Suckability

I played dreadfully yesterday. Not happy with my efforts to play awfully at NL, I decided at 11.30 at night, when I really should have gone to bed, to prove to myself how bad I am at PLO. I succeeded in my mission with some style. Any descriptions of hands would only be embarrassing. Suffice to say, if I had been watching me play, I think I would have added me to my "buddy" list.

Notwithstanding all this, my PLO appears to indicate a break-even of 0.0 big bets per hand over 1,500 hands or so. Unfortunately, this masks a two-buy-in loss at $200, which is monetarily not compensated by a two-buy-in win at $100.

Even when you play like a dick at PLO, you often have outs. I managed to double my very loose opponent's $150 stack when my second-top-set (Jacks) and nut flush draw rightly got stomped by top set (Queens). It's such an irritating game when players come in UTG with QQ83 rainbow and then double-through against AJJT double-suited but, so it goes. That's how PLO works and I should know that by now.

Playing as near as I possibly could get to tilt without punching the wall, I spunked off the remaining $60 the following hand, to the same donkey. Flop came 887 with two diamonds, and this time I have AJT8 with two diamonds. All my money goes in and he shows 87xx at the end. I've actually got 9 outs twice here, but I still played it tilt-ways.

Fortunately, amidst a day of what I can only describe of unremitting awfulness, I played less badly than some truly awful opponents at $100 PLO, and early in the day I had managed a suck-out at $200NL. Admit them when they come, because they will happen to you. That was a $280 pot that came my way (AKs, flush draw, board of AT6, opponent had two sixes) when I hit the flush after all the money went in on the flop. That meant by noon I was $450 up (although some of that was the weekly rakeback bonus). By midnight I was $50 up (all of which, and a bit more, was the rakeback bonus).

I only played the PLO because the NL looked like a rockfest. Friday nights are not good any more. The best night is definitely Saturday. I'm not sure when this flip-flop came about, but there's no missing it.

In fact, I really ought to give Firdays a complete miss. It's my worst day this year apart from Mondays. Sundays win by a mile, followed by Saturdays, and then decent wins in the midweek Tuesday to Thursday "beat the nits" sessions.

I'm trying to stick solely to $200NL for the rest of the month. The quality of play is distinctly higher, but the nit factor is lower. If I can maintain a three-table regime, I think that my win-rate should be higher, although the concomitant volatility looks pretty horrible (about three times to four as much per hour is my guess). That comprises a combination of higher volatility and a lower win rate.

+++++++

Although there are some useful observations in the latest 2+2 book "Professional No Limit Hold 'em" (PNLHE), it seems to me that some of the advice is positively dangerous if not read very carefully. Certainly if you read the book and immediately dived into a midweek $100 buy-in game on the IP network, you would get shafted.

Beating these nits at $100 buy-in is mainly a matter of avoiding getting stacked off and taking small pot after small pot off them. If your opponent is perpetually in search of implied odds and doesn't have the wit to try anything fancy (because they are six-tabling), then one way to beat them is to not pay them off. OK, sometimes you might actually fold the winning hand, but you will always know when this is the case, because these guys can never resist showing a bluff. And they aren't that common.

In a sense, DY's point that things "are less complicated than you think" seems to hold true. The books I've read on NL focus on winning big pots. Most of the players I am up against are focused on winning big pots. So why should I enter a crowded field? Sure, if I am in a situation where I know I have positive EV, I'm in there. But I'm making my bread and butter by focusing on winning small pots -- lots of them. Pots that people don't notice.

I have no idea if my stats are typical for $100NL, but at the moment they look similar to my limit stats. 17.8% VPIP. PF Raise of 12.6%. Won $ when saw flop, 40.06%. Went to showdown 19.8% (lower than the limit figure, for obvious reasons) and Won pot at showdown, 54.06% (also lower than limit. I'd like this number to be higher!).

When I raise, I'm winning 52% of hands. About half these went to showdown, and my win percentage there is 58%. So the ratio of hands when I raise appears to be in the region of 50:25:25 (fold half time, win without showdown a quarter of time, win at showdown a quarter of time).

PLNHE does mention this in passing when it refers to mistakes your opponents can make and how the profit for you differs. Their somewhat forced example went something like:

You both have $100. You pick up AA (something which happens to you in books far more often then in real life). Opponent raises to $80 and you reraise to $100 all-in.

If opponent calls with his dog hand, he will still win often enough for it to be right for him to call. Although you have the best hand, you still want him to fold, because, if he folds, you win the pot 100% of the time.

In the midweek nit fests, the major error that I see is an inappropriate fold, not an inappropriate call. But you see little reference to this in the books. Perhaps there should be a chapter on "Are you a nit? Here's how you can win more money." The default assumption appears to be that the reader is loose-passive, rather than tight-passive. I suspect that, for most buyers of 2+2 books, tight-passive is the default.

I'm not saying that PNLHE is a bad book, by the way. I just think that it could have expressed its ideas more lucidly and in a better way. The way it reads at the moment, I think that a number of players could cost themselves a lot of cash. Then again, perhaps I should be glad at that.

Codicil. This is a complete stream-of-consciousness ramble. Feel free to point out the self-contradictions, but realize why they are there.