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November wrap
Nov. 30th, 2010 01:30 pmA satisfying and dissatisfying month online. Although I finished up slightly down (although there's still tonight to go), it was my first month of serious multi-tabling on Stars -- which remains tougher than anywhere else, so to knock through nearly 60k hands on the site (mainly 11- or 12-tabling) and to finish only marginally down in open play is an achievement in itself. As the month has gone one I've felt more "in the zone" with Stars players. I've also colour-coded the regulars, and have adjusted my table-selection accordingly.
Party appears to have dumped any kind of special offer at all ahead of its planned merger. The "Gladiator" offer (or whatever it as) was absolutely pathetic last month or the month before, and effective rakeback on the site seems to have dropped from around 40% at the beginning of the year to something like 17% at the end. Party is also less friendly to serious multi-tabling. I may keep my stack there in preparation for some four-tabling at higher stakes in the new year.
For the rest of the year, and just for the challenge rather than for the money (at least in 2010) the heavy multi-tabling on Stars has brought back the prospect of making Supernova, although, as the Youngmeister observed, I don't want to be one of the people who tries for it and fails. Most of those who "try and fail" do so because they go broke. For me it's more a matter of time.
With a couple of weeks off, and with the Christmas break, Supernova looks doable. Added to this, December has in the past tended to be profitable.
Nine-tenths of this multi-tabling is concentration. For reasons I can't quite fathom, there appears to be some kind of mental equivalent of "the wall" in the marathon. You get to a stage where you start gambling stupidly. But, if you get through this, common sense prevails again. For me this kind of "boredom zone" comes after about 90 minutes (or 850-900 hands).
The other real danger period is right after you sit down. There are any number of known "tricky hands", usually where you are in the big blind with a hand that is good but not that good (say QQ). After you have been playing for a while and got yourself in the zone, you tend to make reasonable decisions, but early on, when you are cold, the important thing is to avoid getting stacked off. Not because of the cost of the single stack, but because of the impact this will have on your whole session.
I've noticed that a bad beat early on in a session is also often bad news for the whole session. It's important when I suffer something like AA losing to KK after 100 or so hands for me to hunker down for 20 minutes or so, because the temptation is to take a flyer at some hands, increasing volatility.
Speaking of volatility, I think this is now at something like $150 an hour single standard deviation (that's at 50c-$1, 600 to 650 hands an hour). Certainly most days now seem to end in a three-figure win or loss. That is one of the reasons I'm a bit worried about shifting back up to $1-$2 -- not because I don't think it would be profitable, but because I think that the gain might be marginal and that the increase in volatility would be significant.
I've started the Rush challenge on Full Tilt this week as well, since it's just about the easiest $50 I'll make this year. One interesting development in Rush since I last played it; the increased number of "Rush multi-tablers" has reduced the hands per hour from nearly 500 to little more than 230. I even two-tabled myself to get it up to the speed that I am used to when 8-tabling on FTP. Rush still plays differently from the full-ring standard tables, including the pleasant situation of seeing someone putting in all of his stack with QQ from MP2 when I was the big blind with AA.
Stars is developing in style as well. I'd introduced a "limp the big blind" strategy with a very wide range, just because I thought this gave me a little bit of tempo advantage and also because most of the regs are used to 3-betting from the Big Blind (or folding), but not so comfortable when faced with a wide-range limp.
I'm also calling from the Big Blind with a much wider range when the raiser is in the small blind.
Unfortunately, as is the way with things, this seems to have caught on with a few other players, and we're seeing quite a few button limpers now. Maybe these guys came to the same conclusion as I did completely independently. Unfortunately, it means that it won't be long before the regs have developed stronger counterplays than they know at the moment.
One of the hardest positions in Stars is one where I am in early position with KK and I get reraised by a player behind who has a fairly narrow reraising range. Obviously, even if the guy is rock of ages, a fold is out of the question, but the stack sizes just make any good play difficult.
If you reraise and he 4-bet shoves you are probably looking at Aces more than 75% of the time (you still call btw, even if only for metagame reasons). If you reraise and opponent calls at 50c-$1 then you have something like a $55 pot with $73 behind, and you are first to act on the flop. This tends to make it hard for opponent to make a mistake unless he has QQ and it's an all low flop. If it comes Axx you are in a horrible position and, once again, it's hard for your opponent to make a mistake no matter what you do.
An obvious novice answer would be to say, "why not play the same way with AA, KK or AK (or whatever else you might four-bet with)?" The problem with this line is that the strength of the betting drastically reduces the likely holdings of both of you, which means that what your opponent holds has a strong impact on what you are likely to hold, and when combined with the flop, has a very strong impact on what you are likely to hold.
The second option is not to four-bet in the first place. This leaves you with a $20 pot and $80 behind. Although this is uncomfortable, it does at least make it more likely that your opponent will make a mistake. Of course, it also increases the chance that you will make a mistake (the smaller the pot compared to your stack size, the more opportunities you will have to make an error). But, as players of German board games know, it doesn't matter if things get worse for you; what matters is whether they get relatively worse for you. So, the argument in favour of calling is that, although you are now more likely to make a mistake, the situation has got relatively even trickier for your opponent.
This raises one of the great paradoxes of Hold 'Em (nearly all sweeping statements on 2+2 seem to embody a paradox of one sort or another). This paradox is that, although if you have a 'tricky' hand out of position you generally speaking want to keep the pot small, the larger the pot size gets past a certain point the less disadvantageous it is to be out of position. More accurately, therefore, the recommendation for tricky hands OOP is that you either want the pot very small compared to stack sizes (allowing for bet from you, raise from opponent, reraise all-in from you), or as big as your stack (i.e., you can get the money in first and cannot get raised back). What you do not want is a pot size when any bet from you allows for a reasonable-sized raise from opponent that puts you or him all-in.
So, OOP, you want to manoeuvre odd-numbered bets to reach all-in, while in position you want to manoeuvre even-numbered size bets.
However, if if you are OOP and there's an even-numbered size bet, you have the option of checking, because if opponent bets, then you can shove. There are several standard "turn" situations where this works, but it does depend on your opponent acting according to script.
Far better, if you can, to manoeuvre the pot size so that if you are OOP, you are in an odd-numbered situation (on the flop, 1, 3, or if it is deepstack, 5)
This is the pig with the KK holding OOP after a raise and a reraise. Although a reraise (if opponent does not 5-bet you all-in) can put you in a position where you could, theoretically, shove, there are very few flops with this hand where opponent can make a mistake.
This is where the strength of 4-betting light with some hands improves your long-term chances. Suppose you 4-bet KK all the time, QQ 75% of the time, JJ half the time, and 88 25% of the time (do with AK, TT and 99 what you wish)? If you now shove any flop you give opponent a much better chance of making a mistake, while still retaining some chance of hitting a killer flop and some value if you are called even if you don't hit the flop.
____________
Party appears to have dumped any kind of special offer at all ahead of its planned merger. The "Gladiator" offer (or whatever it as) was absolutely pathetic last month or the month before, and effective rakeback on the site seems to have dropped from around 40% at the beginning of the year to something like 17% at the end. Party is also less friendly to serious multi-tabling. I may keep my stack there in preparation for some four-tabling at higher stakes in the new year.
For the rest of the year, and just for the challenge rather than for the money (at least in 2010) the heavy multi-tabling on Stars has brought back the prospect of making Supernova, although, as the Youngmeister observed, I don't want to be one of the people who tries for it and fails. Most of those who "try and fail" do so because they go broke. For me it's more a matter of time.
With a couple of weeks off, and with the Christmas break, Supernova looks doable. Added to this, December has in the past tended to be profitable.
Nine-tenths of this multi-tabling is concentration. For reasons I can't quite fathom, there appears to be some kind of mental equivalent of "the wall" in the marathon. You get to a stage where you start gambling stupidly. But, if you get through this, common sense prevails again. For me this kind of "boredom zone" comes after about 90 minutes (or 850-900 hands).
The other real danger period is right after you sit down. There are any number of known "tricky hands", usually where you are in the big blind with a hand that is good but not that good (say QQ). After you have been playing for a while and got yourself in the zone, you tend to make reasonable decisions, but early on, when you are cold, the important thing is to avoid getting stacked off. Not because of the cost of the single stack, but because of the impact this will have on your whole session.
I've noticed that a bad beat early on in a session is also often bad news for the whole session. It's important when I suffer something like AA losing to KK after 100 or so hands for me to hunker down for 20 minutes or so, because the temptation is to take a flyer at some hands, increasing volatility.
Speaking of volatility, I think this is now at something like $150 an hour single standard deviation (that's at 50c-$1, 600 to 650 hands an hour). Certainly most days now seem to end in a three-figure win or loss. That is one of the reasons I'm a bit worried about shifting back up to $1-$2 -- not because I don't think it would be profitable, but because I think that the gain might be marginal and that the increase in volatility would be significant.
I've started the Rush challenge on Full Tilt this week as well, since it's just about the easiest $50 I'll make this year. One interesting development in Rush since I last played it; the increased number of "Rush multi-tablers" has reduced the hands per hour from nearly 500 to little more than 230. I even two-tabled myself to get it up to the speed that I am used to when 8-tabling on FTP. Rush still plays differently from the full-ring standard tables, including the pleasant situation of seeing someone putting in all of his stack with QQ from MP2 when I was the big blind with AA.
Stars is developing in style as well. I'd introduced a "limp the big blind" strategy with a very wide range, just because I thought this gave me a little bit of tempo advantage and also because most of the regs are used to 3-betting from the Big Blind (or folding), but not so comfortable when faced with a wide-range limp.
I'm also calling from the Big Blind with a much wider range when the raiser is in the small blind.
Unfortunately, as is the way with things, this seems to have caught on with a few other players, and we're seeing quite a few button limpers now. Maybe these guys came to the same conclusion as I did completely independently. Unfortunately, it means that it won't be long before the regs have developed stronger counterplays than they know at the moment.
One of the hardest positions in Stars is one where I am in early position with KK and I get reraised by a player behind who has a fairly narrow reraising range. Obviously, even if the guy is rock of ages, a fold is out of the question, but the stack sizes just make any good play difficult.
If you reraise and he 4-bet shoves you are probably looking at Aces more than 75% of the time (you still call btw, even if only for metagame reasons). If you reraise and opponent calls at 50c-$1 then you have something like a $55 pot with $73 behind, and you are first to act on the flop. This tends to make it hard for opponent to make a mistake unless he has QQ and it's an all low flop. If it comes Axx you are in a horrible position and, once again, it's hard for your opponent to make a mistake no matter what you do.
An obvious novice answer would be to say, "why not play the same way with AA, KK or AK (or whatever else you might four-bet with)?" The problem with this line is that the strength of the betting drastically reduces the likely holdings of both of you, which means that what your opponent holds has a strong impact on what you are likely to hold, and when combined with the flop, has a very strong impact on what you are likely to hold.
The second option is not to four-bet in the first place. This leaves you with a $20 pot and $80 behind. Although this is uncomfortable, it does at least make it more likely that your opponent will make a mistake. Of course, it also increases the chance that you will make a mistake (the smaller the pot compared to your stack size, the more opportunities you will have to make an error). But, as players of German board games know, it doesn't matter if things get worse for you; what matters is whether they get relatively worse for you. So, the argument in favour of calling is that, although you are now more likely to make a mistake, the situation has got relatively even trickier for your opponent.
This raises one of the great paradoxes of Hold 'Em (nearly all sweeping statements on 2+2 seem to embody a paradox of one sort or another). This paradox is that, although if you have a 'tricky' hand out of position you generally speaking want to keep the pot small, the larger the pot size gets past a certain point the less disadvantageous it is to be out of position. More accurately, therefore, the recommendation for tricky hands OOP is that you either want the pot very small compared to stack sizes (allowing for bet from you, raise from opponent, reraise all-in from you), or as big as your stack (i.e., you can get the money in first and cannot get raised back). What you do not want is a pot size when any bet from you allows for a reasonable-sized raise from opponent that puts you or him all-in.
So, OOP, you want to manoeuvre odd-numbered bets to reach all-in, while in position you want to manoeuvre even-numbered size bets.
However, if if you are OOP and there's an even-numbered size bet, you have the option of checking, because if opponent bets, then you can shove. There are several standard "turn" situations where this works, but it does depend on your opponent acting according to script.
Far better, if you can, to manoeuvre the pot size so that if you are OOP, you are in an odd-numbered situation (on the flop, 1, 3, or if it is deepstack, 5)
This is the pig with the KK holding OOP after a raise and a reraise. Although a reraise (if opponent does not 5-bet you all-in) can put you in a position where you could, theoretically, shove, there are very few flops with this hand where opponent can make a mistake.
This is where the strength of 4-betting light with some hands improves your long-term chances. Suppose you 4-bet KK all the time, QQ 75% of the time, JJ half the time, and 88 25% of the time (do with AK, TT and 99 what you wish)? If you now shove any flop you give opponent a much better chance of making a mistake, while still retaining some chance of hitting a killer flop and some value if you are called even if you don't hit the flop.
____________
