![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Land Of A Thousand Words
Nov. 5th, 2006 09:18 amWhat with LiveJournal offline all of yesterday, I'll save the two hand histories that I put together, both of them illustrating interesting facets of play at $3-$6 online these days, until later in the week. Meanwhile, I'll just witter.
Taking a leaf out of Law School Dropout's book, I decided that, what with games likely to get tougher, I might have to practise some game selection. This is particularly the case if I have to admit to my egoful self that I probably can't beat any $5-$10 game on the planet.
Anyway, a bad start to the month at both $2-$4 and $3-$6 had me screaming for a change of pace. So, what better than game selection at a higher level? With Full Tilt showing a fair bit of action at $5-$10 these days, this seemed a reasonable option.
This has worked very well the past couple of days apart from one minor hiccup. This was when I spotted a $15-$30 game with two, yes two, 60%/15% players at a nine-player table. Well, if you are going to practise game selection, I said to myself, you'd be a fool to turn this down.
Net result was minus $300 after 40 hands, at which point, damn it, I had to go out (darned real world). Three significant hands. In the first my flush draw with a gutshot missed. In the second my AQ turned from a pair of queens into an ace flush by the end, and in the third my AA got cracked against one of the fish when his K8 hit a board of 8-5-2-8-K. In other words, I was fairly sure that I had positive EV in that game, but you can't eat value, and the monthly figures began to look a bit sicker as a result.
However, if you are selecting games, turning down bad games, and playing at higher levels, then higher volatility very much comes with the territory. Whereas three-tabling at $2-$4 for a month tends to keep the results on a fairly even keel, game selection at $5-$10 to $15-$30 (I'd even punt $30-$60 if I spotted some fish) can result in four-figure swings without a blink of an eyelid. Still, that's the mood I'm in at the moment, and at least while I'm sitting down I don't feel an overwhelming sense of ennui.
Postscript. Found loose $8-$16 game Sunday morning. AA in big blind cracked by J4-off limper on the button this time, for $350 pot (well, I had to check-raise on the turn to eliminate the drawing hand behind me :-) ) Crawled back to $250 down, with my "high"-stakes record with AA now a stunning nought for two and minus $300 or thereabouts. Decided to alter range of axis scale on monthly figures. That way the downswing only looks a third as big. Cunning as a fox, or what?
++++++++++
The MTV awards last week gave Depeche Mode the best group award (or something like that). Now, I have nothing against Depeche Mode, but surely 20 years ago, if asked what you would have predicted for them, if they were still around, it would have been that they would have been playing their old hit in Essex music pubs, followed by the old faithful -- as has been the fate of many of their contemporaries. Their continued success in the USA (which is what the MTV awards are all about, let's face it) remains a perpetual puzzle.
Do you think that Jack White read all those reviews of how bad his "musical" partner was in The White Stripes? Because you only had to watch the performance of The Raconteurs on either Jools Holland or the Electric Proms to realize that Jack White is a very special talent indeed. This is a bit unfair on Brendan Benson and "the other two guys" from the Greenhomes, who are no mean musicians themselves, but once Jack White is freed from the self-imposed burden of keeping the whole shebang going by himself, you get to see what he is really capable of.
Most so-called supergroups have been a pile of shite, usually het up with ego problems, and The Raconteurs might well go the same way. So, well, just enjoy it while you can, I say.
+++++++++++++++++
I got an e-mail from Paradise at the weekend. If ever an online poker site totally lost the plot, Paradise is it. Not only has the American law slaughtered their customer base, but only now have they realized that Paradise Poker is facing death by lack of liquidity. So what do they do? They offer you rakeback for a limited period. They actually call it "bonus dollars" and pretend to you that $5,000 is "in" your account. Which just goes to show what utter donkeys most people in marketing are (apparently they think that if you are playing $2-$4 you are likely to be generating bonus points "nearly every hand". Yeah, right.) Only a few years ago, indeed, only six months ago, I would have leapt at this offer from Paradise. But now it's too little and too late. The only players tempted back will be there for the bonus dollars and nothing else. The games will still be thin on the ground and will turn to crap. Obviously, since I have shares in SportingBet, I desperately hope that I am wrong (the Poker Site isn't really part of my calculations anyway). However, the guys who trousered $300m-plus by selling it to SportingBet must be wondering when the next mug will be walking round the corner.
+++++++++++++
I see that the courts will be delivering a verdict on Saddam Hussein this week.
"SADDAM INNOCENT" rules Iraqi court.
An Iraqi Court today decided that Saddam Hussein was innocent of all charges relating to genocide of the Kurds, murder of innocent families, corruption and torture. The senior judge said that "we think it was a case of mistaken identity. Saddam had so many lookalikes, we think that it was one of these who ordered all that bad stuff. We believe Mr Hussein when he says that, at the time of the chemical attack that killed tens of thousands of Kurds, he was at home, doing the Daily Telegraph crossword and watching The X-Files."
Well, perhaps not.
Taking a leaf out of Law School Dropout's book, I decided that, what with games likely to get tougher, I might have to practise some game selection. This is particularly the case if I have to admit to my egoful self that I probably can't beat any $5-$10 game on the planet.
Anyway, a bad start to the month at both $2-$4 and $3-$6 had me screaming for a change of pace. So, what better than game selection at a higher level? With Full Tilt showing a fair bit of action at $5-$10 these days, this seemed a reasonable option.
This has worked very well the past couple of days apart from one minor hiccup. This was when I spotted a $15-$30 game with two, yes two, 60%/15% players at a nine-player table. Well, if you are going to practise game selection, I said to myself, you'd be a fool to turn this down.
Net result was minus $300 after 40 hands, at which point, damn it, I had to go out (darned real world). Three significant hands. In the first my flush draw with a gutshot missed. In the second my AQ turned from a pair of queens into an ace flush by the end, and in the third my AA got cracked against one of the fish when his K8 hit a board of 8-5-2-8-K. In other words, I was fairly sure that I had positive EV in that game, but you can't eat value, and the monthly figures began to look a bit sicker as a result.
However, if you are selecting games, turning down bad games, and playing at higher levels, then higher volatility very much comes with the territory. Whereas three-tabling at $2-$4 for a month tends to keep the results on a fairly even keel, game selection at $5-$10 to $15-$30 (I'd even punt $30-$60 if I spotted some fish) can result in four-figure swings without a blink of an eyelid. Still, that's the mood I'm in at the moment, and at least while I'm sitting down I don't feel an overwhelming sense of ennui.
Postscript. Found loose $8-$16 game Sunday morning. AA in big blind cracked by J4-off limper on the button this time, for $350 pot (well, I had to check-raise on the turn to eliminate the drawing hand behind me :-) ) Crawled back to $250 down, with my "high"-stakes record with AA now a stunning nought for two and minus $300 or thereabouts. Decided to alter range of axis scale on monthly figures. That way the downswing only looks a third as big. Cunning as a fox, or what?
++++++++++
The MTV awards last week gave Depeche Mode the best group award (or something like that). Now, I have nothing against Depeche Mode, but surely 20 years ago, if asked what you would have predicted for them, if they were still around, it would have been that they would have been playing their old hit in Essex music pubs, followed by the old faithful -- as has been the fate of many of their contemporaries. Their continued success in the USA (which is what the MTV awards are all about, let's face it) remains a perpetual puzzle.
Do you think that Jack White read all those reviews of how bad his "musical" partner was in The White Stripes? Because you only had to watch the performance of The Raconteurs on either Jools Holland or the Electric Proms to realize that Jack White is a very special talent indeed. This is a bit unfair on Brendan Benson and "the other two guys" from the Greenhomes, who are no mean musicians themselves, but once Jack White is freed from the self-imposed burden of keeping the whole shebang going by himself, you get to see what he is really capable of.
Most so-called supergroups have been a pile of shite, usually het up with ego problems, and The Raconteurs might well go the same way. So, well, just enjoy it while you can, I say.
+++++++++++++++++
I got an e-mail from Paradise at the weekend. If ever an online poker site totally lost the plot, Paradise is it. Not only has the American law slaughtered their customer base, but only now have they realized that Paradise Poker is facing death by lack of liquidity. So what do they do? They offer you rakeback for a limited period. They actually call it "bonus dollars" and pretend to you that $5,000 is "in" your account. Which just goes to show what utter donkeys most people in marketing are (apparently they think that if you are playing $2-$4 you are likely to be generating bonus points "nearly every hand". Yeah, right.) Only a few years ago, indeed, only six months ago, I would have leapt at this offer from Paradise. But now it's too little and too late. The only players tempted back will be there for the bonus dollars and nothing else. The games will still be thin on the ground and will turn to crap. Obviously, since I have shares in SportingBet, I desperately hope that I am wrong (the Poker Site isn't really part of my calculations anyway). However, the guys who trousered $300m-plus by selling it to SportingBet must be wondering when the next mug will be walking round the corner.
+++++++++++++
I see that the courts will be delivering a verdict on Saddam Hussein this week.
"SADDAM INNOCENT" rules Iraqi court.
An Iraqi Court today decided that Saddam Hussein was innocent of all charges relating to genocide of the Kurds, murder of innocent families, corruption and torture. The senior judge said that "we think it was a case of mistaken identity. Saddam had so many lookalikes, we think that it was one of these who ordered all that bad stuff. We believe Mr Hussein when he says that, at the time of the chemical attack that killed tens of thousands of Kurds, he was at home, doing the Daily Telegraph crossword and watching The X-Files."
Well, perhaps not.
