Getting back up

Sometimes the biggest losses happen in the best games.

Maybe I should have quit once I had recouped nearly all of my losses.

These are poker cliches, and today I'm the poker player voicing them.

I recently put some money back on FTP, to end my rather lengthy hiatus from online poker. Unlike some other poker bloggers, I don't have a big tournament score to report. I like to play cash games, and I'd been told by reliable sources that Rush PLO (6max) was a goldmine. Sure, I thought, I can grind out a profit there. I have 30 buyins for this game, I'm properly rolled if I remain disciplined, and I've got a bonus to clear to boot.

A couple of thousand hands later, I'm down eight buyins.

How did this happen? The usual litany of suckouts, one or two coolers, and a mammoth pot shipped to a fishy villain when the stacks were ultra-deep. I need to go over this particular hand in some detail because I really would like a sanity check from other Omaholics regarding situations like this.

So to set the stage, here is what happened. I'd lost four buyins earlier in the day. I lost four more but had developed some very good notes and had learnt the tendencies of most of other players in the relatively small player pool rotating through the Rush PLO10 game. I proceeded to get paid off and win four buyins back and was consequently sitting with 450+BBs in my stack. Several other players were nearly as deep, and I was eager to see if I could take all their money. (I should have listened to that little voice in my head that said to use proper BR management and quit since I had an overly large amount of my BR at one table.)

I opened with a fantastic speculative hand in early position, the A778 ds (nut hearts and clubs). Two weak players (each sitting with less than 100BBs) call. The button, my main target whom I've observed closely and whose play is transparent -- most importantly of all, he overplays his hands and can be taken to value-town -- makes a pot-sweetening raise. I call, as do the other two players. The button still has 370BBs in his stack, and I cover.

The flop comes out a dreamy AA8, giving me the stone cold nuts.

I bet pot, since I figure the button will get stubborn and pay me off. Sure enough, the button calls as the other two players get out of the way.

The turn is the safest of cards, a seven of spades. I bet pot again. The button calls. The pot is now 420BBs and the button has less than half a pot-sized bet left (about 170).

The river is a king. I throw up in my mouth, since I figured the villain's range is heavily tilted to AKQJ hands (in other words, an ace with some Broadway sidecards), but I also know I am going to call if he shoves the river. So I do the betting for him and sure enough, he shows up with the nuts. In retrospect, as Bayne pointed out in the comments, this is probably a mistake. The longterm +EV play is probably to check-call (or even check-raise for value when he bluffs AQxx) in a spot like this where I might have been drawn out on since the board is so dry. This requires a lot of poise and ruthless composure to pull off, and I wasn't cold-blooded enough to do so here. On the other hand, the villain might pay off with trips on the river but not bet if checked to, so I'd lose a ton of value. It's hard to know which
line is best.

And thus I lost the biggest pot of my poker career (over 750 BBs) in terms of bets wagered. Did I do anything wrong? What arguments, if any, are there to play more conservatively? I'd welcome feedback on this.



So the next day I sucked it up, and played some lower-stakes NLHE. And won some money. The comeback begins - again.

The day after

I'm never going to forget February 28, 2010.

Apparently a few Americans watched the men's hockey gold medal game along with me and the other 18 thousand or so live spectators at Canada Hockey Place.

Of course, on a per-capita basis this event shattered all domestic records: on average, nearly half the Candian population watched the entire game (just under 17 million people), and 80% of the population watched part of the game. Eighty percent!

Some of my American friends have congratulated me on the result -- for which I am quite appreciative (I should take the time here to compliment the American team; they have nothing to be ashamed of and they should hold their heads high after having such a phenomenal tournament in Canada's home rink, and what's more their team plays a very Canadian style with all of the attributes we prize so highly in our own players). A couple have followed up by saying "Hey, go ahead and celebrate, this is your Super Bowl". I suppose that's a reasonable statement from their point of view, but it doesn't really come close to approximating just how important this game was to me and the rest of Canada. This New York Times piece does a fair job of describing hockey's place in Canada's psyche; I'm one of those who strapped on a pair of skates when I was 3 years old and began playing hockey before I turned five.

The Cold War is over; this game might not have the geo-political dimensions of the '72 Summit Series but I can say I was fifty feet away from the action when Sidney Crosby scored the most important goal of my lifetime. Crosby has had an amazing eight months: he's won the Stanley Cup and an Olympic gold medal all before his 23rd birthday.

After the game - I really didn't want to leave the building, but officials cleared it away promptly as they wanted to get people over to the closing ceremonies on time - I walked with my dad through downtown to reach his office's underground parking lot. Neither of us could stop smiling. We waved at the people screaming from balconies above us. We high-fived complete strangers singing O Canada. The scene was pure bedlam - I hope to upload a few pictures we took of the crowds - and in fact at one point I feared for public safety as we got separated in the crush at Granville and Robson as the crowd grew a bit unruly.

To wrap up I'll use a crude analogy: let's say you were a Chicago Cubs fan and your team finally won the World Series, and they did so at Wrigley Field against the hated New York Yankees. Then imagine that your national identity was contained within the state of Illinois and you and your fellow citizens only cared about baseball and nothing else.

Hockey is Canada's religion.

I'm never going to forget February 28, 2010.

Gold

I have a ticket to the gold medal game. That is all.

I might just have the best parents in the world. What a stealth birthday present.

NB. I'll take action on the game (prop bets, drinks, whatever) to be paid up at next Vegas blogger gathering I attend. Post a comment if you want in.

I felt a rush

I now see the appeal. About thirty hands into my first foray at FTP's Rush Poker, single-tabling a low stakes NL table, this happened:



Later I won another buy-in off someone who felt like gambling with AQo vs. my QQ.

And then another when someone shoved into me with a crappy ace, like so:



Sometimes, poker is easy.

Then, a lucky villain escaped a cooler situation with half of the pot:



NB: don't engage in fancy traps like I did here:



But do punish overpairs like this:



Finally I sucked out pretty nicely when I decided to gamble it up with AKs preflop against a couple of short stacks. I didn't figure on being in such bad shape, but I got there:



Overall, my initial impressions of Rush Poker are very positive; a common theme should be apparent from the hand histories above which is that nitting it up and taking good gambles when you have the proper overlay is very +EV. Once I built a big stack I consistently tried to play big pots only when I felt it was correct; I often employed small flop re-raises as a defensive tactic and I would often fold trouble hands (eg. top pair, third kicker) to real heat. I shall be sure to try some PLO tables next. I hear from reliable sources that they are as equally profitable as the NL tables I was playing tonight.

Post-birthday "gift"

This is not a disguised bad beat post. Rather, it's an example of how much +EV you can find in a good PLO8 cash game.



PLO8 really can be a low variance bankroll builder. The poker gods just decided I had to suck up a loss this time, but I'll take this gamble every day. Let's look at the equities here:

Omaha Hi/Lo Simulation

board: Tc Th 2h
Hand Pot equity
3c 3d 7h 6h 8.81%
As Kh 2s 2c 68.94%
Ah 5h Qh 9h 3.31%
8s Ac Ad 4h 18.94%

This is just a fantastic value for money in a spot like this. Look at the money odds I was getting to hold up with my underfull! Much of the time I will scoop and nearly all of the time I will take half of the pot 4-ways for a phenomenal expected profit.

A very small early birthday gift

I promised myself a birthday present: some time spent playing Omaha.

Of course, with the Olympics starting today all I could manage was some low-stakes online play--the 7-game mix--at lunchtime because the city is turning into a veritable zoo.

And here's FTP rewarding me with a small gift as I actually managed to win a big pot playing relatively deep. Ordinarily I don't like overplaying a hand like this but I had enough time spent with this villain to recognize the action being given was with a really wide range of hands, most of which I beat.



I ran the equity calculation afterward and was mildly surprised that I was only a 65/35 favourite. I got partially fooled by the fact that my opponent actually had 11 wins. As badly as I played this hand (my bet-sizing on the turn was awful and was supremely exploitable), my opponent butchered it even worse: putting that much money in the pot drawing to a 4-high flush and a bare wheel on a paired board is a recipe for a world of hurt against my range. He's just lucky that he was up against the bottom of my range to actually have any equity at all (since a lot of the time he'd be drawing dead).

The 7-game mix can surely be a profitable one to play. I might have to try Rush poker soon.

[Edit] Bonus hand, which goes a fair way to demonstrating my observation regarding the 7-game. Scandis will give you all the action you could want, and with complete trash:

A quiet January

I haven't blogged at all this month.

So, here are a few observations from what has been a very busy month:

the Olympics are going to feature a lot of genuine excitement, but at a very high cost to the BC taxpayer;

the city's inhabitants (read: not visitors) will probably riot if Canada's men's hockey team doesn't win the gold medal (after all, that's what happened when the Canucks lost the Stanley Cup in '94);

my nephew Oliver is a real handful and if he grows up to the size I expect, the Canucks will draft him in 2028 (I'l be reponsible for teaching him to skate in a couple of years);

I'll probably treat myself to a session of live PLO for my birthday in a couple of weeks (but the Olympic traffic jams will certainly make it difficult).

NB. The Canucks are really, really good this year. We might well get a change to avenge last year's loss to the Blackhawks in the playoffs. Which means I'll likely have some bets on the series and try to get even myself!