I’m away in Europe for the next four weeks or so and while I’ll be trying to get to a poker table sometime while I’m away I won’t be able to update the blog (business as usual really ;)).

Good luck and I’ll see ya when I get back!

Want a quick way to calculate your bankroll requirements? Try this calculator I found during my virtual travels:

http://…/bankroll-requirements.html

You’ll need to know your win rate (big bets per hour or per hundred hands is the standard way to measure this) and your standard deviation over the same period which if you’re a poker tracker user can be found in your ring game statistics under the “More detail…” button on the “Session Notes” tab.

It should be noted that the more hands you have in your poker tracker database the more accurate this calculator will be. Personally I wouldn’t recommend bothering with anything less than 10,000 hands and many would argue that even this many is no where near enough (and technically they’d be right, so just nod your head and walk away slowly as believe me you don’t want to be on the receiving end of a lecture on statistics from a math geek ;)).

If you are interested though there’s a good thread over on 2+2 that covers the topic quite well.

At the end of the day, even if you’re not interested in the math behind it it’s nice to get a feel for what is statistically a correct bankroll to be playing with. While playing within your bankroll is no guarantee of success (tomorrow your playing style may change sending the current numbers out the window) nor should it ever even enter your thoughts once you’ve bought in and sat down at the table (if your bankroll is in your mind at the table it’s affecting your play and that’s a bad thing) it’s still nice to know that, all things being equal, we can determine if we’re playing within our means.

Good luck at the tables!

I’m afraid there’s not much to report from September, I played the least amount of hands last month than I have since I first started playing on-line and while I managed to turn a (small) profit my heart just wasn’t in it.

To be honest there was about 6 weeks there (end of August and all of September) where I just wasn’t in the mood for poker.

Sounds crazy I know but apparently it happens to the best of us.
Good news is I’m back in the game and feeling good. October has started well and I’ve already nearly played as many hands in three days as I did the whole of September.

So, my apologies for the half-arsed monthly status report but if you’ll excuse me I need to get back to the tables!

Reading Opponents

One thing I’ve been working on recently is reading my on-line opponents. Obviously I’m not talking about shaky hands or how my opponents eat their Oreos, physical tells don’t exist on-line. I’m talking about things like how passive or aggressive my opponents are, their betting patterns and any other interesting bits of information I might get from seeing them play (e.g. do they slow play monster hands, do they bet their big draws).

Keeping track of all this inside your head can be tough, sure you’ll remember certain players and hands but there’s no way most players are going to be able to keep track of the thousands of players they face over the months or years of play. The good news is there are a range of tools at your disposal to help keep track of this information, here’s what I use:

Poker Tracker

This essential application will keep track of all your on-line ring and tournament game play. I’m not going to go into detail here (the benefits of tracking your game with apps like Poker Tracker (PT) are well documented across the ‘net) but I will say that if you’re serious about playing on-line and you’re not yet using any kind of tracking software you’re missing out on leaning a lot about your game.

GameTime+

This little utility interfaces with your PT database to provide information on your opponents while you are playing in the form of stats overlayed on the table. You can configure GameTime+ (GT+) to display any of the wide range of stats that PT tracks, here’s my configuration:

• Voluntarily Put Money In The Pot % (VP$IP)
• Pre-Flop Raise % (PFR)
• Post-Flop Aggression Factor (PFA)
• Went To Showdown % (WSD)

Along with the icon assigned by PT and the players name. There’s a great article on how these numbers should be interpreted here:

http://www.bet-the-pot.com/poker-tracker-part3-page37.html

Well worth a read if you’ve never examined these statistics in the past.

Player Notes

Player notes are a feature provided by most on-line poker rooms and are a great way to keep track of:

1. The overall rating of the player based on stats (e.g. Loose-Aggressive/Passive for someone who is loose and aggressive pre-flop but passive post-flop). This allows me to pick good seats at tables before I sit down and fire up GT+.
2. Anything I feel sets this player apart from others in that category (e.g. “May slowplay top pair heads up” or “Willing to cap flop betting on a strong draw”).

I always make sure that I’m continually updating player notes as I learn new information or something that I had inferred from an opponents previous play is contradicted by something new (in this case I may make a note that a player is smarter and less predictable than average which would alert me to watch closely how they are playing that day).

Putting It All Together

So, you’ve been tracking players with PT, can see their stats in GT+ and you have all your player notes up to date. How should all this affect your game? The unfortunate answer to this question is that (like most things in poker) “it depends”. It depends on the hand, the stats and your general feel for a situation. I like to use these tools to verify something that I’m already thinking, if I’m getting bet into post-flop by a player who is usually extremely passive post flop then I can more easily throw my marginal hands away. If in this same situation my opponent is ultra aggressive post flop (indicating a lot of bluffs or continuation bets) I might decide to re-raise and see where I’m really at.

I’ve played a couple of hands recently where the information I’ve had on my opponents has directly influenced the decisions I made making me do things that I would not usually do against random opponents.

The first hand was at low stakes 6 handed limit hold’em table, I was on the button and had been dealt:

A player with stats of 60% VP$IP and 33% PFR raised from middle position and it was folded to me. I re-raised, which is standard play with queens on the button so nothing interesting so far.

Then, to my surprise, the player in the big blind (a player I had flagged as Loose-Passive/Passive with stats of VP$IP 41% but only a PFR of 1.6%) capped the betting. Alarm bells started going off in my head, here was a player who practically never raises pre-flop capping the betting. I couldn’t help feeling my queens might be in trouble.

The original raiser calls and I call since I’m getting great odds. We see the flop:

Now, usually I would like this flop for queens (as much as you can like a flop with an over card on it) but with that cap on the flop I’m not so sure they’re good. What can you put a player that passive on when he caps pre-flop? AA, AK, KK and maybe QQ are what came to my mind at that point.

I was surprised however when the action was checked to me. Of course I bet, maybe all that pre-flop action was just an anomaly? Well both players call and at that point I feel so sure that the BB is beating me. The third player in the pot doesn’t concern me much, he’s usually aggressive and would have bet any made hand. He might have hearts but ace high is more likely. So we see the turn:

Totally irrelevant, except for some crazy straight and the action is checked to me again. This is where the stats and my feel changed my normal play, I’m normally betting again here but I really think I’m beat. Given the unusual pre-flop aggression from the BB I feel I might be being trapped here and elect to just check and see the river:

Another straight card but I’ve all but discounted that possibility (the maniac could play A5 but since I thought I was already beat on the turn it’s irrelevant). The BB player now bet causing the maniac to fold and leaving me getting 8.5 to 1 on a call where I really felt I was beat. The odds coupled with the fact that I decided he had to bet even if I was wrong about the hand (there’s a difference between you’re beat and knowing it) made me call and he turned over:

For a set of kings on the flop. I happily mucked my queens knowing I’d lost (nearly) the minimum. Sure, slowing down with queens after a lot of action and an overcard is no super poker move, but the truth is that if I was up against any other style of player I would have lost more on this hand by betting the turn and likely at least calling the inevitable raise setting myself up for more pain on the river.

The second hand was in the same type of game, against different opponents. The unique thing about this hand is that the player in the small blind had the following stats:

• VP$IP = 80%
• PFR% = 55%
• PFA > 7
• WTSD = 70%

In general a maniac.

The action is folded around to me where in the cut off I have been dealt:

:Ts::9s:

Perhaps not the best hand to play against this type of player, but I felt I wanted to see the flop. Since I didn’t really want the player on the button to hang around I felt a raise was in order, so I raised and just to be annoying the button called anyway (he had a VP$IP of 55% also so it shouldn’t have surprised me too much). Our maniac in the SB re-raised (this was not at all surprising or scary and didn’t narrow down his holdings too much - he probably has at least one high card or a pocket pair) and the big blind folded. I called and we saw the flop:

I like this flop. I want to play this flop aggressively. The SB maniac bets - which he does on every flop - and I re-raise. The button called (unexpected, he’s hit something I’m just hoping it’s not a better flush draw). The SB re-re-raises which makes me think he’s at least got a pair (he’s crazy but not crazy enough to think he’s going to bluff out two opponents especially when I’ve been playing the hand so aggressively so far) and I decide to cap in a last ditch effort to get the button out. The button calls and we see the turn:

And once again the turn is where my play differs from normal. The 4s is a great card and usually I’d expect my opponents to slow down when it comes but in this case the SB bet, I raised, button called, SB re-raised, I capped and they both called.

I would never play the non-nut flush this way against any opponent I respected. At this point I have no doubt the SB has an ace and at the time I was thinking A8 or A3. The button on the other hand is a bit of a mystery, I was now thinking that he might have a set of 3’s or 8’s. Of course spades were possible but unless he had the king I felt he would have re-raised the turn. Maybe he’s just sticking around in because the pot is so large, either that or he’s making a very smart play by letting the SB bet for him. I decide I can’t be scared of a higher flush and my plan is only to slow down if a fourth spade drops. The river:

And the SB and I cap it again (with the button coming along for the ride). The button turned over A6o and earnt himself a player note “can’t fold a pair of aces” ;) and the maniac SB turned over AJo for a better than expected holding but still a crazy play.

So there you have it, two examples of changing play based on opponent stats and reads. The first where I played a hand very passively that I would usually play aggressively and the second where I played hyper-agressively with a non-nut hand that I would usually slow down with against similar action from any other style of player.

If you don’t already, get hold of the programs I’ve mentioned here (or their equivalents) and start tracking your opponents. You’ll be surprised at just how useful this information can really be!

Worst. Month. Ever.

5,657 hands of limit hold’em in the ring games for a total return of 0.38 big blinds per 100 hands.

To be honest I shouldn’t be too disappointed, a positive return is a lot better than the negative return I’d been expecting to report on a week or so ago. Still, I can’t help being disappointed with my declining results the past couple of months.

Don’t get me wrong, I know due to variance there will be good and bad months but the thing is this reduction in profit also coincides with my stating to play at more 6-Max tables. Does this mean that I’m a poor 6-Max player? I don’t think so, 2,500 of the hands I played last month were on the Poker Stars 6-Max tables where I turned a respectable profit of nearly 3 BB/100 hand.

So why the reduction in overall profits? I have a few theories:

• Too small a sample size, I really need to play more hands to get a true indication of how I’m running at 6-Max (but it can’t hurt to analyse as I go).
• The fact that I’ve been seeking out the most maniacal players at these tables (the ones that play 80%+ of hands, raise 60%+ of the time and rarely fold), while this should be highly profitable in the long term in the short term it can work against you.
• Tilt. When those players just keep catching cards it can really mess with you. I can’t tell you how many times I’d see maniacs repeatedly calling down raises and even re-raises with no pair only to flop the nuts when I decide get involved in a hand with them.

So with that said, here’s my plan for the coming month:

• Play more 6-Max hands, perhaps exclusively unless there are some juicy full ring tables.
• Continue to seek out the maniacs, but only sit down at their table when I have position on them and when there is only one at the table. Better to sit down at a table full of passive players than one with 2 or 3 lunatics, sure the pots will be smaller but there’s less chance of going insane. Too often I’ve folded the best hand after getting sandwiched between two maniacs raising and re-raising with middle pair or a gutshot straight draw or some such.
• Don’t tilt. Generally I’ve been good at controlling myself, I usually take beats very well it’s just this month that’s been the exception to the rule (probably because of my poor overall results).
• Don’t force things to happen. I’ve always said (and I’m not alone) that poker is a game of patience, this doesn’t change at the 6-Max table even though you can see more flops.

One other thing got in the way of my poker playing this month - real life! Annoying as it meant I didn’t really get a good run at most of my poker goals for August, so they carry forward to September:

1. Read Harrington volume 2, re-read volume 1.
2. Return a positive figure in NL hold’em tournaments (actually made some headway here in August but nothing to get too excited about).
3. Play at least 500 hands in a game other than hold’em, I’m thinking maybe some Omaha 8 or better.and now…
4. Improve my return at the 6-Max tables.

Wish me luck for September… here’s hoping for some better results!

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 :D.

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:

:Ad::4h:

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:

:Ts::6d::Ks:

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:

:Jc::8s:

And he turns over:

:Qc::9s:

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Draw more, you’ll often have the implied odds you need to see another card.
4. 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.
5. Don’t bluff. Ever*.
6. 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.
7. Don’t tilt. You’re going to get bad beats at these tables, it comes with the territory.
8. 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.

In case anyone is interested, I’ve patched v1.47 of GameTime+ to fix a couple of bugs that were, um, “bugging” me ;). Available here, this patch fixes the following:

• PostgreSQL Detection
• Asks user for size of Part Poker tables (e.g. 10 or 6 handed or heads up). Auto-detection was broken by either Poker Tracker or Party Poker somewhere along the line

Hope someone finds this useful!

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:

1. Keep the solid cash game going at my new limit.
2. Keep playing the low-level NL hold’em tournaments, aim for a positive return for the month.
3. 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:

1. 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.
2. Study the 6Max game.
3. Read Harrington volume 2, re-read volume 1.
4. Return a positive figure in NL hold’em tournaments.
5. 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.