Blindtilt

I am pumped about the WSOP which technically has already started today with the Casino’s Employees Event. However tomorrow is a big one with the new $40,000 NL event.

I will be following the action at the WSOP site, but also pokernews.com.

I will also be following the tweets from the pros on my own page I have established here. There is also a seperate page which lists the last 15 tweets from the WSOP news and updates twitter accounts.

Maybe one day I will get to play!

Bankroll $1337.23

A quickie. It has been a shocker 2 months; I have learnt new lessons in variance. As a result of this, along with a couple of trips OS I have had a bit of a hiatus from poker. By bankroll is down to below $1400 and I am back to 10c/25c NL. The hand that did it (when I totally lost it and felt like giving up on poker) was when I 4-betted all-in with JJ against an aggressive player who was 3betting almost every hand. After 10 seconds he called…with A4 offsuit, and hit not 1 but 2 Aces on the flop.

So I am grinding my way at 10c/25c NL but actually playing well. It is funny how when you go down you tend to play more aggressively, probably because the amounts don’t seem as high. I am 4 tabling, no more, and playing with a 2 buy-in stop loss. So fay over a couple of thousand hands my 3bet% is 7% which is double what it has been this year so far, and my red line ($won without showdown) is actually in the black. Usually it just continually goes down. So I think I will stick here(10c/25c NL) for a while to build both my bankroll again, and my confidence!

Looking forward to WSOP 2009………..

OK……it is early May. Looking to recover from my bad April. I am in position compared to the villain who is playing loosely (36/15).

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, $0.50 BB (6 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

saw flop | saw showdown

MP ($91.30)
CO ($47.40)
Hero (Button) ($55.10)
SB ($55.80)
BB ($42.15)
UTG ($61.40)

Preflop: Hero is Button with , 
1 fold, MP bets $2, 1 fold, Hero calls $2, 2 folds

Flop: ($4.75) , ,  (2 players)
MP checks, Hero bets $3, MP calls $3

Turn: ($10.75)  (2 players)
MP checks, Hero checks

River: ($10.75)  (2 players)
MP bets $7.50

So what would you do here?

April Results

Total Hands: 13,409

Result: -$653.54 = -4.81/100 hands

VP$IP: 18.06  PFR 14.07  AFq 43.4

Actual result versus Equity in All in Pots: -$225

AA preflop: + 587 BB/100 hands

KK preflop: -30 BB/100 hands !!

Bad beat story: Flopped set of KKK’s 5 times: won small pots twice; got rivered after all-in 3 times!

Flopped sets with pocket pair: 53 times with 496 pocket pairs that saw flop (should have flopped 58).

Flopped sets with pocket pair: Won at 404 BB/100 hands (less than half normal).

Estimated number of buy-ins lost due to tilt issues resulting in bad play: ~ 5.

Adjustment to play

I have had a long hard think about my tilt issues. I clearly had a bad luck month, both with bad beats and coolers, but this affected my play more than ever before. To be a good player this CANNOT happen. To help combat this, I am making the following adjustments:

1. Playing less tables. I will play between 2-4 tables at the same time, rather than 8.

2. I am reducing my stop loss to one buy-in (from 2). Ie, if I am down $50 at any time in a session I quit that session.

3. If I am losing after 1 hour of play I quit.

There is a positive: I am actually still winning for the year despite this horrible month!

Good luck in May all!

I accept that I am not a great player and have many leaks, but my biggest is my tilt tendency. April has been the worst month of playing online cash game NL Holdem by far. After running up my bankroll to $2250, I have dropped back down to $1555 (15 buy-ins!). Yes, I have run bad, but I have lost multiple buyins this month because of bad play due to my inability to cope with running bad. So I am taking a break and rethinking my approach….especially how to deal psychologically with bad runs.

Warning: Major Bad Beat Post!!!

Yes, I am posting this for purely cathartic purposes.

In my poker career to date I have probably played half a million hands. Most of that time I have multitabled. A few days ago (I still haven’t recovered from it yet) something happened to me that has never happened before. I was all in in three hands on 3 separate tables at the same time and lost all three; two were suckouts on the river and the third was a cooler (although I probably should have got away from it).

I was already running badly in the session. My flopped top set of Kings were run down by a runner, runner flush, and numerous donkeys kept calling my high pairs down with their bottom pairs and hitting 2 pair on the river with hands like 53o. So I was almost at my 2 buyin stop loss …I think I was down ~$95 and was all set to leave if I lost a few more $.

Then at 10:07:13 ET, 10:07:18 ET and 10:07:46 ET on the 16th April, 2009, I played the following three hands.

Hand ONE:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, $0.50 BB (5 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

saw flop | saw showdown

BB ($66.55)
Hero (UTG) ($55.10)
MP ($28.70)
Button ($98.60)
SB ($46.50)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with , 
Hero bets $1.50, 1 fold, Button raises to $5, 2 folds, Hero raises to $13, Button calls $8

Flop: ($26.75) , ,  (2 players)
Hero bets $15, Button raises to $85.60 (All-In), Hero calls $27.10 (All-In)

Turn: ($110.95)  (2 players, 2 all-in)

River: ($110.95)  (2 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: $110.95 | Rake: $2

Results:
Button had A, Q (two pair, Aces and Queens).
Hero had K, K (one pair, Kings).
Outcome: Button won $108.95

That is, he hit his 6 outer on the river.

Hand TWO:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, $0.50 BB (5 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

saw flop | saw showdown

BB ($54.95)
UTG ($9.25)
MP ($7.55)
Button ($101.75)
Hero (SB) ($68.60)

Preflop: Hero is SB with , 
3 folds, Hero bets $1.50, BB raises to $6, Hero calls $4.50

Flop: ($12) , ,  (2 players)
Hero checks, BB bets $8, Hero calls $8

Turn: ($28)  (2 players)
Hero checks, BB bets $15, Hero raises to $54.60 (All-In), BB calls $25.95 (All-In)

River: ($109.90)  (2 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: $109.90 | Rake: $2

Results:
Hero had J, J (three of a kind, Jacks).
BB had Q, Q (straight, Queen high).
Outcome: BB won $107.90

That is, he ALSO hit his 6 outer on the river.

Hand THREE:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, $0.50 BB (6 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

saw flop | saw showdown

BB ($63.30)
UTG ($60.05)
MP ($56.30)
CO ($171.65)
Button ($52.50)
Hero (SB) ($50)

Preflop: Hero is SB with , 
2 folds, CO bets $1, Button raises to $3.50, Hero calls $3.25, 1 fold, CO calls $2.50

Flop: ($11) , ,  (3 players)
Hero checks, CO checks, Button bets $9.75, Hero raises to $25, 1 fold, Button raises to $49 (All-In), Hero calls $21.50 (All-In)

Turn: ($104)  (2 players, 2 all-in)

River: ($104)  (2 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: $104 | Rake: $3

Results:
Button had 8, 8 (three of a kind, eights).
Hero had Q, A (one pair, Queens).
Outcome: Button won $101

I could have got away from this hand. A drawy board and against 2 players. But I had hardly any history against either player. And, I was certain I was ahead in the other 2 hands, so the thought of a triple win was enticing!

The result: instead of walking away with a $95 loss, one minute later I was down more than $250. My bankroll received a major hit and I have had a few days off to reflect.

The biggest phenomena online at the moment is Twitter.

Twitter seems fairly simple; a microblogging service that allows you to publish online posts of up to 140 characters for anyone to read. However it is more than this; you follow friends, or anyone you want for that matter  (and they can follow you), and as soon as a post is made, you can read it through a web browser, or more conveniently your smart phone.

Not that long ago (maybe 6 months?), twitter was the domain mainly of tech geeks. Those with the most followers were the likes of Leo Laporte, Kevin Rose, Scoble and Jason Calacanis. Then Barack Obama stepped into the fray during his election campaign to become the number one on the ‘twitterers with the most followers’ list. Now, it has become mainstream in a big way after the introduction of an ever increasing number of celebrities such as Britney Spears, Ashton Kutchar, Ashton’s wife Demi Moore, Shaq O’Neil, John Cleese, and many, many more who tweet about their days. You can see the current rankings here at twitterholic. E.g, currently Britany Spears has 778,000 followers.

Now I have noticed Poker Pros everywhere on twitter. Therefore, I have set up a page which is dedicated to the ‘Poker Pro’s on Twitter’. This page shows the latest 3 tweets of many of the Pro’s including Daniel Negreanu, Barry Greenstein, Gavin Smith, Jeff Madsen, Liz Lieu, Phil Helmuth, Maria Ho, Joe Sebok… and many more. I will add more if other players are clearly using it frequently. E.g, Daniel Negreanu was tweeting live from Bobby’s Room at the Bellagio yesterday telling everyone how much he was losing….lol. I am sure twitter will be used extensively through the WSOP and provides yet another means of keeping uptodate with a tournament.

Bankroll: $1,947.66

Diagnosis: Major Tilt

Outcome: Lost $250 = 5 buy-ins

Predisposing factors: Lethargy, anxiety about going back to work, frustration over last 12,000 hands where I feel like I have been going nowhere.

Symptoms: Taking on hyperaggressive bullies (when they are running well); playing beyond your own goddamn rule of quitting when down 2 buy-ins; trying to make up losses; thinking way too much about trying to maintain Gold VIP status on Pokerstars; making really bad calls as a result of all of the above.

Treatment: Have a break; blog about it!; don’t play when tired; don’t play when stressed; don’t play when frustrated; look at positives (still have double bankroll compared to 3 and a half months ago); start again when fresh and motivated; stick to 2 buy-in stop loss!; do not take on bullies (let them steal other people’s money); watch Daniel Negreanu go on tilt, but instead of losing only $250>> loses $400,00o on High Stakes Poker!

Bankroll: $2205.61

This is a brief and delayed review of March because I have been away.

It is nice to have profit in a month that seemed fairly tough. Again I had a good start to the month with a steady increase over 11,000 hands to be up 9 buy-ins ($450). Then I hit a wall in the second half just like February.

Result: Win +$262.05 over 19, 739 hands =1.33 BB/100 hands.

VP$IP: 18.56  PFR: 13.26.

Good luck in April!

At last Pokertracker 3 has added an Expected Value Performance graph. They say that this is just the start (”a teaser”) but I like it already.

I was a bit confused at first but think I understand what it does now. Unlike HoldemLuck which only plots points on the graph for the allin pots, this graph plots a point for every hand. But if a particular hand is not allin (ie most pots) then the graph moves up or down for both ‘Money actually won’ and ‘Money Expected Won’ in exactly the same way. So if there are absolutely no allin pots the lines will overlie each other.

Here is the graph for my latest session which I feel good about but got sucked out on twice in all in pots which accounts for the discrepancy (2 outer on river, and 9 outer on river near the end).