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peterbirksSorry for the silence, but really little inspiration at the moment. Writing anything on Greece and/or Goldman Sachs would just require more research than I feel inclined to do at the moment.
I got to 3pm yesterday and decided "right, let's start painting", and upstairs I went. I got as far as the first landing and, for reasons I can't quite recall, I ended up refiling my DVDs. This entailed bringing a number of DVDs down to the office, where I noted that I now had too many Jools Holland Show DVDs to fit in their allocated space on the shelves. In addition, my fiction collection is in a bit of a mess, ever since a shelf collapsed last year and I lost the nerve to put any weighty stuff on it.
So, two hours of book reshuffling ensued, and I reckon that I am only a third of the way through. Sigh, keeping a place organized is difficult.
++++++++
I experimented with some 100bb-250bb with antes on Stars this morning (50c-$1). My initial instinct last week was to treat it as $1-$2 (raising to $6 or thereabouts), and indeed a few players were taking this line. But it appeared that the old 3x raise still elicited folds -- if not to quite the same degree, at least to a sufficient degree. So I continued my normal main strategy of 3x raises, adapting it slightly for the deeper stack structure (I sat down with $250 at all four tables available). In particular, there was much greater option for flat-calling smallish raises when in position, because the minimum stack behind you in the blinds) would normally be $100. In addition, the AK-AQs combo in early became considerably less attractive.
The rake generated was higher than 40bb-100bb $100 BI, but not by a lot. The quality of play did not seem any weaker, although it probably was slightly weaker than 40bb-100bb $200 BI -- the game's closest equivalent.
Given the hassles involved, I'll probably give the tables a miss unless it's clear that there's a complete fish sitting there. Only five or six run at a time (max) when I am likely to be playing.
But the fact is, you have to follow the money -- and most of the weak play is in the 20bb to 50bb games. Strategy here borders on the tedious and I don't think that I need to spell it out. AK and AQ and AJs get better, small pairs get worse, suited connectors get much worse, position becomes less relevant. Because it's easier to be a "less bad" player (a very bad player in this game will lose money much more slowly than he would in a deepstack game with equivalent blinds) the "good player's" edge is necessarily smaller, and Pokerstars makes more money (relatively) than the winning players do -- which is of course Pokerstars' idea.
++++++
I crawled to a $2,300 profit on the month in April, not bad considering a $2k downswing half-way through the month. But it still left me somewhat disappointed. For a start, I drropped down to 50c-$1, to rebuild some confidence. Incredible how penny-ante a $50 max buy in game (the new 20bb to 50bb) seems to me now. Only two years ago I spent three months playing $50 max buy in. Now I reshove against a short-stack late raiser on highly speculative hands, and half the time I want him to call, just for a bit of excitement (my odds will rarely be that awful, but obv I would usually prefer to take it uncontested).
My at-the-table win for April was just $784 over 34,200 hands. Of this, $600 was won at 50c-$1 over 14,000 hands.
This almost led me to conclude that I might have reached the "top of the curve" in terms of winnings -- six-tabling at $100 BI for an avge of maybe $6 a hundred at the tables and $4 a hundred in bonuses and rakeback.
That's a perfectly adequate sum and it's not to be sniffed at -- but it's always sad to feel that you have "reached your limit", and that a million dollars a year is no longer just around the next corner or perhaps the corner after that.
However, I think that I can get up to a better rate at $1-$2, and that if the mood takes me, some 3- or 4-tabling at $2-$4 full stack is not impossible.
__________________
I got to 3pm yesterday and decided "right, let's start painting", and upstairs I went. I got as far as the first landing and, for reasons I can't quite recall, I ended up refiling my DVDs. This entailed bringing a number of DVDs down to the office, where I noted that I now had too many Jools Holland Show DVDs to fit in their allocated space on the shelves. In addition, my fiction collection is in a bit of a mess, ever since a shelf collapsed last year and I lost the nerve to put any weighty stuff on it.
So, two hours of book reshuffling ensued, and I reckon that I am only a third of the way through. Sigh, keeping a place organized is difficult.
++++++++
I experimented with some 100bb-250bb with antes on Stars this morning (50c-$1). My initial instinct last week was to treat it as $1-$2 (raising to $6 or thereabouts), and indeed a few players were taking this line. But it appeared that the old 3x raise still elicited folds -- if not to quite the same degree, at least to a sufficient degree. So I continued my normal main strategy of 3x raises, adapting it slightly for the deeper stack structure (I sat down with $250 at all four tables available). In particular, there was much greater option for flat-calling smallish raises when in position, because the minimum stack behind you in the blinds) would normally be $100. In addition, the AK-AQs combo in early became considerably less attractive.
The rake generated was higher than 40bb-100bb $100 BI, but not by a lot. The quality of play did not seem any weaker, although it probably was slightly weaker than 40bb-100bb $200 BI -- the game's closest equivalent.
Given the hassles involved, I'll probably give the tables a miss unless it's clear that there's a complete fish sitting there. Only five or six run at a time (max) when I am likely to be playing.
But the fact is, you have to follow the money -- and most of the weak play is in the 20bb to 50bb games. Strategy here borders on the tedious and I don't think that I need to spell it out. AK and AQ and AJs get better, small pairs get worse, suited connectors get much worse, position becomes less relevant. Because it's easier to be a "less bad" player (a very bad player in this game will lose money much more slowly than he would in a deepstack game with equivalent blinds) the "good player's" edge is necessarily smaller, and Pokerstars makes more money (relatively) than the winning players do -- which is of course Pokerstars' idea.
++++++
I crawled to a $2,300 profit on the month in April, not bad considering a $2k downswing half-way through the month. But it still left me somewhat disappointed. For a start, I drropped down to 50c-$1, to rebuild some confidence. Incredible how penny-ante a $50 max buy in game (the new 20bb to 50bb) seems to me now. Only two years ago I spent three months playing $50 max buy in. Now I reshove against a short-stack late raiser on highly speculative hands, and half the time I want him to call, just for a bit of excitement (my odds will rarely be that awful, but obv I would usually prefer to take it uncontested).
My at-the-table win for April was just $784 over 34,200 hands. Of this, $600 was won at 50c-$1 over 14,000 hands.
This almost led me to conclude that I might have reached the "top of the curve" in terms of winnings -- six-tabling at $100 BI for an avge of maybe $6 a hundred at the tables and $4 a hundred in bonuses and rakeback.
That's a perfectly adequate sum and it's not to be sniffed at -- but it's always sad to feel that you have "reached your limit", and that a million dollars a year is no longer just around the next corner or perhaps the corner after that.
However, I think that I can get up to a better rate at $1-$2, and that if the mood takes me, some 3- or 4-tabling at $2-$4 full stack is not impossible.
__________________
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no subject
Date: 2010-05-02 05:45 pm (UTC)On the other hand, I'd still rather you took up professional writing (as opposed to institutional writing). Still, whatever boats your rock.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-02 08:50 pm (UTC)Five million, we are talking respectable money. Quit work, pay off mortgage, buy small villa near Nice.
If I knew that the games were going to stay as they are, I might even consider quitting the day job. After all, I definitely do better when I am not tired from work. But the games are going to get tougher and within five years might be unplayable (although tournaments will remain playable for longer). So I keep up the dayjob, "because it is there" and, of course, because, if I am going to leave. I'd quite like a nice redundancy package!
PJ
no subject
Date: 2010-05-10 08:10 pm (UTC)Not bad at all. I'd say that deserves congratulations!
no subject
Date: 2010-05-11 01:08 pm (UTC)I really want to get to a consistent 60:40 ratio (table to rakeback) at the minimum.
I also feel that I have a $5k month in me, and twice this year I've felt that "this might be the month" only to hit an immediate downswing. Hell, I feel that I have a $10k month in me.
PJ