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peterbirksI 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.
______________
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Thought for the day
Date: 2009-07-05 03:18 pm (UTC)Big range there. Farnborough? Dorking? (Don't mind if I do.) I think we can rule out Godalming. There are really only two downsides to Godalming. One is that the train station greets you with the sign "Home of Friary Meaux," the real ale equivalent of "Here be Buboes."
The other is that it is "just outside Guildford."
It's one of those images that is more enchanting in the mind than it is in HDTV, isn't it? Graham Norton, a six-foot hamster, and a giant wheel. Symbolic of the Fall of Man, in a way. All it really needs for the perfect icon of our times is Richard Gere with his arse hanging out.
And to think you forsook such a wonderful chance for meditation on the question of what is real, and what is merely very large and furry and will run tirelessly on the spot for a gob-full of sunflower seeds, and decided to watch Eastenders In Space instead.
Oh, the Humanity!
no subject
Date: 2009-07-06 08:38 am (UTC)The Saturday evening TV-watcher seems to have an insatiable appetite for these shows that "celebrate" the tedious notion that everyone has talent, however mediocre and unworthy of note such "talent" may be. It offers an excuse to go and do something more pointful, I suppose.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-06 06:37 pm (UTC)Ya gotta stop hangin' out with them damn yankees, babs, 'n grab yasself a bucket o' suds. Or else, drop that Excel and become a Franciscan priest. Couldn't hoit!
I believe your intention was to say "less pointless" or "more meaningful." Though, what could be less pointless than living in Sidcup (or wherever it is) and lusting after another mortgage ... well, that's hard to say from this angle. Or indeed norman.
Give my love to the hamsters.
JTs hand
Date: 2009-07-06 01:44 pm (UTC)It's just that it looks like you check-raised him twice, but didn't make a particular point of mentioning it in the post. If I had gone for the turn check-raise I would have shoved following his $9 bet, hoping he'd think I put him on a weak hand or draw (which I would) and was just relying on applying enough pressure to move him off it rather than my own hand strength.
Whether he was on the button or in the sb, I think flopping top two-pair against one somewhat laggy player (who raised from LP) is usually going to be a good enough reason to get all the chips in. Likely hands you might come up against could be AJ, KJ, QJ, AK/AQ hearts, maybe some overpairs, possibly J8 and the other pair + flush draw combos or if he's really stubborn just the naked flush draws. Overall your hand is doing well enough against that range to more than offset the few times he flops the straights or sets.
---
It occurred to me today to wonder if I check-raise the river frequently enough. Recently I've noticed more often following my check I've been faced with a very thin value bet indeed, sometimes absurdly so. At the moment my check-raise frequency is about 1% but it occurred to me that this might be worth experimenting with. The hand that brought it to my attention was one where I had rivered an 8-high flush on a very ugly board that was paired with high cards on the flop, and got nastier with both turn and river.
My play in the hand didn't make too much sense to be honest, since I was wary of the flopped boat and my hand was weak. Then again, my opponent's check on the turn should (obviously?) have put paid to that notion and I certainly felt there was a chance my backdoor flush would be good often enough to call a (low absolute $ amount) full pot bet on the river. After seeing my opponent's straight however I started wondering if a sizeable check-raise might actually be a far superior move if used infrequently (but more often than I'd think to do it now). It might be I don't use this play mainly because I'm scared to do so, the question is whether this fear has a sound rational basis. Anyway, I thought I'd mention it in case this situation comes up for you too.
Mattito.
Re: JTs hand
Date: 2009-07-06 01:53 pm (UTC)As you say, I think I probably am sufficiently ahead of his range throughout not to be able to get away from it. TBH I was more concerned at 88 than Q9.
Cr'ing the river is definitely good if the stack-sizes are right. Opponents are betting thin on the river to checks these days.
The question is, do you make more from the CR than you do from a bet? Sklansky covers the maths of this question in some detail, but my recollection of the matter is that your EV is normally better from betting out, although the thinner opponents tend to bet, the better the CR is. The less money opponent has behind after he bets at you, the better it is as well. If your CR on the river is effectively little more than a mini-raise setting him in, it can be a strong weapon.
PJ
Cr' me a River
Date: 2009-07-06 06:48 pm (UTC)Actually, this is indeed a function of being ignorant. As far as I can see, you're committed and you can't get out of it. If you're playing the man, and the man is laggy, why not just shove and be done with it?
I only really posted so that I could quote a Julie London song.
Re: Matt's problem
Date: 2009-07-06 06:56 pm (UTC)That, and unsuited connectors, will get you a cup o' joe and a smoky voice to haunt your dreams.
Can't say fairer than that.
Re: Cr' me a River
Date: 2009-07-06 07:09 pm (UTC)In the "real" hand (which I hunted down) things are significantly different. I will print it, when I get the energy. Opponent limped in the SB after two other limpers in a 6-max game. he led out the flop and I raised. He reraised to $20 and I called ($42 in pot). He bet $40 on a donk turn card and I raised him all in for another $43 on top, which of course he snap-called, and my four-outer failed to appear on the river.
However, you'll be pleased to note that I did shove the turn inthe "real" hand, although I'm still not sure whether it was right so to do.
PJ
Old Romantics
Date: 2009-07-06 07:42 pm (UTC)