![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksA month or so ago I was predicting the end of UBS as an independent bank. It's a good idea to keep a little record of the woeful performances of some of these laughing stocks, which now have as significant stakeholders various eastern investment institutions. Because then, when you next have a dealing with any bank and they try to tell you what is sensible, you can simply point out that banks, they have to admit, do not have a great track record when it comes to judging what is "sensible".
However, UBS seems to have saved itself from merging/being taken over by another bank by selling its soul to the far east. Just as it annnounced another $10bn in subprime writedowns (these, remember, are institutions that don't like lending to "risky" small companies) it also announced that Singapore Investment Board and an "unnamed" operation would be pumping in capital to shore up the company's capital base. Great stuff, eh? Translation. "We are in the shit and now we are part-owned by a company that we can't even tell you the name of".
+++++++++
It's turning into a struggling December after the standard "8th of the month luck switch-off" began again. I'd like to blame it all on Full Tilt, but a $300 downswing on Party (where I have been running good for most of the year) also contributed. But it's Full Tilt that causes me to tear my hair out. I'm on something like a thousand dollar downswing there since the beginning of September and in open play I must be about $600 down for the year. That's over 18,000 hands. And I realluy don't feel that I can blame it on bad beats.
Of course, "running bad" is a lot more than bad beats. It's never hitting eight-outers, or flushes, or hitting fewer than your share of sets. It's missing TPTK more often than you should and, when you get it, being check-raised from the defending blind. And when you are running bad in that sense, it reinforces a feeling of being out of control of the game. But the standard style of opponents does seem to cause me more difficulties -- mainly, I think, because opponents are far more likely to "take one off the top" when they have position (and are also far more likely to cold-call raises with position). At least, that's what I think it is, because my continuation bets seem to take it down far less often on Full Tilt than they do elsewhere. Then again, perhaps I am, quite simply, running bad. I don't have 100,000 hands available to find out and I'm not sure that I want to go that far to confirm that, in fact, I do suck at Full Tilt.
Is it possible to run at 4bb profit a 100 on one site (over 50k hands) and yet to be a long-term loser, playing the same way, at another site at the same stakes? Instinctively, that just doesn't feel right, but that's the way it's gone at Full Tilt both this year (at NL) and last (at limit, post-UIGEA). Could it be that I find the American "style" much harder to beat (perhaps because I play in rather an 'American' fashion myself). But if that were the case, you would expect a similar situation at Stars, where I've run very well over about 10K hands a year for two years out of the last three.
The problem now at Full Tilt is that I sit down expecting to lose, hard as I try to take a positive attitude and to play just as I always have. But when you keep getting raised on the flop (or turn), forcing you to fold, Pavlov begins to get to work.
I looked at the 6-max percentages at 8am this morning (in theory, a time when the site should be at its loosest). At $200 buy-in, it looked dreadful - masses of 26% to 30% average number of players seeing flop. But at $100 buy-in it looked more promising. Maybe that might be one solution; a minor change of game. In the ring games, it just feels as if the "average" player has a counterplay to my style. If my results are not because I'm running bad, but because I'm being outplayed, I need to change the way I play. If I am running bad and my opponents just happen to have been hitting hands against me more often here than they are at other sites, then I need to carry on playing the same way.
A conundrum.
However, UBS seems to have saved itself from merging/being taken over by another bank by selling its soul to the far east. Just as it annnounced another $10bn in subprime writedowns (these, remember, are institutions that don't like lending to "risky" small companies) it also announced that Singapore Investment Board and an "unnamed" operation would be pumping in capital to shore up the company's capital base. Great stuff, eh? Translation. "We are in the shit and now we are part-owned by a company that we can't even tell you the name of".
+++++++++
It's turning into a struggling December after the standard "8th of the month luck switch-off" began again. I'd like to blame it all on Full Tilt, but a $300 downswing on Party (where I have been running good for most of the year) also contributed. But it's Full Tilt that causes me to tear my hair out. I'm on something like a thousand dollar downswing there since the beginning of September and in open play I must be about $600 down for the year. That's over 18,000 hands. And I realluy don't feel that I can blame it on bad beats.
Of course, "running bad" is a lot more than bad beats. It's never hitting eight-outers, or flushes, or hitting fewer than your share of sets. It's missing TPTK more often than you should and, when you get it, being check-raised from the defending blind. And when you are running bad in that sense, it reinforces a feeling of being out of control of the game. But the standard style of opponents does seem to cause me more difficulties -- mainly, I think, because opponents are far more likely to "take one off the top" when they have position (and are also far more likely to cold-call raises with position). At least, that's what I think it is, because my continuation bets seem to take it down far less often on Full Tilt than they do elsewhere. Then again, perhaps I am, quite simply, running bad. I don't have 100,000 hands available to find out and I'm not sure that I want to go that far to confirm that, in fact, I do suck at Full Tilt.
Is it possible to run at 4bb profit a 100 on one site (over 50k hands) and yet to be a long-term loser, playing the same way, at another site at the same stakes? Instinctively, that just doesn't feel right, but that's the way it's gone at Full Tilt both this year (at NL) and last (at limit, post-UIGEA). Could it be that I find the American "style" much harder to beat (perhaps because I play in rather an 'American' fashion myself). But if that were the case, you would expect a similar situation at Stars, where I've run very well over about 10K hands a year for two years out of the last three.
The problem now at Full Tilt is that I sit down expecting to lose, hard as I try to take a positive attitude and to play just as I always have. But when you keep getting raised on the flop (or turn), forcing you to fold, Pavlov begins to get to work.
I looked at the 6-max percentages at 8am this morning (in theory, a time when the site should be at its loosest). At $200 buy-in, it looked dreadful - masses of 26% to 30% average number of players seeing flop. But at $100 buy-in it looked more promising. Maybe that might be one solution; a minor change of game. In the ring games, it just feels as if the "average" player has a counterplay to my style. If my results are not because I'm running bad, but because I'm being outplayed, I need to change the way I play. If I am running bad and my opponents just happen to have been hitting hands against me more often here than they are at other sites, then I need to carry on playing the same way.
A conundrum.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-12-10 12:32 pm (UTC)matt
no subject
Date: 2007-12-10 02:19 pm (UTC)These are the two possible hypotheses:
1)
I am running bad:
Opponents are playing more aggressively on the flop because I have been coming up against better cards.
Correct response:
Carry on playing as normal. Regerression to the mean will make things fine.
2) I am not running bad:
Opponents are playing more aggressively post-flop because they are more aggressive players.
Correct response:
?
As it happens, I'd be happier if they did reraise me more often pre-flop, because I'm a better player one-on-one. Although you do get a few more CR-plays on the flop, the more standard response pre-flop on FTP is the "cold-call with position". Perhaps there's a standard range of hands that are folded to raises on one site and called with on another. But cold-calling of raises by multiple players is something I have to learn to cope with. I do get the feeling that these guys are less aggressive pre-flop and more aggressive post-flop than I am used to. But I don't have absolute numbers to back this up, yet -- not ones that are statistically significant, anyway.
What's irritating about it is that it's inherently poor play in many cases.
E.G. If I raise to 3xBB in UTG+1 (let's assume that I have AQs, for the sake of argument), then a cold-call by UTG+2 can hardly be right for UTG+2 under any circumstances. Unfortunately, it does me no favours either.
Many FTP winners seem to play a much more passive style pre-flop, limping a lot, mini-raising first in a lot, but reraising very rarely pre-flop (but quite often Check-raising or raising a a CB post flop). Currently I'm running at 17%/13% there and I've been equally aggressive post-flop. I have a horrible feeling that I need to change this.
I'm still thinking it all out.
PJ