For Rock, Not Such A Wonderful Life
Sep. 17th, 2007 02:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksIf Northern Rock wanted to dissuade people from withdrawing their cash, perhaps one solution would be to force all putativer withdrawers to watch Its A Wonderful Life, particularly the part where James Stewart explains to the moron panicking customers how a building society works. Except, of course, that Northern Rock is not a building society.
Then again, since Northern Rock has only 76 branches, and since it seems up for any hare-brained scheme you like, perhaps they could hire 76 James Stewart lookalikes to give the speech live, in person. At this point all of the customers would nod sagely, put a few quid in a bowl and Adam Applegarth would embrace his children in a Carpa-like happy ending.
What a pity that real life isn't like the movies.
I seem to have set fire to a fair amount of money myself in the past week, and the four-cent fall in Sterling since Thursday afternoon most certainly hasn't helped. Fucking fundamentals.
+++++++++
And rock-on congrats to Annette_15, not yet 19 years old. A pity that she's Scandinavian, but you can't have everything. She's certainly not your standard MOG and she isn't your standard young American wunderkind, playing 33 entries in MTTs and the like.
As DY observed, this is now a game where the money travels from the old to the young. Every day, as with my visits to the gym, I simply fight to maintain stasis. Eventually the quality of my play will deteriorate compared with the average standard to such a degree that I'll be losing at the lowest stakes available.
So it goes.
Texas Hold'em NL $0.50/$1.00
Seat 1: BartGoor ($99.00 in chips)
Seat 2: bearhunt ($20.00 in chips)
Seat 4: Hero ($99.00 in chips)
Seat 5: Montalat ($21.95 in chips)
Seat 6: Gastropoda ($98.50 in chips)
Seat 9: Fish ($128.96 in chips)
Seat 10: FISH 2($73.67 in chips) DEALER
BartGoor: Post SB $0.50
bearhunt: Post BB $1.00
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Hero [K◊ K♣]
Dealt to Fish [J♣ J♠]
Hero: Raise $3.50
Montalat: Fold
Gastropoda: Fold
Fish: Raise $12.00
FISH 2: Fold
BartGoor: Fold
bearhunt: Fold
Hero: Raise $35.00
Fish: Call $26.50
*** FLOP *** [J♡ 9♣ 9♠]
Hero: Allin $60.50
Fish: Call $60.50
*** TURN *** [4♠]
*** RIVER *** [6♣]
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $196.50 Rake $3.00
Fish: wins $196.50
I don’t really mind being stacked off here. Opponent did nothing wrong here (it was his later play that made me designate him a fish). I’m going all-in no matter what the flop. As the cards lie (assuming he folds the flop when he misses, which, given his later play, I doubt that he would, unless there were an ace on the board) I win $38.50 from Fish about five times in six, while one time in six I lose $99. Gives me a plus EV of about $20 a hand.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Given that the aboove was about my second hand of the night, I could be forgiven for thinking “here we go again. Still it will end eventually”. I certainly recall when this run started. I was about $300 up on the day, and I had smegged a flush against a set for a couple of hundred. I then blew $250 in about half an hour, in a mini-version of winner’s tilt, and I haven’t looked forward since.
But for the last week I’ve not been blaming myself. Perhaps I’ve folded some winners, but I think that I’ve got away from many more losers when I’ve had a good second-best.
Tonight I pottered around most of the evening and decided to play for just an hour before bed. That was the first bad result.
But, as they say, there’s no such thing as a good hand, only a good situation. I decided to play pure ABC stuff tonight. No Fancy Play Syndrome at all. And I also stopped bothering trying to get inside my opponents’ heads. They do so much that at times utterly baffles me, that I might as well just play my own hand.
Well, the Gods smiled (eventually). I’d crawled back to about $70 down, when this hand came up.
Texas Hold'em NL $0.50/$1.00
Seat 1: BartGoor ($104.45 in chips)
Seat 2: bearhunt ($55.10 in chips) DEALER
Seat 4: Hero ($102.85 in chips) (small blind)
Seat 5: gonzalos ($100.00 in chips)
Seat 6: sebas777 ($111.50 in chips)
Seat 7: lenos ($126.25 in chips)
Seat 9: solskinn ($8.00 in chips)
Seat 10: FISH 2($112.92 in chips)
Hero: Post SB $0.50
gonzalos: Post BB $1.00
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to FISH 2[A◊ 7◊]
Dealt to Hero [3♡ 5♡]
sebas777: Fold
lenos: Call $1.00
solskinn: Fold
FISH 2: Call $1.00
BartGoor: Fold
bearhunt: Fold
Hero: Call $0.50
I’ll always complete with a single-gapped low suited hand. If it looks like a table where there are good implied odds, I might stretch this to a double-gapper.
gonzalos: Check
*** FLOP *** [A♡ 9♡ 3♣]
Hero: Bet $3.00
I want to build the pot in case I hit my hand. I’m prepared to call a 3x raise here, although obviously I don’t really want 10% of my stack going in on a draw.
gonzalos: Fold
lenos: Fold
FISH 2: Call $3.00
*** TURN *** [4♡]
No time for fears of flush over flush here. I think I am winning against something like ATs to AQs.
Hero: Bet $10.00
FISH 2: Call $10.00
*** RIVER *** [6◊]
Stop worrying about how much the guy will call for as it it were me who was thinking of calling (that has led to me underbetting the river in the past, I am sure). Bet the pot and hope that he’s the kind of guy who can’t lay down a good Ace.
Hero: Bet $30.00
FISH 2: Call $30.00
Turns out I was wrong. He was the kind of guy who couldn’t lay down a bad Ace.
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $87.00 Rake $3.00
Hero: wins $87.00
++++++++++++
I actually felt sorry for my opponent on this one below, as the table was just breaking up. But it’s a good example of “assume that your opponent has a hand that’s good enough to lose a lot of money”. Or, in more simple speak, “slow-playing is for dolts”.
Luckily (for me), this guy and I had already had a bit of history when it was four- and five-handed. He knew that I was capable of aggression on thin values.
Texas Hold'em NL $0.50/$1.00
Seat 2: houseofd6 ($23.50 in chips)
Seat 4: BrunoTheHunk ($131.50 in chips) DEALER
Seat 7: Hero ($118.35 in chips)
Seat 9: Luz58 ($51.50 in chips)
Hero: Post SB $0.50
houseofd6: Post BB $1.00
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to BrunoTheHunk [8♡ 6♣]
Dealt to Hero [3♣ 3♡]
Luz58: Sitout
BrunoTheHunk: Call $1.00
Hero: Call $0.50
houseofd6: Check
*** FLOP *** [8♣ 8♡ 3♠]
Flopped full houses, like flopped straights, are good. They can also be vulnerable when you have the underpair.
Hero: Bet $2.50
houseofd6: Fold
BrunoTheHunk: Raise $5.00
Hero: Raise $11.00
BrunoTheHunk: Call $8.50
We’ve gotta place opponent on an 8 here. He would have raised preflop with an overpair. So, 8x, where x on turn or river is deep shit for Birks.
*** TURN *** [4♡]
This is a good turn card for me. Even short-handed, 84 is an unlikely starting hand for my opponent (stats of 19%/7% in an 8-handed game). It doesn’t matter really, because I’m obviously not laying this down in a four-handed game. But it makes me feel more confident.
Hero: Bet $40.00
BrunoTheHunk: Raise $80.00
Hero: Allin $63.85
BrunoTheHunk: Call $23.85
*** RIVER *** [7♣]
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $235.70 Rake $2.00 (yoo hoo! Short-handed rake!)
Hero: wins $235.70
And that was just about that. From $100 down after two minutes to $100 up after 45 minutes.
When you’ve had about a month of struggling, it’s nice to hit a little bit of a streak. Perhaps I should focus more on ABC stuff (I think I’m in front. Therefore, I bet) rather than pot-building, pot control, etc etc. It certainly worked on hands two and three.
___________________
Then again, since Northern Rock has only 76 branches, and since it seems up for any hare-brained scheme you like, perhaps they could hire 76 James Stewart lookalikes to give the speech live, in person. At this point all of the customers would nod sagely, put a few quid in a bowl and Adam Applegarth would embrace his children in a Carpa-like happy ending.
What a pity that real life isn't like the movies.
I seem to have set fire to a fair amount of money myself in the past week, and the four-cent fall in Sterling since Thursday afternoon most certainly hasn't helped. Fucking fundamentals.
+++++++++
And rock-on congrats to Annette_15, not yet 19 years old. A pity that she's Scandinavian, but you can't have everything. She's certainly not your standard MOG and she isn't your standard young American wunderkind, playing 33 entries in MTTs and the like.
As DY observed, this is now a game where the money travels from the old to the young. Every day, as with my visits to the gym, I simply fight to maintain stasis. Eventually the quality of my play will deteriorate compared with the average standard to such a degree that I'll be losing at the lowest stakes available.
So it goes.
Texas Hold'em NL $0.50/$1.00
Seat 1: BartGoor ($99.00 in chips)
Seat 2: bearhunt ($20.00 in chips)
Seat 4: Hero ($99.00 in chips)
Seat 5: Montalat ($21.95 in chips)
Seat 6: Gastropoda ($98.50 in chips)
Seat 9: Fish ($128.96 in chips)
Seat 10: FISH 2($73.67 in chips) DEALER
BartGoor: Post SB $0.50
bearhunt: Post BB $1.00
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Hero [K◊ K♣]
Dealt to Fish [J♣ J♠]
Hero: Raise $3.50
Montalat: Fold
Gastropoda: Fold
Fish: Raise $12.00
FISH 2: Fold
BartGoor: Fold
bearhunt: Fold
Hero: Raise $35.00
Fish: Call $26.50
*** FLOP *** [J♡ 9♣ 9♠]
Hero: Allin $60.50
Fish: Call $60.50
*** TURN *** [4♠]
*** RIVER *** [6♣]
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $196.50 Rake $3.00
Fish: wins $196.50
I don’t really mind being stacked off here. Opponent did nothing wrong here (it was his later play that made me designate him a fish). I’m going all-in no matter what the flop. As the cards lie (assuming he folds the flop when he misses, which, given his later play, I doubt that he would, unless there were an ace on the board) I win $38.50 from Fish about five times in six, while one time in six I lose $99. Gives me a plus EV of about $20 a hand.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Given that the aboove was about my second hand of the night, I could be forgiven for thinking “here we go again. Still it will end eventually”. I certainly recall when this run started. I was about $300 up on the day, and I had smegged a flush against a set for a couple of hundred. I then blew $250 in about half an hour, in a mini-version of winner’s tilt, and I haven’t looked forward since.
But for the last week I’ve not been blaming myself. Perhaps I’ve folded some winners, but I think that I’ve got away from many more losers when I’ve had a good second-best.
Tonight I pottered around most of the evening and decided to play for just an hour before bed. That was the first bad result.
But, as they say, there’s no such thing as a good hand, only a good situation. I decided to play pure ABC stuff tonight. No Fancy Play Syndrome at all. And I also stopped bothering trying to get inside my opponents’ heads. They do so much that at times utterly baffles me, that I might as well just play my own hand.
Well, the Gods smiled (eventually). I’d crawled back to about $70 down, when this hand came up.
Texas Hold'em NL $0.50/$1.00
Seat 1: BartGoor ($104.45 in chips)
Seat 2: bearhunt ($55.10 in chips) DEALER
Seat 4: Hero ($102.85 in chips) (small blind)
Seat 5: gonzalos ($100.00 in chips)
Seat 6: sebas777 ($111.50 in chips)
Seat 7: lenos ($126.25 in chips)
Seat 9: solskinn ($8.00 in chips)
Seat 10: FISH 2($112.92 in chips)
Hero: Post SB $0.50
gonzalos: Post BB $1.00
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to FISH 2[A◊ 7◊]
Dealt to Hero [3♡ 5♡]
sebas777: Fold
lenos: Call $1.00
solskinn: Fold
FISH 2: Call $1.00
BartGoor: Fold
bearhunt: Fold
Hero: Call $0.50
I’ll always complete with a single-gapped low suited hand. If it looks like a table where there are good implied odds, I might stretch this to a double-gapper.
gonzalos: Check
*** FLOP *** [A♡ 9♡ 3♣]
Hero: Bet $3.00
I want to build the pot in case I hit my hand. I’m prepared to call a 3x raise here, although obviously I don’t really want 10% of my stack going in on a draw.
gonzalos: Fold
lenos: Fold
FISH 2: Call $3.00
*** TURN *** [4♡]
No time for fears of flush over flush here. I think I am winning against something like ATs to AQs.
Hero: Bet $10.00
FISH 2: Call $10.00
*** RIVER *** [6◊]
Stop worrying about how much the guy will call for as it it were me who was thinking of calling (that has led to me underbetting the river in the past, I am sure). Bet the pot and hope that he’s the kind of guy who can’t lay down a good Ace.
Hero: Bet $30.00
FISH 2: Call $30.00
Turns out I was wrong. He was the kind of guy who couldn’t lay down a bad Ace.
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $87.00 Rake $3.00
Hero: wins $87.00
++++++++++++
I actually felt sorry for my opponent on this one below, as the table was just breaking up. But it’s a good example of “assume that your opponent has a hand that’s good enough to lose a lot of money”. Or, in more simple speak, “slow-playing is for dolts”.
Luckily (for me), this guy and I had already had a bit of history when it was four- and five-handed. He knew that I was capable of aggression on thin values.
Texas Hold'em NL $0.50/$1.00
Seat 2: houseofd6 ($23.50 in chips)
Seat 4: BrunoTheHunk ($131.50 in chips) DEALER
Seat 7: Hero ($118.35 in chips)
Seat 9: Luz58 ($51.50 in chips)
Hero: Post SB $0.50
houseofd6: Post BB $1.00
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to BrunoTheHunk [8♡ 6♣]
Dealt to Hero [3♣ 3♡]
Luz58: Sitout
BrunoTheHunk: Call $1.00
Hero: Call $0.50
houseofd6: Check
*** FLOP *** [8♣ 8♡ 3♠]
Flopped full houses, like flopped straights, are good. They can also be vulnerable when you have the underpair.
Hero: Bet $2.50
houseofd6: Fold
BrunoTheHunk: Raise $5.00
Hero: Raise $11.00
BrunoTheHunk: Call $8.50
We’ve gotta place opponent on an 8 here. He would have raised preflop with an overpair. So, 8x, where x on turn or river is deep shit for Birks.
*** TURN *** [4♡]
This is a good turn card for me. Even short-handed, 84 is an unlikely starting hand for my opponent (stats of 19%/7% in an 8-handed game). It doesn’t matter really, because I’m obviously not laying this down in a four-handed game. But it makes me feel more confident.
Hero: Bet $40.00
BrunoTheHunk: Raise $80.00
Hero: Allin $63.85
BrunoTheHunk: Call $23.85
*** RIVER *** [7♣]
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $235.70 Rake $2.00 (yoo hoo! Short-handed rake!)
Hero: wins $235.70
And that was just about that. From $100 down after two minutes to $100 up after 45 minutes.
When you’ve had about a month of struggling, it’s nice to hit a little bit of a streak. Perhaps I should focus more on ABC stuff (I think I’m in front. Therefore, I bet) rather than pot-building, pot control, etc etc. It certainly worked on hands two and three.
___________________
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no subject
Date: 2007-09-18 10:34 am (UTC)On the 5h 3h hand I will just say that in a tournament with a shortish stack of 20 blinds I might go for a check-raise allin here but with the deeper stacks here I like your bet out. Why? Because in a tourney if you fire out and get called and the turn bricks you're in a bad spot. If you bet the turn as well and get raised you're not getting odds to call but have lost a chunk of chips. Here though you can comfortably bet the turn with a smallish bet if u you miss, essentially getting a cheap draw against a passive calling station.
matt
no subject
Date: 2007-09-18 01:38 pm (UTC)So, if there is an early raiser , and you have QQ on the button, a reraise to 12xBB with initial starting stacks of 100BB can open you up to a very difficult situation if opponent reraises to around 33xBB. You are going to have 65BB in the pot, just about the same size as your stack. If a rag flop comes down, you are almost obliged to call (opponent might well have AK), even though you might be a massive dog. If Axx comes down, you probably fold, meanwhile naggingly worried that opponent has pushed you off with JJ or TT.
Meanwhile (and here the FMM line certainly has lots of merit), the hand holding KK can make no mistake at all, unless his opponent only ever three-bets with AA (in which case you will be winning lots of money elsewhere).
Should QQ three-bet the button to $12, on the grounds that he has position over the early raiser and is usually ahead? I guess so. But it makes the play by KK remarkably easy.
PJ
Tough decisions
Date: 2007-09-18 01:55 pm (UTC)You said it was early in your session. I see a lot of players at low limits raising all sorts of trash UTG, presumably with the intention of stealing the blinds by appearing very strong. Your fish may well have reraised in order to establish for sure whether you were trying it on in this way, and after you called, it could well be that he would have thrown his hand away to any bet from you if he failed to flop his set. So I'm not entirely convinced he was facing a difficult decision on the flop. It could well be that in his mind he had a very clear cut one to make. That doesn't of course make him correct in thinking that though.
Lurker
Re: Tough decisions
Date: 2007-09-18 01:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-18 03:03 pm (UTC)matt
no subject
Date: 2007-09-18 03:18 pm (UTC)I think JJ is a clear fold to my 4-bet. QQ strikes me as the difficult one.
I had a horrible feeling that QQ was a fold as well, solely because, if you call, you get yourself into a very tough spot on most flops. And, as you say, surely the default assumption to a 4-bet is AA/KK/AK, with a lean towards the first two, because so many players like to pump it all in with AK, rather than leave money behind for a flop bet.
If you have a much smaller stack or a much bigger stack, things are different.
So, this is an interesting case where the FMM argument (try to control the pot size to avoid tough decisions for all your money) has a lot of validity, but not quite in the way they put it in the book. After all, they advocate a limp/reraise with KK and AK in early position to avoid their dreaded SPR of 13 OOP. Personally, I think that line in my games would take me very quickly to the poorhouse.
But how many players at this level would three-bet the QQ and then fold to the four-bet? Not many, I suspect.
Indeed, many more players seem to flat-call the eraly raisers with such hands. I think that's wrong (actually, I'm prejudiced against any flat-call of a raise when you have position and it's likely to be heads up, mainly because a three-bet takes the pot down pre-flop so often).
PJ
no subject
Date: 2007-09-18 03:25 pm (UTC)My guess is that he got momentarily wedded to his hand preflop, made a rash call and got lucky on the flop. I suspect there wasn't much thinking going on. But I agree that you played it well.
Lurker
no subject
Date: 2007-09-18 06:47 pm (UTC)And if he does not fold to the four-bet, he's almost certain to have a horrible decision on the flop (unless he's decided to fold if an ace or king flops, and call if one doesn't).
So, the three-bet is right, the call of the four-bet is right (or is it?) and yet all of a sudden he has $60 left, a $60 pot, and facing a $60 bet on a rag flop where he is almost certainly either a big dog or a not very big favourite. Alternatively, he faces a $60 bet on an Ace-high flop (or king-high flop) and he folds.
A horrible position.
So what else could he have done to avoid that horrible position? I don't know the answer to that. I just think it's an interesting question.
PJ
no subject
Date: 2007-09-19 08:56 am (UTC)Can I reveal a pet hate now ... your usage of "3-bet" for a re-raise and "4-bet" for a re-re-raise. In Limit the nomenclature makes sense as a raise is implicitly two small bets and a subsequent re-raise must be three. However in NL the terms are somewhat illogical.
matt
no subject
Date: 2007-09-19 09:40 am (UTC)PJ