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Just Cannot Contain Me
Sep. 10th, 2006 10:22 pmSo, I'd worked off my 100 points on Full Tilt, I'd won a few bob on Party, I'd tried a few hands on Ultimate (the site that's dying a death) and quit when slightly ahead. Then I printed out some DVD covers for films that I'd recorded, and then I wrote 850 words of a short story (yes, Birks enters into the realm of fiction, but I fear that it won't be anything that any of you would ever want to read).
What I'm saying is, apart from cleaning the oven, I'd done a bit of just about everything in the past couple of days that I needed to do, and the choice was between writing some of tomorrow's newsletter, or playing on Virgin.
Playing on Virgin won, but it was a close-run thing.
The basic plan there now is just to run up $50 in rake-back (the minimum amount before a payment can be made), redeem my V-points for whatever is the best value, and then to withdraw my cash. Since the NL games are hopeless for rakeback generation, I decided to sit down at one (one) of the highest-stakes limit tables available.
I haven't played one table for so long, I'd forgotten what it was like. Luckily there was a $5-$10 table available, and I plonked myself down, carefully not letting my attention wander as it had done in the past. Watch the players after you have folded, I told myself. You don't have pokertracker to tell you what they will do. And the last time you multi-tabled on this site you lost $800 in three days. Remember that.
And, also, these are Europeans, ensconced in the "won't bet, won't fold" mode, with occasional splashes of laggy lunacy.
Now, Aaron Brown (admittedly, an American), makes some astute points about calling rather than raising or folding. Summed up generally, his line is the same as mine. Calling is right in particular circumstances, but what it is not is a compromise between raising and folding.
Unfortunately, when you have five people to your left who think that calling is precisely that, life can get a bit difficult for us Brownites (Aaron, not Gordon).
So, you are in MP1 and you get AJo. UTG limps (this means nothing. Everyone limps). You raise. The player on your left calls with 93s. This leads to a shoal of call,call,call,call. The flop comes K83. You bet, the player on your left sees this as the perfect flop, so, of course, he just calls. And so on.
You give up on the turn and await another day.
Then your AA gets cracked by a flush on the river and your KK immediately after loses to AK on a flop of AQx. Despite all this, the opposition is so unremittingly awful that you just gear yourself down, check-call with top pair, limp first in with hands like T9s (because there is little chance of these mainland Europeans raising you) and generally adjust your game to a completely different playing style.
You can see why Aksu says that there isn't much wrong with limping with A7s with one previous caller. Because in this type of game it is absolutely the right play. If you try it these days at $2-$4 or $3-$6 on the US sites, you get raised 90% of the time. But not here. I would say that 60% of flops - at $5-$10, mind you, were seeing a flop without a raise.
And, after two hours of increasing frustration. sinking to nearly $100 down (only 10 big bets, mind you), you finally hit a couple of hands and get $20 up. You have a headache, you are tired, and you say "thank fuck for that" and quit. Your faith in yourself is restored.
I'm fairly sure there are some short-stacked guys in these games IMing each other (the Germans were my main suspects tonight), but maybe that's just my natural superstition of European players who seem to be playing all wrong and yet finishing up in the black. Another possibility is extreme incompetence, blind luck, and short-term variance. Certainly the bigger games there have vanished, indicating either that the cheats have won, or the blind luck ran out.
+++++++++
I wandered round some of the UK bloggers' sites via a round-robin of link to link, and some of it made for sorry reading. I know that these guys are no-limit players (as a rule) and so my judgement of individual plays might be a bit suspect, but most of my thoughts on the game the past few months has been on the metagame, and it seemed to me that hardly any of these guys had any grasp of this whatsoever. Most seemed to be from outside London (although this has no relevance to my overall point, so I'm not sure why I mentioned it) and generally the approach seemed more suited to Bill Hicks than Bill Hikock. "It's only a ride".
Common errors spotted (and these were among players playing $2-$4 NL up to £40-£80 NL):
1) Playing too long.
2) Bad bankroll management.
3) Drinking.
4) Assumption that the good times are "normal" while the bad times are aberrations.
5) Too many either negative EV or marginal EV choices. Too few of the "grinding profit" days, resulting in hardw aon cash disappearing in tournaments, or, worse, qualifiers.
6) Linked to (2), playing at too high a level. Moving up and down in levels too quickly.
7) a generally amateurish approach with a lack of preparedness. "Taking things as they come".
8) No strategic game-plan from day to day or month to month. Or, if there is one, a tendencey to abandon it too soon if something happens (either good or bad).
It was all a bit depressing, although it did make me feel that if the upper echelons of the limit game were anything comparable to the No Limit arena, then I could surely beat it.
Unfortunately, when you read the 2+2 fora, you soon realize that there are guys playing higher levels of NL and Limit who prepare very hard and who you know will be long-term winners. A pity, really. Then again, I find these guys "easier" to play against than the complete donks I just saw on Virgin. By that I mean I find them less frustrating to play against. However, I know that in the long run I make more money against the donks. That's two of the reasons I play them at lower stakes. One is that I can cope with the inevitable suck-outs with some sanguinity, and the other is that there are more of them at that level.
Bedtime. Ugh, Monday tomorrow. Roll on September 27th. I never want to see an insuranace story again.
++++++++++++++
What I'm saying is, apart from cleaning the oven, I'd done a bit of just about everything in the past couple of days that I needed to do, and the choice was between writing some of tomorrow's newsletter, or playing on Virgin.
Playing on Virgin won, but it was a close-run thing.
The basic plan there now is just to run up $50 in rake-back (the minimum amount before a payment can be made), redeem my V-points for whatever is the best value, and then to withdraw my cash. Since the NL games are hopeless for rakeback generation, I decided to sit down at one (one) of the highest-stakes limit tables available.
I haven't played one table for so long, I'd forgotten what it was like. Luckily there was a $5-$10 table available, and I plonked myself down, carefully not letting my attention wander as it had done in the past. Watch the players after you have folded, I told myself. You don't have pokertracker to tell you what they will do. And the last time you multi-tabled on this site you lost $800 in three days. Remember that.
And, also, these are Europeans, ensconced in the "won't bet, won't fold" mode, with occasional splashes of laggy lunacy.
Now, Aaron Brown (admittedly, an American), makes some astute points about calling rather than raising or folding. Summed up generally, his line is the same as mine. Calling is right in particular circumstances, but what it is not is a compromise between raising and folding.
Unfortunately, when you have five people to your left who think that calling is precisely that, life can get a bit difficult for us Brownites (Aaron, not Gordon).
So, you are in MP1 and you get AJo. UTG limps (this means nothing. Everyone limps). You raise. The player on your left calls with 93s. This leads to a shoal of call,call,call,call. The flop comes K83. You bet, the player on your left sees this as the perfect flop, so, of course, he just calls. And so on.
You give up on the turn and await another day.
Then your AA gets cracked by a flush on the river and your KK immediately after loses to AK on a flop of AQx. Despite all this, the opposition is so unremittingly awful that you just gear yourself down, check-call with top pair, limp first in with hands like T9s (because there is little chance of these mainland Europeans raising you) and generally adjust your game to a completely different playing style.
You can see why Aksu says that there isn't much wrong with limping with A7s with one previous caller. Because in this type of game it is absolutely the right play. If you try it these days at $2-$4 or $3-$6 on the US sites, you get raised 90% of the time. But not here. I would say that 60% of flops - at $5-$10, mind you, were seeing a flop without a raise.
And, after two hours of increasing frustration. sinking to nearly $100 down (only 10 big bets, mind you), you finally hit a couple of hands and get $20 up. You have a headache, you are tired, and you say "thank fuck for that" and quit. Your faith in yourself is restored.
I'm fairly sure there are some short-stacked guys in these games IMing each other (the Germans were my main suspects tonight), but maybe that's just my natural superstition of European players who seem to be playing all wrong and yet finishing up in the black. Another possibility is extreme incompetence, blind luck, and short-term variance. Certainly the bigger games there have vanished, indicating either that the cheats have won, or the blind luck ran out.
+++++++++
I wandered round some of the UK bloggers' sites via a round-robin of link to link, and some of it made for sorry reading. I know that these guys are no-limit players (as a rule) and so my judgement of individual plays might be a bit suspect, but most of my thoughts on the game the past few months has been on the metagame, and it seemed to me that hardly any of these guys had any grasp of this whatsoever. Most seemed to be from outside London (although this has no relevance to my overall point, so I'm not sure why I mentioned it) and generally the approach seemed more suited to Bill Hicks than Bill Hikock. "It's only a ride".
Common errors spotted (and these were among players playing $2-$4 NL up to £40-£80 NL):
1) Playing too long.
2) Bad bankroll management.
3) Drinking.
4) Assumption that the good times are "normal" while the bad times are aberrations.
5) Too many either negative EV or marginal EV choices. Too few of the "grinding profit" days, resulting in hardw aon cash disappearing in tournaments, or, worse, qualifiers.
6) Linked to (2), playing at too high a level. Moving up and down in levels too quickly.
7) a generally amateurish approach with a lack of preparedness. "Taking things as they come".
8) No strategic game-plan from day to day or month to month. Or, if there is one, a tendencey to abandon it too soon if something happens (either good or bad).
It was all a bit depressing, although it did make me feel that if the upper echelons of the limit game were anything comparable to the No Limit arena, then I could surely beat it.
Unfortunately, when you read the 2+2 fora, you soon realize that there are guys playing higher levels of NL and Limit who prepare very hard and who you know will be long-term winners. A pity, really. Then again, I find these guys "easier" to play against than the complete donks I just saw on Virgin. By that I mean I find them less frustrating to play against. However, I know that in the long run I make more money against the donks. That's two of the reasons I play them at lower stakes. One is that I can cope with the inevitable suck-outs with some sanguinity, and the other is that there are more of them at that level.
Bedtime. Ugh, Monday tomorrow. Roll on September 27th. I never want to see an insuranace story again.
++++++++++++++
