Some happy developments
May. 6th, 2005 10:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksSince Blogs have the irritating habit of putting the last thing you write at the top, I'll get the poker out of the way first, since I am aware that continual bleatings about the unfairness of life will strain even the most loyal readership.
Yesterday was a curate's egg of 90 minutes' play if ever I saw one. I had reassessed my situation and decided that, once again, Jim Feeney could come to my rescue. What I was going to do was focus on each and every play that I made — and I mean really focus. I would make no automatic play whatsoever, but would think for five seconds or so before making any action. This would follow the Feeney principle of just making sure that you make the right plays, and letting the winning (or, possibly, losing) take care of itself. The point would be, if I thought carefully about every play, at least if I lost again, I would know that I had played to the best of my ability.
Anyway, when your first hand is AQs as a poster and you raise, get an Ace on the flop (A73 rainbow), and you are check-raised by a limper in MP2, you are already in the "hmm, let's have a think about this" mode. I'm not folding this hand and, since I can't see this player making this play on any kind of draw, I am either miles in front (against nothing, or Ace with a lower kicker) or miles behind (against a set or two-pair Aces). I think, and decide to call the bet. To be honest, if the guy had a set, I would expect him to check-raise the turn rather than the flop. I'm more inclined to think that he has a dodgy Ace and he is giving himself the extra shot of me folding to his bets with a slightly better Ace.
Turn comes a Jack and he bets again. I call. River is a nine. He bets. I call. he turns over Ace-Nine. So it goes, and we're already $45 in the hole.
Hand two and I get a pair of nines. One limper. I raise. Big blind (who is very short-stacked with just $21) calls. Flop comes J52 a couple of spades. I bet, he raises. Since all the money is going in here, I decide to reraise. In these situations as often as not a short stack that actually has a hand will let the aggressor bet into him. So I reckon the guy is weak.
So, all the money goes in. Turn is an eight and the river is a King. He turns over 88 for a set of eights. Whoops. Now $80 down in two hands, beaten by a three-outer and a two-outer. You can understand the feelings of persecution, can't you.
An hour later I am $150 down, not through anything significant, just the normal run of things. I then pick up 44 on the button. There is a raise from MP2 by a very aggressive player pre-flop whom a couple of times I have seen give up on the turn when people fight back. I'm not flat-calling here. Either I fold or semi-bluff reraise. I reraise. Big Blind calls. Shit. MP2 calls.
I needn't have worried. Flop came 443 rainbow. Not often you have the nuts on the flop against an obviously good hand in the BB and an aggressive player in MP2. I can't remember how the hand went exactly, but I know that I had $115 more in the bank by the end of it.
Then I drifted back down again until I hit AA on the button and got the almost unheard of two limpers. I raised. The blinds fold and the limpers call. Flop comes TTJ two diamonds, which I don't like the look of at all. Two checks to me. I bet and I get two callers. I'm not really any the wiser. I could be up against a made full house here, or a ropey 4-card straight draw.
Turn is a rag. Two checks to me again. I bet, get two callers. Hmm, I would have expected a good hand to check-raise me here. Could I be in front against something like KJ and a medium pair?
It doesn't matter, because the river is a very beautiful Ace. At this point, things erupt. Player one bets, and player two raises. Whoah! Christmas. I call and, as expected, I get a reraise from the initial bettor. I reckon I am up against KQ twice here. Player 2 merely calls, and I now put in my raise. They are both committed to the fourth bet. Player one had, yes, the flopped full house with JT. Player two had KQ for the straight. Birks has the higher full house and picks up a $199 pot.
So, two bad beats and two good beats. The net result was that I was just over $100 up. In other words (well, this is what I told myself) if the good beats and bad beats even out, you can beat this game. Because it was far from fishy. Most of the players saw between 10% and 25% of flops and most of them raised between 6% and 13% of the time pre-flop. In other words, as Krusty The Clown would say "tough crowd".
A very pleasing development.
Yesterday was a curate's egg of 90 minutes' play if ever I saw one. I had reassessed my situation and decided that, once again, Jim Feeney could come to my rescue. What I was going to do was focus on each and every play that I made — and I mean really focus. I would make no automatic play whatsoever, but would think for five seconds or so before making any action. This would follow the Feeney principle of just making sure that you make the right plays, and letting the winning (or, possibly, losing) take care of itself. The point would be, if I thought carefully about every play, at least if I lost again, I would know that I had played to the best of my ability.
Anyway, when your first hand is AQs as a poster and you raise, get an Ace on the flop (A73 rainbow), and you are check-raised by a limper in MP2, you are already in the "hmm, let's have a think about this" mode. I'm not folding this hand and, since I can't see this player making this play on any kind of draw, I am either miles in front (against nothing, or Ace with a lower kicker) or miles behind (against a set or two-pair Aces). I think, and decide to call the bet. To be honest, if the guy had a set, I would expect him to check-raise the turn rather than the flop. I'm more inclined to think that he has a dodgy Ace and he is giving himself the extra shot of me folding to his bets with a slightly better Ace.
Turn comes a Jack and he bets again. I call. River is a nine. He bets. I call. he turns over Ace-Nine. So it goes, and we're already $45 in the hole.
Hand two and I get a pair of nines. One limper. I raise. Big blind (who is very short-stacked with just $21) calls. Flop comes J52 a couple of spades. I bet, he raises. Since all the money is going in here, I decide to reraise. In these situations as often as not a short stack that actually has a hand will let the aggressor bet into him. So I reckon the guy is weak.
So, all the money goes in. Turn is an eight and the river is a King. He turns over 88 for a set of eights. Whoops. Now $80 down in two hands, beaten by a three-outer and a two-outer. You can understand the feelings of persecution, can't you.
An hour later I am $150 down, not through anything significant, just the normal run of things. I then pick up 44 on the button. There is a raise from MP2 by a very aggressive player pre-flop whom a couple of times I have seen give up on the turn when people fight back. I'm not flat-calling here. Either I fold or semi-bluff reraise. I reraise. Big Blind calls. Shit. MP2 calls.
I needn't have worried. Flop came 443 rainbow. Not often you have the nuts on the flop against an obviously good hand in the BB and an aggressive player in MP2. I can't remember how the hand went exactly, but I know that I had $115 more in the bank by the end of it.
Then I drifted back down again until I hit AA on the button and got the almost unheard of two limpers. I raised. The blinds fold and the limpers call. Flop comes TTJ two diamonds, which I don't like the look of at all. Two checks to me. I bet and I get two callers. I'm not really any the wiser. I could be up against a made full house here, or a ropey 4-card straight draw.
Turn is a rag. Two checks to me again. I bet, get two callers. Hmm, I would have expected a good hand to check-raise me here. Could I be in front against something like KJ and a medium pair?
It doesn't matter, because the river is a very beautiful Ace. At this point, things erupt. Player one bets, and player two raises. Whoah! Christmas. I call and, as expected, I get a reraise from the initial bettor. I reckon I am up against KQ twice here. Player 2 merely calls, and I now put in my raise. They are both committed to the fourth bet. Player one had, yes, the flopped full house with JT. Player two had KQ for the straight. Birks has the higher full house and picks up a $199 pot.
So, two bad beats and two good beats. The net result was that I was just over $100 up. In other words (well, this is what I told myself) if the good beats and bad beats even out, you can beat this game. Because it was far from fishy. Most of the players saw between 10% and 25% of flops and most of them raised between 6% and 13% of the time pre-flop. In other words, as Krusty The Clown would say "tough crowd".
A very pleasing development.
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I bet that feels bettter...
Date: 2005-05-06 10:08 am (UTC)And of course you played these correctly (Fundamental Theorem and that) so no problem. +EV before and after the fact. Just -$.
Steady ........ this is tilt country.
But then it worked out. You played good, some of the others played not so good (I particularly like the JT guy getting trapped trying to trap, something I'm prone to doing to myself - good ol' schadenfreude).
But geez. Was everybody that tight? Could you not find a better game somewhere else?
Re: I bet that feels bettter...
Date: 2005-05-06 10:25 am (UTC)A 1) No. At this time of day (5pm UK time), you are going to be up against tough players. And I did say "most". During the 90 minutes I got three loosies (and the KQ guy in the last hand was one of them) playing 35% to 40% of flops. And there were perhaps three more tight/passives, who are even easier to beat (they are, indeed, my favourite kind of opponent).
A 2): Yes. If I spent a long time looking and waiting. Any good game has a longer waiting list. The players waiting to get on that game will, by definition, be tighter and better than average (because they have the brains to practise game selection). In other words, the benefit of searching for a good game is rapidly negated.
A 3) Trust to luck. Sit in a game at random, and wait for a fish to arrive. The style of a game changes rapidly online. You can be certain if you sit in a soft game that it will tighten up fairly quickly. But you can't be certain if you sit in an average game that it will loosen up quickly. But it is more likely to do so than a game already tending towards looseness. This is because the sharks will not have the game that you are in on their radar. The best games I have ever been in have been ones which have become charities after</> I have sat down. because I am already there, and I'm not going anywhere until the bad players have lost all their money (or got lucky, won, and left).
A 4) You have to consider waiting time in terms of opportunity cost. Even sitting out of a hand, if your expectation would be positive to a small degree, is a mistake. This is not so much the case in No Limt, where the losses and gains rely considerably more on your knowledge of how the opposition play. In Limit it's a great help, but you can still have a positive EV without it.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-06 11:38 am (UTC)The only thing that stood out for me was that in the first hand with AQ, if you decide you are not folding, why not play it for 3 bets? You will have position on later streets so although your hand may already be good, you can probably have an option to check the river down if you don't get a better feel for where you are at by then.
One of the characteristics that starts to materialise at 5/10+ is that lots of people are "just checking" to see if you have the ace, either because they are on the rob or because they want a re-inforced clue that they can safely put their Queens down.
Re: I bet that feels bettter...
Date: 2005-05-06 12:29 pm (UTC)I did play until 03:30 last night whilst some counting thing was going on, and it was profitable, but maybe that should go on my blog if I ever get round to starting it!
why not play it for three bets?
Date: 2005-05-06 12:39 pm (UTC)If there had been any kind of draw potential on the flop (say, A89 rainbow, or AH 6S 4S) then I would probably have raised the flop, because there is an added scenario where the raise is right.
Secondly, I concede that, by calling, I appear to be making what might be called a fundamental error along the lines of "Either I should raise here or I should fold, but I don't know which. I know. I'll call". Since I have said that I am not folding, then, logically, I should raise.
So, why did I call? Well, I fear that gun-shyness slightly came into it. It was the first hand and I could see a justification for calling as well as raising, so I did it.
Suppose I raise here and my opponent has a dody Ace? What is he likely to do? Fold, I would guess (unless he thinks I am lying). Since, if I am winning, I am miles ahead, is "going limp" such a bad play? It will get more money out of an aggressive player than raising will. I might even elicit a bet on the river.
One could head into big areas of EV here, but basically the line runs along that of Sklansky's "sometimes the pot is big enough to try to win there and then". If I think this, then I should take the aggression and try to get him to fold.
I don't wamt to go into a heavy maths-fest on this one, because, as I said, I can see the argument for being aggressive. But if the guy has a dodgy Ace, then he only has three outs (and I stil have my three outs if he hits on the turn). Why not go for the extra $20 profit by letting him bet at me on flop, turn and river? Similarly, suppose ther eis a smallish pot and you suspect taht your oppoenent is betting to see where he stands. In this case, just flat-calling can generate a longer-term greater profit (by gaining bets on the turn and flop) than raising back straight away.
The technique works when (a) the initial bettor is aggressive (as most of them are at this level and (b) he has very few outs.