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I decided that I really had to get the ironing done last night, so I turned on the television and the DVD in order to catch up on the Doctor Who Christmas Special (and quite good it was too, despite the fact that I mistook the gorgeous Dervla Kirwan for the gorgeous Miranda Richardson).
By pure chance I hapenned across five girls dancing, with five gay-looking bare-chested guys dancing behind them. All the girls were also lip-synching (not very well) to a "pop" song of the worst kind -- one that could have been written by a computer, and quite possibly was.
What was most frightening was the audience. I know that these people are encouraged to "be enthusiastic" by the Charlottes and Sophies who for some reason (the pension plan, probably) become floor managers at the BBC, but some of these people were clearly loving it on their own time rather than the BBCs. Up they stood, clapping away. And then it struck me that, basically, this was the summit of their ambitions. They wanted to be able to dance like that and to dress like that. With luck, they might even become a WAG. (Well, without trying to be unkind, no amount of Tilly and Susannah could have turned most of these into WAGs.)
I thought that was dispiriting enough, until the follow-up appeared, which was Graham Norton standing next to a bloke dressed up in a Hamster suit, in a giant Hamster Wheel. "Where are you from?" Graham asked the hamster. "Just outside Guildford", he replied, clearly assuming that, although where he lived might be thought of as anonymous, the mere mention of the gian metropolis "Guildford" would eliminate any confusion.
At this point Doctor Who kicked in, and I was spared any more of the nightmare that is Saturday-night prime-time TV on the BBC.
++++++++
Reading the 2+2 Internet poker forums (let's just accept that form of the plural as ok, shall we?) is always illuminating, if not particularly interesting. For a start, it gives you a good benchmark. If the average 2+2 poster thinks it's an awful idea, then you can be fairly sure that it's good for me. That's because the average 2+2 poster who plays at $100 buy-in is a 24-table grinder on Pokerstars. As with all other points, these people are beatable, but I'd rather they weren't there.
I've adopted a slightly different table-search pattern on Stars, because the "default" method I had (biggest average pot size) did not seem to generate the best tables (for me). For why? because big average pot sizes meant a significant number of pre-flop reraises. And a large number of pre-flop reraises, as a rule, usually indicates good aggressive players.
So I switched to VPIP and stopped worrying about average pot sizes, provided the average pot size was above 8x the big blind. This gets me a higher proportion of passive players who might not give you the best EV, but do make it easier to multi-table. Fewer tough decisions for potentially all of your stack.
Now, I know that courting volatility can be good and profitable. It also makes for more interesting hands. On the downside, it makes it much harder to get a decent hand throughput. The extra amount that you might or might not expect to win has to be balanced against greater swonginess and the fact that three-tabling is probably (for me) the comfortable maximum at the moment.
Have run well for a few days, with one five-minute exception where I lost two buy-ins without even blinking. Both times it was to a laggy player because their ranges are so much wider.
The second hands had me wondering for agest about whether I could and/or should have got away from it.
He's on the button and I'm in the BB. I have JTs. It's passed round to the button and he makes it 3x. I could reraise here, but this guy is laggy enough to shove pre-flop. So, I call. $6 in pot, he has $70 behind.
Flop comes JT8 two hearts (not my suit, obv). I have top 2 pair. He bets half the pot and I raise him something like $12. He calls. $30 in pot, he has $58 behind. Turn brings something innocuous like 4s. He bets $9, which is a bit of a smelly amount. I reckon that 90% of the time he's on some kind of draw here and wants to get to the river cheaply.
So, I raise enough to make his decision to call wrong if he's on a draw, something like $22 more. The downside to this is that if he now shoves I am committed. He promptly shoves and I call. He tables Q9 for the flopped straight. My 4-outer does not materialize (online poker is rigged, I tell you). Rebuy.
As you know, I'm loath to call any hand where I get stacked off a "cooler". But it's hard to see how I get away from this. JTs doesn't really merit a reraise preflop in this situation. On the flop, against his range, a failure by me to raise is criminal.
Then on the turn, his bet keeps his range wide enough to make a raise by me better than a call. This means that nearly half my effective stack is in the pot, and even his reshove on the turn could be a desperate semi-bluff.
So it goes.
______________
By pure chance I hapenned across five girls dancing, with five gay-looking bare-chested guys dancing behind them. All the girls were also lip-synching (not very well) to a "pop" song of the worst kind -- one that could have been written by a computer, and quite possibly was.
What was most frightening was the audience. I know that these people are encouraged to "be enthusiastic" by the Charlottes and Sophies who for some reason (the pension plan, probably) become floor managers at the BBC, but some of these people were clearly loving it on their own time rather than the BBCs. Up they stood, clapping away. And then it struck me that, basically, this was the summit of their ambitions. They wanted to be able to dance like that and to dress like that. With luck, they might even become a WAG. (Well, without trying to be unkind, no amount of Tilly and Susannah could have turned most of these into WAGs.)
I thought that was dispiriting enough, until the follow-up appeared, which was Graham Norton standing next to a bloke dressed up in a Hamster suit, in a giant Hamster Wheel. "Where are you from?" Graham asked the hamster. "Just outside Guildford", he replied, clearly assuming that, although where he lived might be thought of as anonymous, the mere mention of the gian metropolis "Guildford" would eliminate any confusion.
At this point Doctor Who kicked in, and I was spared any more of the nightmare that is Saturday-night prime-time TV on the BBC.
++++++++
Reading the 2+2 Internet poker forums (let's just accept that form of the plural as ok, shall we?) is always illuminating, if not particularly interesting. For a start, it gives you a good benchmark. If the average 2+2 poster thinks it's an awful idea, then you can be fairly sure that it's good for me. That's because the average 2+2 poster who plays at $100 buy-in is a 24-table grinder on Pokerstars. As with all other points, these people are beatable, but I'd rather they weren't there.
I've adopted a slightly different table-search pattern on Stars, because the "default" method I had (biggest average pot size) did not seem to generate the best tables (for me). For why? because big average pot sizes meant a significant number of pre-flop reraises. And a large number of pre-flop reraises, as a rule, usually indicates good aggressive players.
So I switched to VPIP and stopped worrying about average pot sizes, provided the average pot size was above 8x the big blind. This gets me a higher proportion of passive players who might not give you the best EV, but do make it easier to multi-table. Fewer tough decisions for potentially all of your stack.
Now, I know that courting volatility can be good and profitable. It also makes for more interesting hands. On the downside, it makes it much harder to get a decent hand throughput. The extra amount that you might or might not expect to win has to be balanced against greater swonginess and the fact that three-tabling is probably (for me) the comfortable maximum at the moment.
Have run well for a few days, with one five-minute exception where I lost two buy-ins without even blinking. Both times it was to a laggy player because their ranges are so much wider.
The second hands had me wondering for agest about whether I could and/or should have got away from it.
He's on the button and I'm in the BB. I have JTs. It's passed round to the button and he makes it 3x. I could reraise here, but this guy is laggy enough to shove pre-flop. So, I call. $6 in pot, he has $70 behind.
Flop comes JT8 two hearts (not my suit, obv). I have top 2 pair. He bets half the pot and I raise him something like $12. He calls. $30 in pot, he has $58 behind. Turn brings something innocuous like 4s. He bets $9, which is a bit of a smelly amount. I reckon that 90% of the time he's on some kind of draw here and wants to get to the river cheaply.
So, I raise enough to make his decision to call wrong if he's on a draw, something like $22 more. The downside to this is that if he now shoves I am committed. He promptly shoves and I call. He tables Q9 for the flopped straight. My 4-outer does not materialize (online poker is rigged, I tell you). Rebuy.
As you know, I'm loath to call any hand where I get stacked off a "cooler". But it's hard to see how I get away from this. JTs doesn't really merit a reraise preflop in this situation. On the flop, against his range, a failure by me to raise is criminal.
Then on the turn, his bet keeps his range wide enough to make a raise by me better than a call. This means that nearly half my effective stack is in the pot, and even his reshove on the turn could be a desperate semi-bluff.
So it goes.
______________
