I was doing some experimenting with some equipment at work, so I decided to undertake a goofy project. I recorded a .01 – .02 cent NLHE session. Actually I just wanted to film myself play a few hands, and I ended up making it quite entertaining with a hilarious “low budget” intro and doing a pretty darn good impersonation of Mike Sexton and Vince Van Patton (or as a friend told me, a dead-on impersonation of both Jim Ross of the WWE and Jack Nicholson).
Enjoy, straight from YouTube:
So I’ve been looking for an alternative to my handy spreadsheet that calculates what I need calculated. The bare essentials are breakouts between cash, SNG, and tournament play, and how much I have won/lost at each, and other things like ROI.
I found the program that a lot of people use, called PokerTracker. The new version is coming out in a month or two for a $10 upgrade if you already purchase the v2 edition, which I downloaded the free trial of to check out. The program is pretty amazing in terms of breaking down your play per position, hand, and situation – in addition to perhaps it’s single biggest asset, breaking down and keeping a database of all of your opponents! What really makes this handy is that the PokerAce HUD add-on actually gives you these statistics on playing tendencies live as you play and updates on the fly.
So looking at all this, I’ve had some conversations with my friend Mike about our pipe dream poker database website. The “legalese” of the sites say that displaying public information about other players is illegal, and I think that is fine. But you are able to display YOUR info and playing information for people to comment on, which is where I think we were headed, in addition to a whole social aspect. It’s a pipe dream, but the site could be an online version of PokerTracker, but with social features, minus the database of other players made public.
Anyways, I am thinking that PokerTracker is still a wise investment if you play poker more than 8 hours a week online. You really get to see holes in your game if you take the time to look at the data, and if you are a regular and see some of the same people often, getting a leg up on their tendencies can be huge at a table.
So this week I didn’t play that much, work and life will do that to you and that’s probably a good thing. After taking a beating at the cash games on FullTilt, I have rallied back with 7 straight winning sessions, including a 2 hour lovefest at the Hollywood Park casino. I jumped into the $40 NLHE table with a friend of mine, and ended up leaving after two hours with a cool $3 profit. Am I okay with that? Sure. The players were wild, there were many times I had AK suited and only limped in, because no matter what you would raise people would be in the pot with garbage. So I just sat back, waited for monsters, and won. If I had planned to stay at the table another hour I would have used the rock image to my advantage, but knowing I was leaving soon kept the game plan the same.
I’ll post my end of month results on Feb 1 for people to see. Right now I’ve managed to get myself back into the black. Maybe by the end of the month I can show a decent profit!
So I was reading through some blogs posted on CardsChat.com, which is a GREAT site for forum poker talk. It seems some play SnGs a lot, and some specialize in ring games. But those that play ring games never stick to just one table, they buy in lower than usual but play multiple tables (more than 2). For example , on one guy’s blog he mentioned that he would log in and play his “usual 16 tables”! I couldn’t believe that – 16 tables simultaneously. Crazy man.
So given my lack of cash game success, I thought to give this method a try, and played the $10NL game at FullTilt on 3 tables. The games were going as usual, then I hit KK on one table and was primed to make some money. I raised standard, got 1 caller, and of course the A flops. I bet it, he calls. I bet the turn, he calls. Crap I’m beat right? Right, I check the river, he value bets and I’m DYING to call, and I do, and he shows A4 off. UGH.
So about 20 minutes roll by, and I hit AA and actually got it to pay off, taking a pot for about $3. Nice right? Yeah, I know, HUGE stakes. The very next hand I got JJ, limped, and hit a beautiful flop of 10 7 2 rainbow, of course someone was playing Q10 and I killed em for another $3 pot. So after I end my 35 minute experiment, I find myself up $4.50 – awesome times.
Four years ago I bought a poker chipset from eBay for about $75. The chips were above and beyond anything anyone had at the time, but if you imagine your average chipset they sell at Costco or Walmart (11.5g) then you know what I am talking about. Nothing special, very average, the same chipset you see n 90% of American homes today. I got the set right before poker EXPLODED, so the nicer sets were in the range of $400 – $500 at the time, which was (and is still) above my bankroll.
Well, I have a client that has a few poker players, and I’ve been promising a poker night with them for a while – but I realized that unless I go first class with the poker table and chips it’ll come off as a cheesy home game. So on Monday I finally did what I originally wanted to do 4 years ago and get a great new chipset and an amazing poker table (or in this case, table-top).
I shopped around the internet and found a great store called the Discount Poker Shop (http://www.discountpokershop.com) I highly suggest you visit their site, they shipped everything out the same day and it got here (So Cal to So Cal) in 1 day (FedEx Home). Looking at the pictures, you’ll see the “High Roller” chipset (Laser Engraved with denominations of 1, 5, 25, 50, 100, 500, and 1000) along with the padded felt table-top with cup holders!!! I also ordered a 50 piece sets of 5,000 and 10,000 denominated chips for bigger home games. All the stuff is top quality and prompted my wife to challenge me to a few heads up matches last night.
I also added some new COPAG jumbo print decks of cards. I have plenty of decks, but only my Modianos are as nice as these, and the jumbo size prevents people from having to stand up to see what flopped. All of this – the new chipset (13.5g, laser engraved, 500 chips), the new table, and the new cards, were all around a total of $250 which includes shipping and taxes. I think it’s a heck of a deal!
So – with this new gear I never have to:
Hooray!
So you can imagine what this post is going to be about. Had some free time on my hands today so I spent time at the FullTilt cash tables to try to get points to get my bonus and make some money doing it.
Sadly, I had a woeful day. My game was on, but my reads were out of wack for a few DIRE hands. I would raise a limper, get 1 call, have an over pocket pair, bet it, get raised, and find out I was up against a bigger pocket pair at the river (KK vs QQ). Another time I flopped a set of Jacks only to be up against a set of Kings at the flop. BRUTAL.
Consider this so far from my handy-dandy spreadsheet:
Cash Games (14 sessions)
Median Cash Game ROI = +3.90%
Average Cash Game ROI = -2.37%
Sit n Go Games (7 sessions)
Sit n Go ROI = 71.76%
In The Money = 57%
I think we’re seeing a trend here eh? I’m seriously thinking I’m wasting my time playing cash games and should just focus on the SnG thing for now.
Check back for the next post – I’ll be showing off my new poker table, new poker chip set, and new cards. Yippie!
I played in the Morongo Friday Morning tournament for $48, you get 6k in chips at 15 minute blinds starting at 25-50. Fun tournament, saw QQ on the BB for the first hand and took it down for about 2k. Played against more super-aggressive people and played my K9 beautifully when I hit trips on the turn (I had top pair at the flop) and doubled through some dolt in seat 10.
Made some plays and worked my way up to 22,000 in chips, then saw the coldest deck of all time. I really REALLY wanted to play some hands, but it quickly got to the point where someone was all-in preflop for 5 to 8k and I don’t even have a marginal hand to call at all. So the blinds finally catch up to me, and we’re down to the last 15 (top 10 make the money).
So I hit some cards – AK off with 13k and the blinds at 2/4k, and of course, I push all in. I get a call from another woeful shortstack of 10k, and she flips over AA. Damn. I get killed, I just go all in next hand with Q7 clubs, get 1 caller (BB) who turns over J7. OMG – am I going to live? Nope. He hits JJ10 on the flop and I am toast, 5 out of the money.
Oh well, I had fun, played for 2+ hours, and damn near made the money in back to back events.
Finally reporting back because I finally got to play some cards. This morning my wife and I headed to the Spa Resort and played in their $40 NLHE tournament where you start with 5k in chips and start at 100/200 blinds at 15 minute levels. A cool thing about the tournament is that there is a 1,500 guarantee and the top 10 make the money if there are only 20 players (we got 28).
3rd hand – AA, with a raise and a call before me, so I make it 2k to go. I get a called and a good flop of K 7 3 with 2 clubs comes. He checks, I go all in, he calls. He turns over KQ clubs, drawing to the flush. It doesn’t hit and I have a nice double up early. Literally 16 minutes later we were down FOUR players! The players were near suicidal aggressive in this tournament, it was CRAZY. Anyways I got some hands, bullied a lot, and came into the final table with the 5th largest stack.
Unfortunately, my wife got nailed on the bubble with a horrible bad beat, her AJc died at the turn when she went all in at the flop to K10 with a flop of J 10 7. The K hit the turn, and she was done.
I fought and got my way to 4th, and with the blinds at 4/8k and my stack at 32k, i push all in from the button with K9h, the BB calls me with A2 off, the board blanks, and I win $90 for 2 hours of tournament play.
All in all, both the players (some seriously old geezers and young guns) played SO ridiculously agressive all I did was sit back and hit the big pots, and then with the stack bullied the bubble people around. Fun tournament.
Now, I finally hit up the cash game here at Morongo (we are staying here). The 1-3 NLHE has a 40-$100 buy in, so we’ll see what happens.
So the wife and I are headed to Palm Springs. Fueled by her astonishing 5th place finish in the New Year’s tournament at Treasure Island, my wife is on a poker rush and I sure as hell don’t want to get in her way (I finished 8th in the same tournament).
Anyways, I’ve never played in Palm Springs and was thinking how I don’t think I’ve ever played against 18-20 year olds in a casino before. Will they own the place? Will they be retarded? I expect most to play totally recklessly. The vacationers will be the fish most likely, so I expect it to be a profitable weekend. I asked a neighbor that goes out there how the play is, and he says he fully expects to pay for his outlet mall shopping with his poker winnings every time he gets out there.
So – I’m going to hit up the 1/2 nlhe, and maybe a tournament or two (found one that looks real fun at the Spa Casino in downtown PS). I’ll post my results when I get back.
For the first time since I started tracking my cash game exploits, I had a losing session. But sometimes it’s not a matter of why you didn’t win, but minimizing the losses. And really, it felt like it was “just one of those times” – consider that all of this happened within 20 minutes:
JJ twice late in the hand with one limper in mid position. I provided a nice preflop healthy raise called by only one (both times this happened). One hand it was the BB, the other hand it was the limper. Both occasions they both had AA. Yikes.
What happens 10 minutes after both of those hands? I get the AA, raise very healthy preflop, get a caller. Q 8 2 on the flop, rainbow. I check, hoping my opponent hit the flop – she did, and she led out with a nice bet (about 25% of the pot). I re-raised about 5x the amount. She calls. Uh-oh. 10 on the turn. I bet about 1/3 the pot, she calls again. I figure my aces are cracked at this point for sure. I check the river, she bets about 15% of the pot (a sure value bet) and even though I know I’m beat I have to call, and sure enough she’s holding Q 10 off. Damn, had her (like i thought i did) at the flop. That’s the breaks.
All things consider for those 3 tough hands, I only left down about 17% of my buyin, which I consider to be a minimal loss for the session.