peterbirks (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
peterbirks) wrote2010-05-01 02:07 pm
peterbirks) wrote2010-05-01 02:07 pm
Trundling
Sorry 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.
__________________
no subject
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
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
Not bad at all. I'd say that deserves congratulations!
no subject
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