 4bet the times they jam, and means they flat the 4bet relatively often. Now playing a large pot, VS a player whose range is weak, with suited broadways and the iniative, is not a nightmare scenario for me. Other players have told me it's not a situation they love, but for me you can make a pair a lot, make a really small cbet other times, and have room to jam turns when we turn equity.
This seems kinda counter intuitive, because don't we 3bet depolarised ourselves because we love to flat 4bets IP? So, shouldn't we despise being flatted ourself? I think there's key differences in each scenario that make each situation good for us.
The most obvious is that we are actually planning to 3bet/flat and actually planning for our 4bet to be flatted in the reverse situation. We tailor our hand range, choose our betsize, and select the appropriate player in the appropriate spot to actually induce it. We expect it, it's fine. From villain's point of view though they're playing a default style VS us and are forced to adjust with the hand already in progress.
A lot of them are 3betting a polarised range for example, and suddenly they face a tiny 4bet. 'Hmm, they say. I have 86s and little to no experience in playing 4bet pots IP, and no idea of my opponent's range, but he made it soooo small that I'll flat this one time.' We're at a postflop advantage.
And in the reverse example, again we're 3bet/flatting because we planned to do it. We have a range of suited broadways and slowplayed AA. We've picked on a guy who 4bets decently often, who has a wide initial opening range, and preferably someone who is clealy an inferior player to us. He doesn't have experience in playing 4bet pots OOP as the 4bettor. Again, I think the postflop advantage is clear.
And of course in both scenario we just get a ton of raw folds to our 3bet or 4bet. nom nom nom $$$$
I was going to write about backdoor aggression, but this is long enough so I'll save it. Any comments on the above very welcome from all..........
Friday, 9 March 2012
March Update
Started well then had a rough few days. EV results are still fine, I'm self limited to 200nl for this month.... but I realised that I need to buck up my ideas. That emo blog I always end up writing, stressing concentration and stuff like that FROM NOW ON, well I usually have to be stuck $7k for the month before I write it. Then I win $6k back and pat myself on the back.
So I'm writing it now instead, I've gotten a little too pedestrian in my approach to poker. Often just sitting down and playing without thinking through my recent leaks, or my approach for today, or new conscious incompetencies that I need to think about, etc. So I need to start taking every session seriously again, starting with this one in a minute. I do think I'm playing ok for the most part, but if I get complacent I can feel it slipping away.
Wednesday, 29 February 2012
February
Allowed myself a sneak peek at my results as I felt I'd ended the month strongly. $5k up from the bottom, and into +EV for the month so a happy finish to a nightmare 29 days. Head down now for March, take each day 1 at a time, play and play and play, talk to Dodgeball about hands, rinse repeat, hopefully win money. I unlock a ~ $5k .fr bonus end of this month if I get the hands in so with some semblance of a respectful month I'll have a decent roll for April.
Edit: shaved another $1k off it just before midnight.
http://weaktight.com/4428972 treble this? 18/16, no reads as I don't play stars. 15% open from this position.
Other interesting hands ..........
http://weaktight.com/4428982 I like this line sometimes, river 2nd nuts, CC. Gets stuff turned into bluffs, loses us less the times we bet call VS a flush, or stops us getting bluff shoved on.
http://weaktight.com/4428984 The fact that all regs have a river inflection point is my favourite realisation in years
http://weaktight.com/4428989 Arnoud Mattern is this guy. Wins a lot at tournys and .fr pro. He value bet AK hi to my AQ hi once in EPT London that I qualified for. He loses heavily at cash games. I've remembered how to bluff the last few days.
http://weaktight.com/4428990 same guy, another 'repping flush = not flush' one for Dodgy.
Hope everyone did well in Feb, and beyond.
Friday, 24 February 2012
What Now?
Still no luck with regards results, both in the fact I'm still thinking about them, and that the reason I'm thinking about them is that they're so bad!
I don't think I'm playing 'bad', certainly not $11k bad for the month. But I'm starting to worry about my lack of reciprocal edge VS the regulars. Yes they do weird and for me somewhat bad things, but their badness serves to confuse me more than anything.
http://weaktight.com/4409541 - take this hand, I mean it's not great. Depends on things like does he vbet turn depolarised etc, but we're probably not folding AA in a 100bb 3bet pot too often. There's no edge to the hand though, certainly no reciprocal edge. I'd play t8s the same way in his shoes, and he'd certainly find some way to stack with AA postflop.
This is a long way of saying that I need to know and act more on my opponent's tendencies. Maybe VS some there is a way to fold AA in this hand. I'm playing well I think in a very generic GTO sorta sense, but I've lost sense of my individual opponents. Not just their vacuumous plays, but like the way they think about poker and how they think about me, from which I can extrapolate things like 'time to make an extremely non standard call/ fold' based on XYZ.
I was doing this for a few successful few months in September. Yes it probably coincided with a heater, but I can't just do on the way I am without making at least subtle changes and expect things to be different. 4 tables from now on, with a heavy focus on getting reads and thinking about ways to extrapolate and exploit people based on this stuff. #gameplan
I don't think I'm playing 'bad', certainly not $11k bad for the month. But I'm starting to worry about my lack of reciprocal edge VS the regulars. Yes they do weird and for me somewhat bad things, but their badness serves to confuse me more than anything.
http://weaktight.com/4409541 - take this hand, I mean it's not great. Depends on things like does he vbet turn depolarised etc, but we're probably not folding AA in a 100bb 3bet pot too often. There's no edge to the hand though, certainly no reciprocal edge. I'd play t8s the same way in his shoes, and he'd certainly find some way to stack with AA postflop.
This is a long way of saying that I need to know and act more on my opponent's tendencies. Maybe VS some there is a way to fold AA in this hand. I'm playing well I think in a very generic GTO sorta sense, but I've lost sense of my individual opponents. Not just their vacuumous plays, but like the way they think about poker and how they think about me, from which I can extrapolate things like 'time to make an extremely non standard call/ fold' based on XYZ.
I was doing this for a few successful few months in September. Yes it probably coincided with a heater, but I can't just do on the way I am without making at least subtle changes and expect things to be different. 4 tables from now on, with a heavy focus on getting reads and thinking about ways to extrapolate and exploit people based on this stuff. #gameplan
Wednesday, 22 February 2012
Session 23
http://weaktight.com/4400432 - Villain 49/31 fish with river agg % of 63% over 8 samples. I was gong to CRAI flop, yes he doesn't bet fold anything worse but it's better than betting as we win a flop stab and if he jams over our bet it's kinda a sick spot given his PF range. I could maybe jam turn with so little behind, ie maybe should protect VS his air at this point. If he always bluffs river though probably not.
http://weaktight.com/4400443 - made at myself for this one, went against my flop instinct and called the raise. He reps nothing, and is capable of bluffs, but his raise size etc told me to fold. Blah.
http://weaktight.com/4400449 - this one happened before the above, and I did follow my instinct here. This guy is always 4betting AK VS me, and I was just sooooo sure he was bluffing on the flop that I just couldn't lie down. He flats 3bets 46% of the time and VS such a range there's not a lot of sets. If I commented on someone else doing this I would say bad, but meh in the moment was happy enough. Maybe I'm being results oriented though.
http://weaktight.com/4400462 - this hand also annoyed me. Sometimes, there's a good reason to do the same with value and air that goes beyond balance and is just good even in a vacuum. Here, barrelling air is bad as he can have Ax and Kx tons and our frequencies would be like mental. Barreling Kx though is also bad, he has less Kx and we look so strong that Ax potentially goes away, as do OOP floats like JT QJ etc. Blah.
Apart from that though was happy. I drank a monster drink which is very short termist of me but basically gets me super hyped up and concentrated for a session. Mental side was good, I lost this early hand http://weaktight.com/4400478 and usually I might start questioning my ability etc, but I went through the motions before cbetting and I'm just completely happy with the squeeze and the cbet (initial raiser reg who folds, caller tight passive fish who also folds). Slowly getting out of being results oriented, I hope, but the test will be when I go on a real bad stretch. Again though, we expect bad stretches, they happen, and our job in those times is to minimise our losses through good play.
I'm going to add some life chores here 'cos if I don't write em down somewhere I'll never get em done. Some things have just been screaming out to be done for weeks now........ tomorrow in between sessions I must:
send off car registration document
go to bank, pay in some cash
pay off parking ticket
clean out rabbits
I'll leave my goals at those for now. They should take me like an hour. For some reason everything just stops when I'm not winning. When I'm winning, house is clean, bills paid, dogs fed. When I'm not, everything goes dark, phone goes off, parents go un-seen. Would be nice to break that habit as part of my mental progression...................
http://weaktight.com/4400443 - made at myself for this one, went against my flop instinct and called the raise. He reps nothing, and is capable of bluffs, but his raise size etc told me to fold. Blah.
http://weaktight.com/4400449 - this one happened before the above, and I did follow my instinct here. This guy is always 4betting AK VS me, and I was just sooooo sure he was bluffing on the flop that I just couldn't lie down. He flats 3bets 46% of the time and VS such a range there's not a lot of sets. If I commented on someone else doing this I would say bad, but meh in the moment was happy enough. Maybe I'm being results oriented though.
http://weaktight.com/4400462 - this hand also annoyed me. Sometimes, there's a good reason to do the same with value and air that goes beyond balance and is just good even in a vacuum. Here, barrelling air is bad as he can have Ax and Kx tons and our frequencies would be like mental. Barreling Kx though is also bad, he has less Kx and we look so strong that Ax potentially goes away, as do OOP floats like JT QJ etc. Blah.
Apart from that though was happy. I drank a monster drink which is very short termist of me but basically gets me super hyped up and concentrated for a session. Mental side was good, I lost this early hand http://weaktight.com/4400478 and usually I might start questioning my ability etc, but I went through the motions before cbetting and I'm just completely happy with the squeeze and the cbet (initial raiser reg who folds, caller tight passive fish who also folds). Slowly getting out of being results oriented, I hope, but the test will be when I go on a real bad stretch. Again though, we expect bad stretches, they happen, and our job in those times is to minimise our losses through good play.
I'm going to add some life chores here 'cos if I don't write em down somewhere I'll never get em done. Some things have just been screaming out to be done for weeks now........ tomorrow in between sessions I must:
send off car registration document
go to bank, pay in some cash
pay off parking ticket
clean out rabbits
I'll leave my goals at those for now. They should take me like an hour. For some reason everything just stops when I'm not winning. When I'm winning, house is clean, bills paid, dogs fed. When I'm not, everything goes dark, phone goes off, parents go un-seen. Would be nice to break that habit as part of my mental progression...................
Session 22
I think it's session 22. I'm starting to lose count. Only a short one this time as I had footy training. Then 2 of us turned up. So I could've gone and watched Hull City, but just could not be arsed.
Played well in the session. Only worrying about playing well through the hour is becoming a habit. I played this hand early on:
http://weaktight.com/4399885 - BTN huge fish, SB a reg! Jesus at some of these regs.
http://weaktight.com/4399906 - same reg as above. Just posted this 'cos we like to see 4bet pots and how they play out don't we. I'd call turn too 'cos we have Ax a ton and he's never bluffing river. He snap checked turn and river which is a decent timing tell.
http://weaktight.com/4399889 _ really couldn't decide on a raise size here. I assume we do have to raise. Turn leader is a fish, other guy is a solid reg. Oh I guess the flop checks up for debate too. I thought the binking equity >> any FE I had.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?6328296 - weaktight just stopped working. Villain is solid 19/16, 20% open in this spot. I think my lack of value is compensated by my lack of bluffs. Raise size I decided to go small, VS a good player I think this is correct.
http://weaktight.com/4399917 - passive fish. please don't pot the river like that when you're so passive and I have top 2. Just don't do that, k?
Played well in the session. Only worrying about playing well through the hour is becoming a habit. I played this hand early on:
http://weaktight.com/4399885 - BTN huge fish, SB a reg! Jesus at some of these regs.
http://weaktight.com/4399906 - same reg as above. Just posted this 'cos we like to see 4bet pots and how they play out don't we. I'd call turn too 'cos we have Ax a ton and he's never bluffing river. He snap checked turn and river which is a decent timing tell.
http://weaktight.com/4399889 _ really couldn't decide on a raise size here. I assume we do have to raise. Turn leader is a fish, other guy is a solid reg. Oh I guess the flop checks up for debate too. I thought the binking equity >> any FE I had.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?6328296 - weaktight just stopped working. Villain is solid 19/16, 20% open in this spot. I think my lack of value is compensated by my lack of bluffs. Raise size I decided to go small, VS a good player I think this is correct.
http://weaktight.com/4399917 - passive fish. please don't pot the river like that when you're so passive and I have top 2. Just don't do that, k?
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