At last I’ve found my winning 10NL game

The last 3 months I was frustated with my game. I thought I was playing a solid preflop (21/19) game but that was as far that I’m good at. My postflop is terrible against loose passive players because I’m weak tight and when I become frustated being pushed out of the pot, I try bluffing the wrong station.

February and March was mostly a good month for me. I have started practising good table selection. I think this is the #1 reason that my winrate is much better than previous months. I’ve tighten up my range out of position especially in the blinds. I’ve thrown out SCs multiway in the blinds. I’ve dropped 22-66 for EP-MP. My reasoning is since the player pool is huge, why should I play hands that would make my decision harder postflop?

I’ve also made foolish expreriments:

1. half stacking at 25NL – it was good for a while but I can’t handle the swing.
2. playing double up sngs – this is so dumb, it’s a waste of time

So this is the way I table select:

1. Find tables with ‘Avg Pot’ bigger the 20bb and the table must not have more than 2 shortstackers (<40bb)
2. Once seated, play a normal game.
3. After 20-30 minutes evaluate your table and your seat.
4. I’ll leave the table if:

• It’s a tight table (<22 VPIP) leave. I don’t want to waste time squeezing rocks.
• There’s a BIG calling station / maniac on my left.
• There’s more than 2 shortstackers on the table.

A well known fact is the best 6 max table is two fish on your right and two nits on your left so these factors are what I always have in mind when I table select.

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Planning for December

November has been quite good to me, considering that it has been 5 months since I left poker. I had to work hard on my discipline which I think is my biggest leak. I’m in the last leg of the month, another 5k hands to go and another $50 bonus to claim. If my bankroll is more than $600, I’m planning to move $500 to Absolute Poker to claim the bonus and rakeback there since Everest $50 monthly bonus is not consistent and the rakeback is only about 15%.

I love time savers…

…even if it is only for only less click. I just found out in this website that if you want to open a link to a new tab in Firefox, you can save one click by using your scroll wheel button instead of right clicking the link and choose ‘Open in new tab’.  Nice.

SnG Donkaments

I was a bit bored today so I played two $11 SnG. Finished 6th and 7th. What a waste of 2.2 buy-ins. Being bored is a leak. Go watch a video!

I’ve got 1200 hands to go to complete 10k hands. It is 4 a.m. The game is juicy but I’m too tired.

TTD before December ’09

[    ] Accumulate 2500 Summit points to qualify Camp 2 at Everest.

That means:

[    ] I have to play around 20k hands.

Update:

week 1: 5k hands done.

23 Nov: 16646 hands. I got ~5k hands to go which has to be done before  noon of 26th Nov since I’m going away for a long weekend. That’s roughly equivalent of 12 hours of poker. I have decided to finish accumulating another 400 Summit points for this month and I’m in the process of accumulating $200 after completing the 5k hands.

Plugging leaks

I have start doing ‘homework’ after my sessions. I have never done this before. After one homework and a bit of reading, I hope I’ll be plugging one of my leaks which is pushing/calling all in preflop with draws. e.g.: Ax suited on a flush draw, QTo on a straight draw board.

When my opponents like their cards and their are betting it aggressively, I don’t have any fold equity when pushing all in.

When my opponents like their cards and their putting me all in, I’ll usually get 2 to 1 or 3 to 1 odds which is bleeding money in the long run.

This type of high variance play is suitable if I have 50+ buy-ins so I will stop doing it.

And every time I repeat it I will post it here to remind me how much I lost.

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LOST 120bb

Example homework:

SB: $1.95
Hero (BB): $16.36
UTG: $10.09
MP: $7.05
CO: $18.18
BTN: $17.66

Pre Flop: ($0.15) Hero is BB with Q 9
2 folds, CO calls $0.10, 1 fold, SB calls $0.05, Hero checks

Flop: ($0.30) 4 J K (3 players)
SB bets $0.30, Hero raises to $0.80, CO raises to $1.60, SB folds, Hero?

Notes on CO: SJ (suited junky), Limpsalot, c/c draws, bets = goods
CO is a habitual limper and I have seen him playing his draws passively.

Scenario 1 -
1. I’m putting him on top pair with medium/good kicker, two pairs, sets.
2. His range would be: K9s+,K4s,J4s,K9o+,K4o,J4o,44.

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

56,430 games 0.005 secs 11,286,000 games/sec

Board: Kd Jd 4c
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 43.099% 42.89% 00.21% 24201 120.00 { Qd9d }
Hand 1: 56.901% 56.69% 00.21% 31989 120.00 { K9s+, K4s, J4s, K9o+, K4o, J4o }

3. I don’t think he is drawing to a straight or flush because he usually calls his draws until he hits.
4. I don’t have any fold equity because he likes his cards on the flop and he wants to play a big pot right now. So putting him all in is high variance.
5. Since my pot odds are 30/8 ( 3.75 to 1) and my equity against his range is 57/42 ( 1.35 to 1) then flat calling the 3bet is best and EV+ (pot odds > equity).

Turn play:

Blank card: Call any turn that isn’t an overbet or all in. If villain put in a pot sized bet (PSB), my pot odds is 3 to 1, my equity is 2 to 1.

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I lost this hand because I didn’t know and didn’t care about my equity and pot odds before doing this homework. I just ‘feel’. I just jammed the pot thinking that my flush draw + gutshot is good without ever considering any of opponents history, without putting him in a range, and without trying to calculate the pot odds and my equity against his range.

This is not saying that I will check call every time I’m on a draw, I will continue to throw in semi bluff bets to build the pot but not to blow the pot and my equity apart.

The only draws that I’m going crazy will be straight + flush draws.

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Good news: I have claimed the $50 bonus. Yay!

Tired + Lost focus = Bankroll destroyer

I played tons of hands yesterday to chase the bonus but I wonder was it worth it? I’ve got less than 100 Summit points to go but at the same time I managed to wipe out 75% of my last week’s winning.

I know that I must treat this as a job but grinding while being tired will do my game no good. I stacked off very light with one pair type of hands A LOT and mistakenly thinking that I could manage the tilt like I did last week. Starting from now, I will be using stopwatch as recommended by spoonitnow to discipline my breaks.

I know what is required to be successful in this game. Again, to remind myself:

1. Make sure all the chores are done.
2. Read ISF Rules to beat low stakes every time before the start of each session.
3. Set the stopwatch to one and half hour.
4. Be DISCIPLINE! Play as PLANNED and find spots to EXPLOIT opponents.
5. Take a 10 minutes break away from the computer. Go to the kitchen and make a drink.
6. Play one more session.
7. Stop and rest.

My best game commence by following these simple steps. The positive money results will follow. It is inevitable.

Week 1 update

I managed to put in less than 3k hands last week.  I need to treat this as a job where I HAVE TO punch in and punch out every and put in hands on table; unless I’m too tired…

I will start at 9 p.m. until 12 p.m. everyday instead of going to bed at 9 p.m. and thinking that I can wake up and play at 3 a.m. (the JUICIEST time to play)

I have 450 Summit points to collect before Wednesday so I really have to grind 10 hours to get it. I’ll be kicking myself if I don’t grab the oppurtunity of claiming 5 buy-ins.

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Good news:

I don’t have to spend over $80 for a poker tracking software because I just found my registration number for my Holdem Manager (HEM) in my old PC. I like the PT3′s HUD custom statistics, though. I’ll consider PT3 when the player pool is considerably less.

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Goal for this week:

[     ] Play > 5k hands.

[  x  ] Claim the $50 bonus by Wednesday (I know I already put this in another post but it is so important for me to claim this bonus).

TTD before Wednesday, November 09, 2009

[  x  ] Collect 600 Summit points and claim $50 bonus.

Configuring PT3 HUD

I spent about two hours yesterday configuring my HUD. I downloaded four videos tutorials of configuring PT3 HUD from YouTube by TightPoker.com & spoonitnow. By default, the HUD for PT3 only show stats for amount of hands, player name, VPIP, PFR and Aggression frequency.

There’s a lot of stats to choose but since I play at Everest which has a short decision timer, I decided to add Fold to CBet%, Fold to Turn Bet%, Cbet% and Limp/Fold% and remove the player name from my HUD. I’ll probably exchange Fold to Turn Bet% with Attempt to Steal% if I can’t exploit my opponent with the former stats. I will upload the image later.

After a long session yesterday, I went to bed late and it affected my work the next day so I promised myself to go to bed around midnight. Since it was almost 11 p.m. after finishing on my HUD, I only played a super short but very profitable session. All my monsters got paid and I made some notes on players which had immediate use.

Everest is offering me a $50 bonus. I have to collect 600 Summit Points before the 11th of November. I can pull this off by playing 6 tables for 15 hours. I am going to put majority of my hands during this weekend.