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Holidays = stress
Dec. 24th, 2007 10:52 amI think that it's a bit unfair that, having recovered from four days of 'flu, that I should then come down with a cold. But that's what happened on Saturday evening. Definitely a cold, completely different from the fluey feeling earlier in the week. But, overall, still a bit of a pisser.
It was doubly annoying because, as you may have read in the newspapers, I was at the weekend received into the Catholic Church. I pointed out to the Cardinal that there were a few minor differences between my own beliefs and that of the Pope, such as the fact that I didn't believe in God, was in favour of abortion, thought that divorce was a good thing (and, indeed, that it should in some cases be compulsory), supported people who chose to use contraception, and vaguely preferred Rangers over Celtic. The Cardinal said that these were minor issues of faith and were not that important.
I did say that I liked the costumes and the architecture, and that seemed good enough for the Cardinal.
+++++++++
Followers of Mr Pickle and players of 1830 will have noted with some amusement the decision of Virgin Trains (major shareholders, Stagecoach and Mr Pickle) to pay out in dividends twice what it made in profit. Cynical observers might think this a rather poorly disguise way to transfer money from the taxpayer via subsidies to the pockets of Virgin Trains' shareholders. However, I am reliably informed that Virgin Trains was taking lots of dividends in one hit, and that it was fair reward for all the risks it had taken over the years.
Yeah. Right.
Virgin plane staff start their strike soon. 10% of flights affected. Virgin actually sent me an e-mail stating how my own efficient travel was their only concern. perhaps some rather more efficient targeting of e-mails (say, to people who have actually bought tickets for travel in the near future) might be less irritating.
++++++++++++
Volatility continues to be fairly hectic on the poker tables. I played badly yesterday, and there was one hand that I think that I should have got away from where instead I got stacked off. Luckily the awfulness of much of the weak-tight opposition makes getting away from hands quite easy in most cases, but in this case my opponent spotted the "just call a reraise heads-up" when holding Aces, and stacked off my QQ on the flop. Given his stats (9%/3%) I should have spotted his check-raise all-in on a flop of 332 as AA rather than "any overpair from 8s upwards" which would be the possible range against stats such as 32%/20%. I should have continuation betted smaller and folded to his check-raise.
The hands on Full Tilt continue to defy description in terms of freakiness. I called a raise with TT in the big blind in a multi-wayer and the board was checked round on Q85, and then checked around again on a board of Q852. River brought a 10, giving me the full house and I bet half my stack (about the size of the pot). One player called in for 2/3 this amount and the original raiser effectively mini-raised me all-in. I called and he showed QQ for the higher full house. I should have smelt a rat when he checked the flop, but it's still hard to see how to get away from it, because, until that final raise, he could well have played AK the same way. Even he called it a "cooler", but once again, doubts nagged at me. Was it really? How many times have I called in that kind of situation and won? Not 20%, I'm sure of that. Would he raise me all-in there with AA (indeed would he have played the hand that way with AA?). What hand can he have apart from QQ? Unfortunately his laggy stats and my perception that it was late at night in the US so the guy might have gone a bit mental, led me to make a call that was incorrect.
It's calling people down at this level that costs the money. They are just too weak-tight to smash in stack-level bets without the nuts. At times I have seen check-behinds on the river with hands that seemed ridiculously strong. I've also seen some incredibly small bets (say, 20% of the pot) from very good hands (second- or third-nuts) where I've said to myself "hell, I would have paid off for much more than that".
Once again, I've got to stop thinking that opponents are thinking the way that I am. It's costing me cash. $100 buy-ins see very few semi-bluff shoves on the flop or turn. Those that might do it are clearly marked by their stats. If in doubt, err on the side of caution and walk away.
I'm not sure if my style of play has changed, but I've now had a five buy-in downswing, something I've only seen once before this year, but it comes on the back of several days of two or three-buy-in gains. I've made some minor changes to my play, which could be a cause of some of the increased volatility, but I don't see it as being the major cause. That, I suspect, has been the fact that, being on holiday, I have been playing late at night UK and European time.
The win rate is up this month as well, about 12% higher per 100 hands and about 30% higher per hour (mainly because I've been four-tabling almost exclusively) but how much of this is due to the change in style, how much due to playing at a different time, and how much due to coincidence, I don't really know.
One factor could well be this spread of the mini-raise (first seen on Full Tilt and now becoming more frequent on Party). As I pointed out many months ago, when I tried it from a couple of spots (UTG and in the small blind) it served two purposes; (a) it gets rid of multi-tabler weak-tights in the BB who click auto check/fold and (b) it often gets you to see a cheap multi-way flop.
The counterplay, clearly, is never to let the mini-raise see the flop for just the mini-raise, even if you have the kind of hand that might like to see the flop cheaply as well. What matters is how cheaply you want to see the flop compared to the mini-raiser not in absolute terms. I concluded therefore that I would either fold or reraise to this mini-raise, and never flat-call.
Well, that's some of the volatility, for a start.
I've also adjusted some raising levels in an attempt to get more post-flop play. I did this because my stats showed that I was winning more money when I was called by one opponent than when I took down the pot uncontested. Clearly you don't want to lower the raise too far, because this might mean that, even though you are called more often, the actual pot that you win is going to be, on average, smaller. But there was quite a big gap between amount won in singly contested pots vs pots where there was no flop, which seemed to indicate to me that the ideal raise point was slightly lower than that at which I was pitching it.
Multi-wayers were too small a sample, but they didn't look very good at first sight. Too much relied on a showdown, which boosted volatility (bad) and showed, once again, that if I came up against resistance, it was best for me to get away early. Indeed, one could call my willingness to go to showdown on marginal hands was largely a metagame factor, discouraging opponents from trying to push me off the hand. Well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. However, it's incredible how few hands actually get that far. Offhand, I'd say it was less than 1% of hands where I put in the initial raise. This inevitably leads one to wonder whether the cards one holds are really that relevant at all. Just focus on particular types of opponent.
I'm now winning about 52% of showdowns on the IP Network at $100 buy-in (33,000 hands this year), but only 49% on both Party (12,000 hands) and Full Tilt (11,000 hands). I also have a higher pot-winning percentage when saw flop on IP, 40.5% vs 39.5% on the other two sites, while on Party I appear to have a significantly lower percentage VPIP (16.5% to 17.5%).
This could be down to a number of factors. More aggressive opponents, more aware opponents, short-term luck or lack thereof. But I frequently get the feeling that I'm thinking at $200 or $400 buy-in level against $100 buy-in opponents. I know the sharp players out there. The others don't seem to look much beyond a crib sheet and a very formulaic way of playing that should only catch fish. Unfortunately, I often say "ohh, man, that's too obvious. He must mean something else...." And then I find that he doesn't.
+++++++++++++++++
It was doubly annoying because, as you may have read in the newspapers, I was at the weekend received into the Catholic Church. I pointed out to the Cardinal that there were a few minor differences between my own beliefs and that of the Pope, such as the fact that I didn't believe in God, was in favour of abortion, thought that divorce was a good thing (and, indeed, that it should in some cases be compulsory), supported people who chose to use contraception, and vaguely preferred Rangers over Celtic. The Cardinal said that these were minor issues of faith and were not that important.
I did say that I liked the costumes and the architecture, and that seemed good enough for the Cardinal.
+++++++++
Followers of Mr Pickle and players of 1830 will have noted with some amusement the decision of Virgin Trains (major shareholders, Stagecoach and Mr Pickle) to pay out in dividends twice what it made in profit. Cynical observers might think this a rather poorly disguise way to transfer money from the taxpayer via subsidies to the pockets of Virgin Trains' shareholders. However, I am reliably informed that Virgin Trains was taking lots of dividends in one hit, and that it was fair reward for all the risks it had taken over the years.
Yeah. Right.
Virgin plane staff start their strike soon. 10% of flights affected. Virgin actually sent me an e-mail stating how my own efficient travel was their only concern. perhaps some rather more efficient targeting of e-mails (say, to people who have actually bought tickets for travel in the near future) might be less irritating.
++++++++++++
Volatility continues to be fairly hectic on the poker tables. I played badly yesterday, and there was one hand that I think that I should have got away from where instead I got stacked off. Luckily the awfulness of much of the weak-tight opposition makes getting away from hands quite easy in most cases, but in this case my opponent spotted the "just call a reraise heads-up" when holding Aces, and stacked off my QQ on the flop. Given his stats (9%/3%) I should have spotted his check-raise all-in on a flop of 332 as AA rather than "any overpair from 8s upwards" which would be the possible range against stats such as 32%/20%. I should have continuation betted smaller and folded to his check-raise.
The hands on Full Tilt continue to defy description in terms of freakiness. I called a raise with TT in the big blind in a multi-wayer and the board was checked round on Q85, and then checked around again on a board of Q852. River brought a 10, giving me the full house and I bet half my stack (about the size of the pot). One player called in for 2/3 this amount and the original raiser effectively mini-raised me all-in. I called and he showed QQ for the higher full house. I should have smelt a rat when he checked the flop, but it's still hard to see how to get away from it, because, until that final raise, he could well have played AK the same way. Even he called it a "cooler", but once again, doubts nagged at me. Was it really? How many times have I called in that kind of situation and won? Not 20%, I'm sure of that. Would he raise me all-in there with AA (indeed would he have played the hand that way with AA?). What hand can he have apart from QQ? Unfortunately his laggy stats and my perception that it was late at night in the US so the guy might have gone a bit mental, led me to make a call that was incorrect.
It's calling people down at this level that costs the money. They are just too weak-tight to smash in stack-level bets without the nuts. At times I have seen check-behinds on the river with hands that seemed ridiculously strong. I've also seen some incredibly small bets (say, 20% of the pot) from very good hands (second- or third-nuts) where I've said to myself "hell, I would have paid off for much more than that".
Once again, I've got to stop thinking that opponents are thinking the way that I am. It's costing me cash. $100 buy-ins see very few semi-bluff shoves on the flop or turn. Those that might do it are clearly marked by their stats. If in doubt, err on the side of caution and walk away.
I'm not sure if my style of play has changed, but I've now had a five buy-in downswing, something I've only seen once before this year, but it comes on the back of several days of two or three-buy-in gains. I've made some minor changes to my play, which could be a cause of some of the increased volatility, but I don't see it as being the major cause. That, I suspect, has been the fact that, being on holiday, I have been playing late at night UK and European time.
The win rate is up this month as well, about 12% higher per 100 hands and about 30% higher per hour (mainly because I've been four-tabling almost exclusively) but how much of this is due to the change in style, how much due to playing at a different time, and how much due to coincidence, I don't really know.
One factor could well be this spread of the mini-raise (first seen on Full Tilt and now becoming more frequent on Party). As I pointed out many months ago, when I tried it from a couple of spots (UTG and in the small blind) it served two purposes; (a) it gets rid of multi-tabler weak-tights in the BB who click auto check/fold and (b) it often gets you to see a cheap multi-way flop.
The counterplay, clearly, is never to let the mini-raise see the flop for just the mini-raise, even if you have the kind of hand that might like to see the flop cheaply as well. What matters is how cheaply you want to see the flop compared to the mini-raiser not in absolute terms. I concluded therefore that I would either fold or reraise to this mini-raise, and never flat-call.
Well, that's some of the volatility, for a start.
I've also adjusted some raising levels in an attempt to get more post-flop play. I did this because my stats showed that I was winning more money when I was called by one opponent than when I took down the pot uncontested. Clearly you don't want to lower the raise too far, because this might mean that, even though you are called more often, the actual pot that you win is going to be, on average, smaller. But there was quite a big gap between amount won in singly contested pots vs pots where there was no flop, which seemed to indicate to me that the ideal raise point was slightly lower than that at which I was pitching it.
Multi-wayers were too small a sample, but they didn't look very good at first sight. Too much relied on a showdown, which boosted volatility (bad) and showed, once again, that if I came up against resistance, it was best for me to get away early. Indeed, one could call my willingness to go to showdown on marginal hands was largely a metagame factor, discouraging opponents from trying to push me off the hand. Well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. However, it's incredible how few hands actually get that far. Offhand, I'd say it was less than 1% of hands where I put in the initial raise. This inevitably leads one to wonder whether the cards one holds are really that relevant at all. Just focus on particular types of opponent.
I'm now winning about 52% of showdowns on the IP Network at $100 buy-in (33,000 hands this year), but only 49% on both Party (12,000 hands) and Full Tilt (11,000 hands). I also have a higher pot-winning percentage when saw flop on IP, 40.5% vs 39.5% on the other two sites, while on Party I appear to have a significantly lower percentage VPIP (16.5% to 17.5%).
This could be down to a number of factors. More aggressive opponents, more aware opponents, short-term luck or lack thereof. But I frequently get the feeling that I'm thinking at $200 or $400 buy-in level against $100 buy-in opponents. I know the sharp players out there. The others don't seem to look much beyond a crib sheet and a very formulaic way of playing that should only catch fish. Unfortunately, I often say "ohh, man, that's too obvious. He must mean something else...." And then I find that he doesn't.
+++++++++++++++++
