A game of edges

Poker is a cruel game. You can manipulate and outmaneuver your opponents such that you get all the chips in the middle with a big advantage. But there's always a chance that your patience and cleverness will go unrewarded. In the grand scheme of things, however, this is actually a necessary evil.

The non-zero frequency that the deck bails out bad players is a feature of the game that keeps poker alive, since without the suckouts and bad beats the bad players would go broke without a chance to keep their bankrolls intact enough to keep donating to better players in the long-term.

I just wish it didn't hurt so much in the short-term when I keep losing after getting myself in situations where I play four or five big pots as a 9:1, 4:1, etc. favourite and lose every single one of them. That's just plain old variance at its cruelest, but I have to keep a proper perspective: if you keep putting yourself in good situations, you are going to take more than your share of bad beats.

Consequently, the lesson here is to keep playing this particular game because the players are so transparent in their play: but only after I've rebuilt my bankroll enough to withstand the variance. Taking shots at juicy games at higher stakes is one thing, but I still need to keep ten or fifteen buy-ins saved for this particular game.

Here's an example of what's been going wrong for me lately. This was a hand where the effective stack sizes were over 200BBs, and the preflop action let me find out just what sort of hand my opponent likely had whilst I had sufficient implied odds to see a flop. And it just so happened that I flopped well enough to play for a 400+BB pot (since postflop I am well ahead of two of the three possible hands he could have, as my opponent's range was polarized to QQ+). Sadly, this did not have a good ending for our hero. (NB. I would fold preflop if the stacks were shallower but I had very good implied odds, enough to see a flop with in my opinion when I was able to invest less than 10% of my stack preflop with a chance to win more than ten times my initial investment.)



I might have lost two buy-ins here with 4d5d, but I can take solace in all of the Galfond bucks I earned in this hand. My opponent's call here with aces was extremely unprofitable if you estimate the equity a pair of aces has against the range of hands I have for making this big check raise: sets, two pair, KK+, and drawing hands with 14+ outs. My strategy on this flop was to try to make myself appear like a shove-monkey making a play for the pot; and I induced a big mistake by my opponent who got stubborn with an overpair and couldn't lay it down.

Unfortunately for me, Galfond bucks can't buy anything in the real world.

Omaha is often a synonym for pain, redux

First of all, congrats to CK who managed to cash in the World Series in the OE/SE 2.5K event! It sounds as if she got unlucky in a couple of big hands or she could have gone even further. I look forward to reading her tournament recap.

Myself, I have been suffering through an 8 -- hah, make that sixteen! -- buy-in downswing in my online PLO experiment. I'm going to do a session review and see if I can spot some leaks, or merely have to attribute the poor results mostly to variance. I certainly know I was mostly getting the money in ahead when I was playing for stacks, so I suspect the latter.

Edit

it's the latter. See this as a typical example where I get it in as a 70% favourite and lose:



I'm glad I didn't have any bets on the Cup Finals. I would have bet on Detroit but the Penguins managed to beat the Red Wings at Joe Louis in game seven.

If the weather holds this weekend I'll be spending nearly all of it outside playing disc golf, riding the trails, or at the beach. Enjoying summer activities outdoors takes precedence over pokering, to be sure!

New Year's Resolutions: Poker, part two

I had another post in mind, but I'll delay it another day as I stomach another day of a rather steep downswing at the cash tables. This hand pretty much sums up how I've been running ... this one happened to be at a 6-max O8 table.

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to PirateLawyer [Ac Kc 8s 8h]
acvikings has 15 seconds left to act
acvikings calls $2
PirateLawyer raises to $4
QuadSuited folds
StructureK calls $4
hotshot6177 folds
AnonymousLegend folds
acvikings calls $2
*** FLOP *** [5h 5c 8c]
acvikings bets $2
PirateLawyer raises to $4
StructureK calls $4
acvikings calls $2, and is all in
*** TURN *** [5h 5c 8c] [2c]
PirateLawyer bets $4
StructureK raises to $8
PirateLawyer raises to $12
StructureK raises to $16
PirateLawyer calls $4
*** RIVER *** [5h 5c 8c 2c] [6h]
PirateLawyer bets $4
StructureK raises to $8
PirateLawyer calls $1.50, and is all in
Uncalled bet of $2.50 returned to StructureK
*** SHOW DOWN ***
StructureK shows [3h 5d 3s 5s] four of a kind, Fives, for high and 8,6,5,3,2, for low
PirateLawyer shows [Ac Kc 8s 8h] a full house, Eights full of Fives, for high and 8,6,5,2,A, for low
StructureK wins the high side pot ($20.50) with four of a kind, Fives
PirateLawyer wins the low side pot ($20.50) with 8,6,5,2,A
acvikings shows [4d 7c 6c 8d] a flush, Eight high, for high and 7,6,5,4,2, for low
StructureK wins the high main pot ($13) with four of a kind, Fives
acvikings wins the low main pot ($13) with 7,6,5,4,2
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $70 Main pot $27. Side pot $43. | Rake $3
Board: [5h 5c 8c 2c 6h]
Seat 1: QuadSuited didn't bet (folded)
Seat 2: StructureK (button) showed [3h 5d 3s 5s] and won ($33.50) with HI: four of a kind, Fives; LO: 8,6,5,3,2
Seat 3: hotshot6177 (small blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 4: AnonymousLegend (big blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 5: acvikings showed [4d 7c 6c 8d] and won ($13) with HI: a flush, Eight high; LO: 7,6,5,4,2
Seat 6: PirateLawyer showed [Ac Kc 8s 8h] and won ($20.50) with HI: a full house, Eights full of Fives; LO: 8,6,5,2,A

This all happened because I decided to re-raise a donkish short-stack and I knew that the second villain, who was running insanely hot, would call with any four cards, so my range of hands here was well ahead of his. And then we get the cooler of all cooler flops.

This makes three times now in the new year that I've had to activate my stop-loss rule. Sigh.

I also thought there was a rule that Canadian poker bloggers were invulnerable to presto.

The Poker Gods are Fickle

It's been a while between posts and unfortunately I don't have any good news to report on the poker front in my absence. Although everything is going smoothly with the job, I'm pleased to say, and of course that's more important than my misadventures on the felt.

I have to keep repeating to myself that variance is part of poker as I've endured a nasty downswing in my online bankroll due to dropping buy-ins like they are going out of style in my cash game play. And it's not like I have been playing poorly . . . I've had the best hand when all the money goes in and my opponents keep hitting their 2, 3, or 4 outs after I've induced them to make grievous mistakes. The worst of it is, I had recently stepped up in limits so the losses have really hurt and taken me back nearly to square one after a lot of good work to get my initial $400 investment on FTP up to nearly 2K.

Ah well. I'll take a few days off to regroup and start grinding it back up. In the meantime, I continue to compete in the BBTwo series of blogger tournaments, and I've been pleased with my play, although I've yet to make a final table despite some good opportunities to do so. Last night was the Mookie, with 112 runners.

I started off with a bang, bluffing on the very first hand from the SB with the Hammer, and chipped up to nearly 4000 in chips before losing quite a few chips -- I was down to 1800 in short order -- with some very good but expensive second-best hands where I showed discipline and lost about the least I could reasonably have expected to lose under the circumstances (rivered 4-flush gets a villain there vs. my two pair, etc... standard FTP shenanigans.). From there, I aggressively played some medium poker pairs preflop and chipped up. Then I gambled with AQo vs. a regular nemesis, surflexus (who had taken away some of my chips earlier and had a large stack early on) and got all the money in the middle preflop against his 88. I (gasp!) improved and won the race to get back up over 4000 in chips.

I used that as a springboard and managed to double that up again to 8000 or so, which would be my highwater mark. Unfortunately, FTP moved me to a different table from the comfortable situation I was in, and my stack was average as the blinds and antes kicked in. At my new table players were dropping like flies as the action was fast and furious and people were gambling like crazy with some very marginal holdings, and I soon found myself dwarfed by three or four large stacks. Going card dead for the better part of an hour didn't help either. Finally, I seized an opportunity to make a move with ATs on the button as I jammed over a LP raiser. Of course, he happened to insta-call with pocket kings and I failed to improve. I go home in 58th or 59th place or something disappointing like that. Still, given my early struggles it was a respectable showing.

Fuel outlasted me by one whole spot, sadly. I wanted to last longer than him despite not having a last longer bet on. To my happy surprise, this donkey from my Friday night game continued his strong play of late to place third. I really thought he was going to take it down with over half the chips in play three-handed, but Astin -- he is way overdue to take down one of these blonkaments! -- and the eventual winner Mike_Maloney played well and played hard, ultimately proving to be Simon's downfall. Simon lost the bulk of his stack on a setup hand where he flopped a set against a flopped nut straight, and Simon didn't get his full house redraw once all the money went in.

Given the state of my online bankroll and the fact that I'll be away for all of Saturday, it seems likely I'll miss Sunday's Big Game, which saddens me immensely. I love deepstack tournaments.
Maybe I will try to farm out some of my $26 tokens into a $75'er so I can get in to the game on the cheap.