Last night I played in one of Poker Stars $4+$0.40 180 player NL hold’em tournaments. I’ve written before about how I’m trying to get as much tournament experience as possible for as cheap as possible and this tournament seems a good candidate. $1500 in starting chips, 15 minute blind levels and from what I could tell a reasonable standard of play once the riff raff has been dealt with (unlike the ultra low stakes SNG’s I’m getting killed in over at Absolute 
– it’s a good thing I’m good at handling bad beats, but that’s another topic).
I won’t go into too much detail but I will say that I was feeling good throughout, applying what I’ve been reading from Harrington where I felt it was appropriate and playing well enough to make it through the first two breaks and into the money (top 18 places pay) with a chip stack slightly above average.
Unfortunately though by the time the bubble burst the blinds and antes were large even for the bigger stacks and for a while play turned into a bit of an all-in fest. I lost a couple of races, most notable being my 77 in the SB vs the BB’s A5o where I was a 70/30 favourite against a player who I’d slowly been getting the better of all tournament only to lose half my stack when an ace came on the flop.
Into the final 15 or so players I was severely short stacked which gave me a chance to put into practice Harrington’s strategy about playing in the “Red Zone” (where your stack is less than 5 times the size of the pot) which worked great until my KTs ran into QQ and didn’t improve, double up there though and I would have been a contender for the final table.
So, in the end I was out in 13th place after 2.5 hours of play. Not a bad result, except for the fact that the prizes are very top heavy in this tournament and there’s no significant money until the final three. I’m almost embarrassed to say but for all my work I took a measly $8.64 for 13th, that’s a huge net profit of $4.24 
.
Hardly a way to get rich, but if you want to get cheap multi-table tournament experience at any time of the day against a wide variety of opponents then it’s pretty hard to go past.
I was reluctant to share this hand because firstly it looks like I’m playing like a lunatic and second I have no way of being 100% sure I was “cheated”. Use your own judgement.
On the button at a 6-Max $0.50/$1.00 table I’m dealt:
This is a hand I would usually muck, but the action had been folded to me and to my left the SB was quite passive and the BB aggressive on the flop with any hand but passive on the turn where he often folded to anyone who’d shown aggression to his usual bet’s and raises on the flop. My plan was to cap the betting (if required) on pretty much any flop in an attempt to take it away from him on the turn. So, with an ace in my hand and only the blind to play I raised. Debatable limit play for sure, but bear in mind this is a unique situation and totally a “feel” thing. The flop comes:
My opponent, as expected bets, I raise and he calls. Then:
“xxx has timed out while being disconnected”
“xxx is being treated as all-in”
So, we see the turn and river:
And he turns over:
Giving him a straight, that he made on the turn. Not a huge pot and yes I almost definitely saved a big bet or two since my original read was correct but he hit his straight on the turn and wouldn’t have given his hand up as planned. My question is though, did he “disconnect” to deliberately see two free cards?
Maybe it’s a coincidence but it sure looked that way to me! Of course (and this is just to make 100% sure nobody else mentions it ), I probably just should have just mucked to begin with and avoided the entire hand but that’s not the point. Was I cheated?
Talk about your roller coaster ride, this past weekend of poker has been one of the strangest I’ve played in a long time.
I don’t know if maybe there’s been a sudden influx of new fishy players that heard the news of James Gold winning $12 Million at the World Series of Poker or what, but something sure was different about these tables.
Between Friday night and Sunday night I played a little over 1000 hands of $0.50/$1.00 6-Max limit hold’em and managed to earn a nice little rate of 5.56 BB/100.
By itself this statistic is not really very interesting, 1000 hands is a small sample and I could just have easily made -5.56 BB/100 over this period. What makes it interesting is the type of players I was up against, I admit I always look for a loose/fishy kind of table, but these were ridiculous. I was repeatedly sitting down at tables where 3-4 players would cap the betting preflop with any imaginable cards, raising and re-raising when they were drawing dead and generally just playing crazy.
These types of players mean big money but also big variance, even with my high win rate for the weekend I was felted more times this than I have been my entire on-line poker career.
So how does one adjust to these kinds of players? Here’s my tips:
- Pay attention, if you usually play at multiple tables think about dropping one or two to allow you to really concentrate on these players. I found by playing only one good table I was able to make some plays that I never would have had I been multi-tabling and not paying proper attention to the players.
- Loosen the hands that you will call a raise with pre-flop, these players are raising with anything and everything better to try and outplay them after the flop.
- Draw more, you’ll often have the implied odds you need to see another card.
- In a similar vein, don’t be afraid to re-raise with your strong draws. In many cases this is correct limit hold’em play anyhow, against these players it’s even more correct as more often than not they’ll be paying you off big when you hit.
- Don’t bluff. Ever*.
- Don’t go too crazy, you still need to play premium hands. Don’t fall into the trap of becoming too loose or drawing to likely loosing hands.
- Don’t tilt. You’re going to get bad beats at these tables, it comes with the territory.
- Pick your players. You’re still going to get the odd Tight/Aggressive player joining you, just stay out of their way whenever you can.
* “Ever” might be a bit strong, bit bluffing is generally -EV at these tables. Make sure you have a really good reason when you do it.
Truthfully, most reasonably solid players should have no trouble beating the kinds of players I’m talking about in this post by just playing their natural game. Theoretically you can just sit back, fold, wait for good cards and get paid off but in my opinion there’s so much extra money to be made at these tables by getting a little creative and jumping in and playing. Sure it can be damn frustrating when you get drawn out on again and again and again but as long as you’re able to see past the bad beats you’ll be nicely rewarded.
Wow that month went quick and I barely updated the blog at all… sorry about that. Time is just flying!
Results wise July started well, was good in the middle but a big (50+ BB) downswing in the last two days brought what should have been close to 3BB/100 hands profit down to around 1.5BB/100.
The annoying thing was this downswing came entirely at a single site, Absolute Poker, where I had just signed up so I could play in their cheap SNG tournaments (I’m trying to get as much tournament practice as possible, as cheaply as possible). I had planned to play tournaments exclusively there but as I’d got a little bit of a deposit bonus I decided to at least try and clear it, going to have to work hard to make a profit out of that one!
So, let see how did with my three goals from last month:
- Keep the solid cash game going at my new limit.
- Keep playing the low-level NL hold’em tournaments, aim for a positive return for the month.
- Read “Harrington on Hold’em” volumes 1 and 2 (on order from Amazon, due to arrive middle of the month – darn international shipping).
Well, I’m going to say that I achieved number 1 even if my BB/100 is well down from where it should be. Since I only played 6000 hands in July and these are (for all practical purposes) my first 6000 at this level (also 3000 of these were 6Max tables – it’s my first time in these waters and I’m still adjusting) I’m not too worried about the drop in BB/100. For some reason I can’t quite put my finger on this has happened every time I’ve moved up a level and seems to return to normal after about 10000 hands or so.
Number 2? well, umm… the less said about number 2 the better. I played in 25 tournaments (range of styles/buy-ins) in July and produced a ROI of -58%. Not good. There is still work to be done here, I’ll post about that later.
That leaves number 3, my books have arrived and I’ve read volume 1. These books will warrant some reading and re-reading, but I can already notice an improvement in my game just by applying some of the thinking that Harrington teaches. I’m looking forward to getting stuck into volume 2.
So, my goals for August:
- Break out of my downswing (early signs are looking promising, but I won’t speak too soon) and clear the bonus at Absolute Poker. Improve my BB/100 for $0.50/$1.00.
- Study the 6Max game.
- Read Harrington volume 2, re-read volume 1.
- Return a positive figure in NL hold’em tournaments.
- Play at least 500 hands in a game other than hold’em, I’m thinking maybe some Omaha 8 or better.
Stay tuned.
P.S. No graph this month, having trouble finding some graphing software that wants to work with my new Postgre Poker Tracker database. I need to get in touch with the Poker Grapher or Poker Patterns authors and see if I’m doing something wrong. Has anyone reading successfully graphed a Postgre PT database? Let me know.
