Touney play is coming along and I am getting closer to a nice payout not to far down the track. You know the story, you are playing well getting past the bubble, have above average chips and hit a cold deck, the monkey across the table hits their 3 outs to take down a large pot, your AA gets busted twice in the space of an hour, followed by your KK when the monkey across the tables get his AA through. Argh. Sure you have your K on the flop, sure and all they go all in you call and they hit their A on the river. But that is poker huh.
Ring play, thank God for bonus', it is keeping my head just above water. Some dumb calls. Why do we do it, our little voice says, "He'll have a straight if he is holding QT, which will beat my two pair, KJ, I bet he has, CALL. Yep told you QT, I was right, I am so good on the read, damn it, no one took my bet and I lost money I shouldn't have." Those type of scenarios are the difference between making money and losing at this level, or breaking even. You have to stop the temptation of calling, raising betting etc when you know you are beat. Keep the money for when you have a hand to play. Easy to say hard to do. This is a basic and known by the good players, it is a discipline and something that you need to master to improve.
I am going to start a few posts later this week on some of the hands that I have played and taken notes of, some I think are great plays and some are downright dumb, but I am looking for the more experienced readers who pop in now and again for some constructive comments about leaks, holes etc.
Chat soon. ¶ Tuesday, January 31, 2006 0 comments
Who would have thought that changing a blog name could have such repercussions? Tilt Tales has its first Tilt!
Last night was interesting - I had nothing, cold, cold cards. Between the two tables I was running (.50/1 & 1/2) I had one pocket pair (88) in 1.5 hours and managed a grand total of 4 flops winning a grand total of zero pots. This I think lead to a little bit of frustration in my game whether I was aware of it or not. Thus my Tilt. KK comes along on 1/2 LHE table and I am behind the button (not sure of what the position name is for this) UTG (that one I know) raises to $1, the player before me raises to $2, I call and UTG calls the blinds had folded. Flop KA8, so good for me, UTG checks, next bets $1, I raise $2, UTG folds. The other guy re-raises $3 and I call. Turn is a 2. Well long story short is that we get into a raise, re-raise stoush and I loose to his pocket AA. I never for one minute think he could have AA, not one.
Just showing my massive donkey skills on that one. Play so blind at times - this is the obvious failure of many players starting out and at my level. We focus solely on what he have - even more so when it is good and simply fire away on the bet/raise button in the blink of an eye. Just like a rabbit caught in the head lights of the on-coming car we are transfixed and cannot see that we are about to get utterly smashed. When putting money into the pot I really need to make a conscience effort to stop and think about the possibilities, count to 10 first each and every time. Then make a decision, not the RSI action of bet..bet...bet...bet...bet, damn I lost.
So that blew my $25 buy in. I close it off and focus on the .50/1 game looking to recover the 1/2 buy-in. That was pretty slow going and decided I need to loosen up a bit to get into some more hands as I was seeing a lot of pots being won with bottom pair despite two over cards sitting out on the felt. This went well and managed to get up about $15 on that table. I fire up another 1/2 table as I think I am playing well enough to dip the toe back in. But alas, no such love, the cold deck run continued and just got sucked out dropping another $25, bugger. I close it all down and look at a loss of $41 for the night. The only good aspect of this was that I could almost reach out and grab the bonus, so a positive there.
Now the ironic thing - earlier in the day I purchased Poker Tracker and downloaded the default rankings (http://www.pokertrackerguide.com/ebook/ptguide_autorate_rules.txt.) offered by the authors Henry “HDouble” Wasserman and Iggy. PT goes through and ranks all the players, and WTF, I am ranked a "good player" despite having a career loss at ring games. That was too much for my mind to handle at
Poker huh.
For a weekend that I was not going to play much poker at all I ended up playing a hell of a lot of poker, about 2 hours Saturday and 4 hours Sunday. Made some massive in-roads into clearing the bonus at InterPoker multi-tabling two .50/1 and one 1/2 table LHE and finishing up which is nice - largely thanks to my J Quads on the 1/2 Limit and being raised constantly, nice stuff. I would have had a nice screen shot to show you, but was to busy yelling "Them's quads bithces"
I should clear the bonus easily this week and then off to Will Hill to bonus up there also. I'm following ScurvyDog's Poker Bonus Strategy Guide to boost the bankroll. Stats have been updated for those that are interested, still down for the month but a massive improvement after my $100.00 Tilt when initially starting the bonus chase playing 1/2 NLHE at Interpoker. If I take that Tilt out I'd be up $56 over the last 5 days of play which is about where I want to be, just above break-even (well lets be honest, I'd love to be pulling down a tone of $$$) while clearing the bonus requirements.
The other news is that last night (Sunday) I met up with a few mates one of whom is back in town visiting from
Threw in my next 6-8 hands before coming across QQ and raised pre-flop and have to entire table call. Righto that is interesting...flop is a bad Kc8d7h , someone has to have another K. I was in the CO and all checked around to me, bet $5, 4 callers, and the turn is a Ks, uh-oh. Bet $10, 1 caller and the river is a 4s. Right has to have a K, I am out of here is he bets. Checks, I bet $10..he calls with AhJc and I my first stack of chips pushed my way...lovely. I could not believe that everyone called my pre-flop raise and they people stayed in the game when the obviously had nothing. I sat back and observed the table for the next few hands and pretty much everyone limped 80% of the hands they played. In all I sat there for about an hour before finishing up $140 odd which I was stocked at. I went and found my mates who were well up playing Blackjack. I pulled up a seat and played until the dealer change and we went home finishing up about $30. A very enjoyable night, the only issue -
In terms of play, very straight forward and one issue is that I cannot for the life of me see a straight, this is a basic part of the game but I struggle sometimes thinking about the 'possibilities' that others could have. This mainly happens when I am holding two pair and think I am home, only for the chips to be pushed to someone else. A good aspect though is I am more patient, on one table of .5/1 I went from my $25 buy in down to $1.46 and grinded it back to $26.08 it was good to dig in and get a result. What I need to do though is stop those leaks so that the money from $1.46 - $26.08 is profit, not recovery.
So - many things happening at the moment. No play tonight as I am heading down to the Northern Beaches to see my parents. Tomorrow could be iffy as well, may be catching up with the mate from
I was not going to write anything today, but seeing as I won't be playing over the next few days I'll give a brief run-down of last night.
I did decide to re-load at Interpoker and sort this ring thing out, but only play LHE and not go near NL, seeing I have never played LHE it should be interesting.
It was a bit of a slog at first as no-one was playing $.50/$1.00 full table at all, only short-handed. So I just joined the waiting list to let me know when there was at least 6 others playing. I loaded up 2 x $0.25/$0.50 tables now the main point is that I am trying to clear the bonus, the issue at this level is that you need a minimum of $5.00 pot for a rake and this only gets you 1/4 of a hand and when you need 450 raked hands....well you can see that this is an issue. After about an hour of play I am up about $7 total which is good. On NL I would have busted my buy-in already! I had accumulated in an hour a grand total of 2.75 raked hands toward my bonus...now that is grinding.
So this limit is not really getting me anywhere and still no action on the $.50/$1.00 tables. So do I get brave and go to 1/2 limit. I give it a shot and open up another table. (I still have no idea why the .25/.50 and 1/2 tables were packed and not a soul on .50/1). I sat in for about 20 hands before seeing a flop with AQs and missed, pre-flop was raised to $2 and the betting was up there post so I got out and was down about $6. The other tables were doing well, basically offsetting any loss at the higher limit. Things went along like this for about another 30 minutes any gain on the lower limits eaten by blinds at the higher limit but I was sitting in the raked hands and had about 24 raked on the 1/2 compared to 3.5 on the two lower combined.
The 0.50/1 table finally game alive and I shut down the 1/2 table. I played pretty well and was up on all three tables and started to shut down as the clock approached the
A few casual observations on LHE v NL and telling you how to suck eggs no doubt also.
- The swings are no where near as great, $$$ wise and emotionally / mentally. NL - Someone bets $15 and are all-in into you and you have a 17% chance and miss = fuck it! LHE - Someone bets $1 into you and you have a 17% chance and miss = at least this is not NL.
- You can buy a cheap look at the next card. The flop is out there and you are head-2-head first to speak, you are looking for a straight / flush draw or to get trips. You check, they bet $.50 and you call and get your look at the turn, if you hit you are set if you miss check / fold. This can be much more expensive NL.
- I find that you (well I do) pay more attention to what is going on especially with the community cards as it seems harder to get a read off the betting patterns of people so you pay more attention to reading the game.
- It is not anywhere near as boring as I have been lead to believe.
I also played a $3.30 tourney last night on Stars busting with the bubble approaching in 117th of 527 (99 paid). A massive 4-way all-in, my KK was cracked by AA, the two others had AT and KQ. Didn't mind so much I was 2nd to call against the KQ who was short stacked and the AA (who was top 10) called my all-in, and the final player also short-stacked decided to make it interesting.
At least it is Thursday, phew such a long week. Not much action over the next few days though as out tonight playing in the Australian Poker League, then the in-laws in town for Friday and Saturday and finally a close friend is visiting from London on Sunday which could get messy on a school night. I may get 3-4 hours in Sunday morning to dent that bonus again and my last two SnG have been 6ths so will need to do something about that.
Cheers...
and will be needing some LHE books to read it would seem...seems to be the way for me to go...
The stats table on the left is a direct steal from WillWonka...credit where credit is due. With the stats up there in black and white it should be a nice dose of reality now and then.
Well I am sunk; I will head back to Poker Stars, tail between my legs and console myself with the lowly $5.50 SnG and small multis as I have done my deposit in about 4 hours of play at Interpoker.
Now to get the bad beats straight out. Over the course of these 4 hours, I played pretty tight Poker, but was beat 4 times when the villain hits their A on the river on pots $20+, not winning one of these pots hurts, I would expect to win at least 50% of these but lost all four. The last, I get QQ pocket, and raise $1 on pre-flop, get one caller and flop comes 6c3d7c, now while there is a possible straight there, the way the table was playing I doubt it, people limping in with premium or one high card. I am checked to and decided to all-in just to take down this pot and I get called - they flip over AhKd...they got nothing, pot of $39, no flush draw, no straight draw, but of course for the 4th time they hit a river A and there goes another $25 buy-in. So I saddle up again and play for another hour, and long story short my two pair 9Ts all-in (9T7) go down in by JT when they hit their gut shot with an 8 on the river. Yes, I should have known better on this one, but geez I could not take a trick.
Things that I have learnt from this experience.
- Ring games are vastly different from SnG and MTT's (duh you all say). If anyone has some good resources on ring v SnG/ MTT play I would love to hear from you or anything about ring play in general.
- NL Ring games, no matter what the limit, is not the place to learn ring games.
- Do not try playing and learning on a very tight table. I was playing on a table that was only nudging 30% seeing the flop. Which pretty much meant that I was running into premium hands - I was totally the fish over the last two days. Need to be playing on more loose tables. The issue at Interpoker there was pretty much only 1 ten seat table at each limit otherwise they were short-handed.
- You are not trying to knock people out in Ring Games - as dumb as that sounds I think it is important if you play SnG and MTT games. There is no time limit in Ring games, the blinds are not going to go up. There is no pressure to 'make this hand pay' otherwise you are out / low stacked with the blinds about to hit you. All that matter is this hand this pot, if it is not right just get out.
- If you have been playing for an hour and are up $3.50 that is ok, you don't need to be up $1,237,567 for it to be meaningful, unlike SnG where after an hour you would expect to have a good stack and down to final 3-4. Especially if you are just trying to clear the bonus, it is about hands played, so breaking even is fine, just continue to play the hands. All-in is for the nuts! In my cases while pissed they hit their A to win, 4 times, I was never a certainty and should have known better and thought about why I was playing - to clear the bonus, not to win $100 this hand (although that would have been nice to).
So - while writing I have been thinking - am I ready to give this up? Can I learn from this now and get back into the action and try and clear the bonus. I can throw some more dosh at Interpoker and learn from the above and clear the bonus and if (and it seems to be a big if for me) I can play properly with break-even poker the bonus will see me slightly down on my investment. And playing another 500 raked hands may offer some pretty good lessons, hopefully not as expensive. I guess the issue is also that I need to find a loose table to play at, and at
I'll give it some thought...
I have been toying with the idea of signing up with an appropriate site to get a handle on the ring game side of Hold 'Em and clear the bonus requirement with the thinking that if I can play break-even or slightly above and clear the bonus I will get ahead in building the bank-role while learning. I was looking at Full Tilt as they are currently running a 100% sign-up bonus up to $600. I was only ever going to put in $100, so after reading this post by ScurvyDog I decided to head to Interpoker, as I would be leaving bonus money on the table, always get the full bonus amount. Essentially going to Full Tilt with only $100 I would be miss out on $500 in bonus.
In terms of my play I think that I am solid enough with fishy tendencies. I will not look at the possibilities, not think about what is out there and commonly only take my hand into consideration. I am still a complete amateur I have no barbs about that. I am here to learn, I read books, read blogs, I think about my play endlessly and how I could have played better even with the hands that I win and lose.
Last night was the first step into this ring world, and I am no Frodo Baggins. From reading SvurvyDog Strategy guide the idea is to play $0.50/$1.00 ring table, as at Interpoker you need 450 raked hands, and a raked hand is one that has a leat $20 in the pot, under $20 is counted as 1/4 of a raked hand. I decided that I should start a little lower in the limits ($0.25/$0.50) then this and on a NL table as this is what I am used to in SnG games. I buy in for $25 making it a full 10 on the table. I get up slightly in the first 30 minutes, playing fairly tight and getting an idea of the table. Essentially, a few players are dominating and taking cash of people popping in with $10 and losing it all. There are some large pots that I am not part of, with the average around $11-$15.
I get down to about $18 over the first hour after reaching a high of $36 when JTs comes along on BB. I check it in with two other callers. Flop of 9J8 rainbow, I bet $2.50 and get one caller, turn is a 4, I bet $5.00 get raised to $8.00...so I am think I have top pair on the board and I have an open ended straight needing a Q or 7 to complete. I thought I was in front and make it all-in. I was in front at this stage with the pair, but they are holding AcTd, looking for the straight also, they get their A on the river and there goes the first buy-in of $25. I was a little stunned by their re-raise and calling my all-in. I am still running this one through my head, and was 2+ hours after I went to bed, as to whether I played it badly. I mean I guess I could have folded the raise and it was bad they hit their river card but in the same situation at the turn I think I would do it again.
So I buy in for another $25 and check my arms and legs for any signs of scales and if there is a fishy smell lingering around. All clear, and I am playing ok, not great winning some small pots and get it to about $32 mark, I am wanting to get back to evens and then head to bed. One guy comes along throwing money around with the better players happy to take it off him; I wanted some of the action but never got the cards when he was donating his bank role. Well into the second hour sitting at the $38 mark and ATs comes along and I am UTG first to speak and do so with $2 raise and I get one caller. Flop fomes along of AA9. Now I can slow play these three Aces but I think that can work against you head-2-head just get what is there and move on, I bet $2 straight away and get raised to $4. So this is where my lack of thought comes in, I have a rule that if I get raised on the flop fold, get out, at my level I am not good enough to think through sum it all up I still get to caught up in what I am holding and lose concentration, an area that I need to work on. But in this instance I could not let go of my A and the two others on the board. So I ignored rule #1 from the previous post and all-in this sucker, they show AQ, the turn and river where nothing special and take the $70 odd pot with a higher kicker. Ouch, man that hurt. PC straight off, lights out and into bed to stare at the ceiling for 2-3 hours thinking about how I played.
Overall I think I played well, not my A game and got busted in the two monster pots I played but with strong hands. I think that better options such as folding to the raises, well duh, would have been better, despite the first being a strong hand. I guess I need to take more notice of my notes and past experiences, read my notes and think about my lessons before saddling up. Hopefully with these in the forefront of my mind I will make better decisions.
Also I think that I should be posting more, I was going to limit it to once a week as I didn't want to bore people, but this blog is here for me, to assist my game if you find it boring there are plenty of entertaining ones out there, such as those I read on the right. So I will add re-reading my own current blog postings before sitting down at the virtual felt and posting my thoughts on a consistent basis.
So tonight back at Interpoker with the other half of my deposit to make amends. Also I did struggle in the bonus stakes, there is $90 in bonus to claim but on the lower limit I only managed to get to 7%, completed - so to get the bonus I will need to re-establish my deposit and step up the limit to $0.50/$1.00 where the average pot size is in the $20 make before the end of the month. Although I do have two weeks left...should just see how tonight goes back at $0.25/$0.50 before deciding to step up limits.
Lessons this week:
- Leave yourself enough time to play in a large Tournament. Just because in the past you have rarely made it to the 2nd break does not mean that you will never. I sat down on Sunday playing a $3.30 tournament with 1800+ others and well into it I was 62nd with 142 left. It had been going for 2.5 hours, first place $1k. and held well above average chips. I was looking good, playing well and thinking final table. Except of course this was impossible, I had to be at a 30th birthday party in 20 minutes. The thought crossed my mind of just sit out and check/fold your way further into the money, but this is poor sport (but does happen!). So this hand comes along, TJs I raise and gets the SB calling. flop J48 I bet $4k, he calls. Turn comes with a Q diamonds, four into my flush, but no longer have top card. I was pretty sure he hit his Q, knew what he was looking for, lets test it $4k bet...straight back at me all-in...yep guess he just hit is Q...so now here it comes, 15 minutes to be at the Australian Hotel in the rocks for a birthday party...fuck it I'm all-in....he has AQos...7 spades...out.
- It takes particular talent and skill to multi table...I've done it twice both times playing a SnG while a tourney starts up...both times at the heads up stage both times finishing 2nd. But this is not true multi tabling, is that more ring games where people have 2-3 tables going...anyway this puppy will concentrate on one game at a time.
1 = 2
2 = 4
3 = 4
4 = 1
5 = 0
6 = 3
7 = 1
8 = 2
9 = 1
So my goal for the rest of this month is to double my bank role to $200, again playing SnGs with the odd tournament...nothing spectacular, but little steps to bigger things...I have to keep reminding myself of the title of this blog.
I have also been thinking about Full Tilt and adding $50 and getting the bonus, and using that bonus to play purely ring games on Full Tilt as I have never really gotten into ring games. This I think could be a good way to get my head around ring play and learn. I'll use the bonus as a base and if I lose it, then I'll be a little wiser, if I can build then great!
Not sure where I picked that up from, perhaps a DVD on poker but someone once said it and is proving quite true. In my short week last week Wed-Sun I was down quite early before finally finishing up for the week, a nice $12.25 which is my largest up week thus far. Though I was still well short of my massive $500 I was aiming for in December with a combined loss of $26.18. If I remove the Tilt on Poker Room, as I switched from Poker Room to Poker Stars when I started this adventure, I made a profit of $29.77 as I have been playing exclusively on Stars this is a solid enough result.
So last week out of 15 x $5.50 SnG
1 = 2 (yay!)
2 = 4
3 = 1
4 = 5 (boo!)
5 = 1
6 = 1
7 = 0
8 = 0
9 = 1
So in the money 46% of the time with an overall return of 31% on investment. There are two worrying trends for me, the amount of 4th place finishes and the amount of 2nd place finishes not being converted into wins.
So like a good little beginning poker player mid week in my run of 4ths, 5ths and 6ths I had a good look at what I was doing. I found that I was short stacked and was doing the 'ol all-in with A6os and losing (not surprisingly) I was moving away from my regular playing strategy, top 13 hands early positions with open raises 2-4 x BB, top 26 hands middle positions open raises 1-2xBB and limp in late positions top 40 hands, assuming no raises in front, otherwise play the table and call. When playing this strategy and sticking to it I have had the most success. I only move away from it when I am not short stacked, and when we are down to the endgame, 3-5 players left. E.G when we have 5 players left and I am chip lead I will open raise a K8os, resulting is stealing blinds or a look at a flop with 1 other player.
The other major worrying trend has been in all-in A2os board of KT2, I have assumed that because I have a pair and can win it, only to lose to pocket K4os.
The goods news is that after this review, twice I was very short stacked 400 chips each time and came back to win one and place 2nd in the other. I guess the moral of the story is that while you have chips anything is possible, and all-in should be reserved for when you have a very good hand, not A9os pre-flop coin flip races. Since the review placing’s have been 4, 3, 1, 4, 1, 2, 2, 6. So I will continue to play with a concerted effort to think about my betting and my playing strategy.
I hope that you all had an enjoyable New Year's, I know I did. All the best for 2006.
