...Yep.

I'm trying to up the posting amplitude a bit, but there's not much coming to me right now. Nothing all that new or exciting to talk about. Hm.

The new and improved SnG challenge I've got going on for myself hasn't really gotten anywhere - I played in three, was OoTM for two and 2nd in one, which is something like a ten cent loss. Woo.

I must say, though, it's going to take a few days to get used to not doing mindless ultra-turbos anymore. I actually have to think now. It caught me off guard in the first two, actually - I kept playing way too aggressively, especially given the nofoldemness of my stakes, and I was down to half my chipstack in no time before I realized what I was doing. I'm not used to actually going ten minutes and just folding without having the blinds up to 25/50, on the verge of 50/100.

I guess in that sense, the ultra-turbos were actually dangerous. Not only were they not all that profitable and far too luckbox oriented, they completely fucked with my mindset in SnGs in general. I'll have to work hard to extra patient at first now that I'm back to normal, not so crazy SnGs. The plus side is that the normal ones are really pretty easy to beat if you're patient and don't try to push people out of pots early on.

And that's about all I have for today. Maybe I'll actually ramble my way into a decent post one of these days.

Shifting Gears

I want to pretend that the ultra-turbos are working for me on UB, but I have to face the facts, and those facts are that I've basically broken even after 35 sit n gos. Now, that's not the hugest sample size, but based on how little my actual play seems to be really affecting my results, I think that the variance is just too high in the ultra-turbos for them to be profitable. In the end, if the cards fall for me, I win. If not, I lose. I feel like there's very little I can do with my playing to change that when the blinds are going up every 2.5 minutes.

So, it's time for me to admit defeat on that venture. I'm going to go in the completely opposite direction with this and just do 10-man non-turbos. I think that if I just play those and play them tight, waiting for good hands and letting the fish pay me off, I'll be able to do well much more consistently. I love UB's blind structure on normal SnGs/tournaments, because it's very slow and allows plenty of time for me to make good plays and increase my stack before the blinds start to press down on me. Granted, I'm not going to be able to toss an SnG into any half an hour or so of computer time that I have available anymore, but I definitely think that it'll be better in the long run.

Other than that switch, everything's the same. I'll start a new chart and keep track of my placements, I'll keep doing the 2% or less buyin strategy (meaning I need $50 to move up in stakes), and I'll just keep on grinding. Hopefully this'll be a grind that doesn't lead me in circles forever.

I really hope that this'll work. I'm very tired of being so stagnant.

The Funniest Two Hands of My Life

During a series of 1.10 triple draw sit n gos I was staked for, one of them started with these two hands:

(I can't find a decent triple draw HH conversion tool, so I'm not posting the whole hand. Basically, it gets raised to the cap on just about every street, and then they show down their hands as follows)

*** SHOW DOWN ***
Leito_1983: shows [Kh 4h 4d Kc 4s] (Lo: a full house, Fours full of Kings)
truckerdave9: shows [Td Kd Jd Ad 8d] (Lo: a flush, Ace high)
truckerdave9 collected 1130 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 1130 | Rake 0
Seat 1: Wlokos (button) folded after the 1st Draw
Seat 2: Zippo (small blind) folded before the Draw
Seat 3: truckerdave9 (big blind) showed [Td Kd Jd Ad 8d] and won (1130) with Lo: a flush, Ace high
Seat 4: Leito_1983 showed [Kh 4h 4d Kc 4s] and lost with Lo: a full house, Fours full of Kings
Seat 5: bobj06328 folded before the Draw (didn't bet)
Seat 6: kg45629 folded after the 1st Draw

I cracked up when I saw the hands. I've occasionally been with someone who didn't realize it was a lo game, but never before have I seen two people who didn't know how triple draw worked at the same table, and especially not facing off in the very first hand for bunch of chips.

The funniest part was the second hand, though, because apparently they didn't catch on after the first one:

(It gets raised to the cap after every draw)

*** SHOW DOWN ***
Leito_1983: shows [5d 8s 5s 5h 9h] (Lo: three of a kind, Fives)
Wlokos: shows [4h 7c 6d Tc 3c] (Lo: T,7,6,4,3)
truckerdave9: mucks hand
Wlokos collected 1300 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 1300 | Rake 0
Seat 1: Wlokos showed [4h 7c 6d Tc 3c] and won (1300) with Lo: T,7,6,4,3
Seat 2: Zippo (button) folded after the 2nd Draw
Seat 3: truckerdave9 (small blind) mucked [9c Jc Kc 2c 5c]
Seat 4: Leito_1983 (big blind) showed [5d 8s 5s 5h 9h] and lost with Lo: three of a kind, Fives
Seat 5: bobj06328 folded before the Draw
Seat 6: kg45629 folded before the Draw (didn't bet)

Yay for easy money.

Still Alive

Yeah, I'm not dead or anything. I've just been incredibly busy, and what little time I had left for poker has been tied up in a stake I got to run some triple draw sit n gos on pokerstars.

That means that I've made very little progress on the ultra-turbo thing right now, which is fine. I'll get back to that afterwards. The good side is that triple-draw sit n gos at the stakes I play (micro) are ridiculously easy to beat. I've seen all sorts of people raising it to the cap and standing pat from after the first draw onward only to lose with their 9-low to my 7-low. The only bad thing is that this makes it tough to distinguish the people who know how to play from those who don't, so I'll occasionally get hit by somebody with a nut low and lose big, but that's rare.

I think that in general, games with a low component are easier to beat than ones that are purely high based at low stakes. I always seem to have an easier time with omaha hi/lo or razz or triple draw than I do with hold 'em or stud high or regular omaha. That could just be due to the fact that I've practiced on the low games more, though. I'm not sure.

I wonder if hold 'em high low would work. You've only got two cards in your hand, so it would make it harder to sweep unless it was an A2 or A3 sort of hand, and it would be a bit of a crapshoot because going for low hands (23) would be really risky and totally reliant on a helpful flop. I think that there's a bit of a problem in that every person shares five cards for each hand but only has two others to use - not allowing the hand variety of stud hi/lo but not allowing the large range of cards available in omaha. It's kind of stuck in-between without any good factors to make a hi/lo game. It probably wouldn't work.

Anyway, that's about all the energy I have in me right now. When things wind down and my stake is over, I'll get back to posting more (and better), I promise.

Variance Much?

I almost never write off losing sessions in poker as just being variance. I mean, variance obviously exists in poker, and a bad run of cards can put a serious damper on a game no matter how well you're playing, but if I lose a couple games in a row, I hate to just say 'variance!' and then not think about it. I know that, variance or not, there was some leak in my game I could've patched, some problem with my play that I need to work on, and that if I look over how I've been playing, I'll likely see something to work on and then I can go about improving it.

With that said, my recent run of losses in the ultra-turbos really seems like a bad dash of variance to me. My reasoning? My current stats:

6-man Ultra Turbo Hold 'em .50+.05

First - 3
Second - 6
Third - 6
Fourth - 3
Fifth - 2
Sixth - 2

By itself, those stats don't show much - but if you compare them to my stats from the last post, you'll see that out of my last five sit n gos I've placed 1st in two, 2nd in two, and then fifth in one. The thing is, I don't feel like I've been playing really any differently than I did for the other eight that I lost before that. I mean, maybe a few small tweaks, but nothing to account for such a huge change in fortune all of a sudden.

Granted, my sample sizes for this whole set of sit n gos so far are grossly under what is needed to get a real feel for how I'm doing, but based on what I have so far, I'm still feeling good about my ability to beat the low stakes ultra-turbos. Besides, by the basic nature of an ultra-turbo, there's bound to be higher variance.

But Wlokos, how do you know that the variance wasn't really in the winning sessions - what if the losing sessions were the norm?

I suppose it's always possible that I've got my variance backwards and I've just been lucky on the first and last batch of games, with the middle set being what I'm truly capable of. It certainly doesn't feel that way, though, and I find myself hard-pressed to believe that I can't even beat the 50 cent sit n gos.

Well, the results of these next few days as I continue to cram as many of these as I possibly can into my playing time should give me a better idea, one way or the other, of how I'm doing. Hopefully I can start pushing myself beyond breaking even and start progressing towards the $50 I need to move up in stakes to the $1 SnGs.

---

In other news, if anybody else plays on Ultimate Bet and wants to join me in an SnG or two, I'd love to play with any of you other bloggers. Granted, my stakes are pretty much guaranteed to be lower than yours, but if you feel like just playing a round for fun, I'd love to do so.

My AIM screen name is oksokol, so just toss me an IM or something if you want to play.

Oh My Golly

Well, after my first bunch of ultra-turbo games, my stats looked something like:

SnGs Played: 8

First - 1
Second - 4
Third - 2
Fourth - 0
Fifth - 1
Sixth - 0

And after that, my stats developed into:

SnGs Played: 16

First - 1
Second - 4
Third - 6
Fourth - 2
Fifth - 1
Sixth - 2

Then I managed to win one to break my 8 or so game losing streak.

I'm not sure whether or not to write it off as variance or not. I mean, on one hand, I lost 8 games in a row. On the other hand, I placed ITM in 5/8 of my games before that, and I don't feel like I really changed my playing style at all. That's not to say that I haven't been playing poorly and not noticing it, though. I don't know quite yet, I need a larger sample size before I can really determine what's going on. I do think that the 6 bubble spots that I landed myself in is something I should work on, but I'm not quite sure how.

Maybe I just need to try and stop myself from dwindling to sub-1000 chip levels before going all in at the final three, because once I'm down that low, doubling up doesn't really help help much. If I just bite the bullet and push in more at the 1500 or so level, when I do come out on top, I'll be in a position to fight again.

On the other side of the coin, I probably need to stop making loose calls early on in the games, because there's no excuse for that. I guess because of the fact that I know blinds are going to get high fast, I feel like I need to stay in hands that I shouldn't on the off chance that they'll help build my chipstack, which they don't. If I can keep myself from bleeding chips and just try to get maximum value on those hands which I should stay in, I'll probably be able to put myself in a better position for those 'final 3' scenarios and have less all-in coinflips to worry about.

I suppose I'll just have to keep experimenting.

Anyway, in case anybody's wondering why I don't just jump to a more familiar and lower-variance sit n go like a non-turbo or even just a regular turbo, I do have a reason. I figure that, if I can beat the ultra-turbos enough to be profitable, it's by far the fastest way to increase my bankroll. It may be high variance, but when I can finish games in 20-30 minutes, I can play a lot more of them than I can with other types of sit n gos - and it keeps the grind moving a whole lot faster. If I keep playing these and after 100 or so I'm still getting nowhere, I might have to bite the bullet and go for a slower game, but for now, I'm going to see how plausible this is.

---

In non-poker related news, Yom Kippur made me realize just how bad it would feel to not have enough to eat on a regular basis. For those who are unaware, Yom Kippur is essentially the Jewish day of repentance, and you have to fast for 24 hours. By the end, I was feeling pretty shitty, and it was great to be able to eat again afterwards. I feel like I have a bit of a new appreciation for my living situation allowing me to eat three meals a day and not have to go without food because I can't afford it or something. I think that some of my money may be finding its way to a charitable organization in the near future.

Don't Drink The Water

Happy Yom Kippur to all of you. Well, as happy as a day of repentance can be, I guess. A day of repentance without food or water, no less. One with several hours of religious services.

Ew.

Oh well, that's how it goes down here in jew world. Maybe I'll get some poker in there too, the fasting should counter the heathenous gambling thing.

..or fast and unstable

The ultra-turbo thing took a bit of a downturn yesterday - nothing severe, but enough to get me a bit frustrated. Frustration is not conducive to any level of good play, so I shut down UB and opened up Pokerstars to go mess around with the $4 I still had lying around on there.

I decided to join a $3.40 8-man razz turbo. I figured that I really didn't care what happened to my pokerstars money, so I could go for broke trying to get it to a more enjoyable level.

The razz was actually pretty fun. I remembered just how many people have no idea what they're doing pretty quickly, as I watched all sorts of ridiculousness going on from at least half the table. I decided that there wasn't much point in trying to use my shown cards to scare off people, because if I had [KK]234 and someone else had [TJ]Q59, they'd likely be calling me anyway. So, I just sat back and waited for the right hands to extract whatever value I could from the donks before they got sent packing.

An example of the plays these guys were making: I bet into somebody at every single street in one hand (and got called) and ended up winning with a 7-low while they had a Queen low. It wasn't a draw, either - it was something like Q-T-9-7-2.

However, thanks to one bad beat on seventh street and a bunch of dead cards, I was eventually the short stack with five people remaining. I don't remember exactly how it happened and I forgot to save any hand histories, but long story short: I came back and won.

So, I now had $12. I left for a while, and when I came back much later, I decided to jump into a .10/.20 limit game with $4 and give it a shot. This table had more calling stations than I have ever before known to exist. The perfect example (and the easiest hand I've ever played) is in this hand, which I did save the history for: http://www.pokerhand.org/?1496088

Yep, quads. Always a fun hand, but much more fun when the betting is capped each round without having to even put any real effort into it. After watching people raising and calling to the showdown with two pair like that, I was ready to bet/call any good hands, and that was just the strategy I used. When I left the table, I had brought my buyin up to $16 or so.

And so, just like that, my bankroll was sixfold what it had been at the start of the day. Granted, that only means it's up to $25 or so, but it's still fun. Guess I won't be totally treating it as my 'whatever I want' bankroll, but it'll still be what I go to when my sit n go challenge on UB bores me.

I'm going to post some actual details on how that UB project is going in a day or two - I was going to today, but then the pokerstars thing came up and seemed much more noteworthy.

Slow and Steady...

Stick responded to my last post by suggesting that I move to the 1c/2c cash games to make the grind a bit less... grindy.

It's a good idea, and if the point of this whole bankroll strategy was to just make money as fast as possible, I would. I think I was a bit unclear on my reasoning behind what I'm doing, though, so let me clear things up a bit:

The point of all this isn't to make money, not yet. If I was trying to increase my cashflow, I'd deposit a bit and skip the micro stakes. The reason that I'm doing this, however, is because I don't think that I'm ready to move past the micro stakes. I want to follow a strict bankroll strategy, one that will reward good play in the long term, and then to just follow it until I'm playing well enough to make enough money to play higher stakes. It's a way for me to instill good bankroll habits within myself as well as a way to make sure that I'm really able to handle higher stakes.

The way I look at it is this: If I can't get past the grind to make it to the $1 sit n gos, and then the $2, and then $5, and so on, with this strategy, then I'm probably not ready to move up yet. Because I'm only doing sit n gos with such a low buyin proportional to my bankroll, the only way I can move up is to beat the games consistently and do well enough that my long term results propel me up into the range I need for the next level buyins.

It's going to be a grind, and it may get boring, but this way I'll know for sure that I'm able to handle the levels I'm playing at. It should help me hone my skills as I move up the levels, and it'll get me away from thinking about the money when I should be thinking about the cards. I think that, in the long run, it will improve my play tremendously, and then I'll be able to be successful.

Eventually, I may do a similar 'challenge' for cash games. Right now, my focus is on SnGs.

Also, while I could consolidate my bankrolls onto one site, I left a little on pokerstars so that I can just fool around in some random games without worrying about messing up my 'roll from time to time. The grind WILL get boring after a while, and sometimes I'm probably going to just want to mess around in a cash game or something, so I'll have my pokerstars account for that. Before I made that decision, I lost around $2 between a cash game and an MTT on UB, and I realized that it was messing with my SnG project, so I decided to leave all that to the pokerstars account.

In other news, as far as the actual progress on my UB project, I've been mostly playing the 'ultra-turbo' 6-man hold 'em SnGs. I've had some decent success so far, and I'm back up to $7 from the $4 that I was at after the aforementioned cash game/MTT. I'll post my views on the Ultra-Turbos in another post, though.

Laugh Hard, It's a Long Way to the Bank

Basically, whenever I start up a bankroll, it usually ends up going through all sorts of crazy ups and downs and loop-the-loops because I never use good bankroll management. This is probably why I'm down to $4 on pokerstars.

So, I'm starting a new project. I'm taking the $6 or so that I have at UB (see last post) and I'm going to put it all towards sit n gos. I won't be playing any ring games, and no mtts (at least, not right now). Instead, I'm just going to follow a very simple bankroll formula to determine the levels at which I play.

Basically, I'm not going to play sit n gos with more than 2% of my bankroll. At first, I'll have to bend the rule to let myself play the lowest stakes, which are .50+.05, but once I get to $25, it'll be legitimate. That means that I have to get to $50 to play $1 sit n gos, $100 to play $2, etc..

I know this is a bit extreme and it'll be one hell of a grind for a while, but I think it's something I need to do to instill a sense of bankroll management into me. If I have some success, I'll probably loosen it up to 3-4% for a sit n go and 2% for mtts, but that won't be until I hit $100 at the very least. And if I really do have success with this, maybe I'll just leave it at a flat 2% or less buyin for anything. I dunno.

Anyway, I could use some comments/suggestions on this. See any massive flaws in my plan? Have any suggestions based on something similar you've done in the past? I'd love to hear it.

Oh, and happy Roshashana to all my fellow jews out there.

Yes!

Yesterday, around 6:30 at night, I decided to jump into a random Ultimate Bet freeroll. I didn't have any money on the site and I just felt like playing on it for some reason. It turned out being Omaha hi/lo, which was fortunate, because it's one of my favorite types of poker and the general population of UB freerollers tends to be even worse at it than other games.

It started out pretty crazily. People were going all in left and right on next to nothing, even after the flop or turn, and I was just folding my mediocre hands and waiting for the madness to die down. It took a while - I think it was at least fourty minutes into the tournament before I won my first hand, and then another ten for the next one - but those were the first two hands I brought to the showdown, and I had nearly quadrupled my initial stack afterwards, bringing me up to around 5500.

After that, I continued to play ultra-tight and wait for good hands. People were paying off just about anything that I would catch, so it wasn't challenging. Eventually, at the first break, I was somewhere in the vicinity of 8000 chips.

Sadly, I had to leave for a while at that point. I spent around an hour away from the game, came back to see that I was still at 7000 or so chips, played a hand or so, and then had to go right back to sitting out while I had to do some work. When I came back again, just to check on my stack, I was around 6000. I decided to just find a good hand preflop and push it all in, because I wasn't going to be able to play out the rest of the tournament.

Well, I did that. Twice. And I ended up at 50k chips after all was said and done. Now, that wasn't all that huge by this stage of the tourney, but it wasn't half bad. And, having obtained a chipstack that could hold on for a while, I proceed to go back to my work and sit out again.

I sat back down to finish the tournament once and for all a half an hour or so later. My chip stack was still fine, though I don't remember what it was exactly. To be honest, I don't remember much about this stage of the tournament. When it got down to around 50 people, though, I was in 30th or so and the top 30 places paid off with an entry into a much better 'round II' freeroll on sunday. I was a bit worried that I'd bubble, but I hung on with a combination of playing really tight and occasionally making plays for chips, and in the end I scraped by and made it into the top 30. I was 26th or so at the time.

The next payout was that there was $50 distributed amongst the top 18. I started playing some real poker again, rather than my too-tight don't let me bubble style that I'd been playing before, and pulled my self up just enough to pull into the money again - but I was in second to last place.

Well, long story short, I went all in a few times and was up to 200k, then 500k, and then the next thing you know I'm at the final table. I don't remember much of this anymore, honestly, because it was past midnight and I was tired as hell.

I ended up placing 3rd. It's my best mtt finish ever, so I'm proud of it. Sure, it was a freeroll, but there were still 3863 people for me to outlast, so it wasn't easy.

I made all of $6 and the entry to the other freeroll as a prize. $1 an hour, woo. Still, it was fun. Incidentally, I had incredible luck all tournament. Not tons of suckouts kind of luck, but every single 50-50 race going my way kind of luck. That doesn't happen too often, so it's always refreshing when it does.

Today, I played a few $1.10 triple draw sit n gos on pokerstars for a stake from neverbeg.com, and placed 2nd/1st/2nd - so the good streak continues. Hopefully it'll never end.

...Yeah, right.

Loose Lips Sink Ships

Why do people feel the need to bitch at others who are playing badly at a poker table?

You know what I'm talking about - some random fish draws out to an inside straight or something after making a ridiculous call, beats another guy's two pair or trips or whatever it may be, and then the guy who suffered the bad beat immediately goes off on a tirade about how the fish has no idea how to play and should go back to the playchips tables or something.

It's just beyond me as to why anybody would do that. I mean, yeah, I understand that they're pissed off that they got a bad beat and they're taking it out on the person who's to blame, but it's just a dumb move. The fact that the other player is making bad calls without the correct pot odds is a good thing. This will make you money. Thus, you want every single person making plays like that.

So, when you get what you should want and have other players making bad plays, why would you alert them to their error? Why would you tell them that they just made a bad move? What if they actually listen and start playing more carefully? You just ruined a bit of a +EV factor for yourself, because you couldn't handle someone else getting one bad beat on you!

Also, though this doesn't tend to happen, what if they actually decide to leave? I mean, it's unlikely, but if it were to occur, you'd be the fish. Getting a bad player to go away is possibly one of the dumbest things you can do in a ring game.

As for me, if I see this sort of situation unfold, I always side with the fish. You should too. It has two benefits:

It makes the pissed off guy very likely to go on tilt if he isn't already. I mean, he gets bad beat by some guy with four or less outs, calls him out on it, and now some other dumbass is defending the play? How can he possibly not see the error in that move? What right does this guy have to call him the fish?! Incidentally, he may start to play way too aggressive against you after you "call him out" on insulting a "normal play", because now he's out for blood.

It also tends to give the real fish more confidence in his bad plays. It's a bit underhanded to encourage somebody to play badly by telling them their bad moves are good, but such is the nature of internet poker. I wouldn't do it to a friend in a live game, but if it's somebody I don't know, I'm going to try to extract every cent I can from them. This means commending their bad plays that end luckily, and also means sympathizing when they get hit with the big losses they deserve. Anything to keep them in the game and keep their money headed in my direction.

In poker, it's all about maximizing the profitability of the situation you're in. This goes beyond the cards you play. Encourage bad play by others, seize the opportunity to put an angry player on tilt, do what you must. In situations like these, I see a huge opportunity and I don't see why anybody would choose to be on the losing end of it - by being the one that tells off the fish for bad plays. Let it be, and take the money.

Pokerbot 9000

While browsing through my poker forum of choice (www.cardschat.com), I've seen a couple topics regarding online poker assistance programs. A program that basically sits underneath your pokerstars or full tilt or whatever else window and gives you all the odds and info that you would normally have to figure out on your own, to make the decision process a lot easier. Now, at first glance, this is a great idea - if you have trouble calculating all the odds, let the computer do it for you, right?

Still, I was a bit surprised to see the majority of the respondants to the topic agree that it was a good program and that using it wasn't a bad idea. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think that using such a program is a good idea at all, no matter what your level of play is or what stakes you're at.

My reasoning? Well, for one thing, if you're constantly glancing between the cards and the odds that are displayed, you're a lot more likely to stop paying attention to the other players, which is never good. I mean, if the program is telling you where the odds are for everything and you're just kind of running on autopilot, you may not notice that SuperPoker112's just bluffed you out of the third hand in a row.

Also, considering that most online poker players also play at least occasionally in real life, using such a program means you're likely to fall apart when that crutch you've been leaning on becomes absent during a live game. If you're so used to having the odds figured out for you, you might notice your ability to figure them out on your own has gotten very rusty. Or, if you've never really been able to figure them out, you'll never get that far. Your poker playing will become very stagnant, and you'll continue to be a live-game fish.

That said, I can certainly see why somebody might want a program to prevent them from losing serious money on some miscalculations. I just think that, if you're going to use one, you'd have to be able to remain alert to the rest of the table and continue to do a lot of the work in your head to stay sharp.

I know that I'd likely end up letting it wreck my play, so such a program will never find its way onto my computer screen.

Bad Beats Ahead

I was playing in a live game two days ago with two of my friends - nothing big, just a $10 buy-in and single $5 rebuy, sit n go style - and as I was actually doing quite well. I never even had to rebuy, and took the full $15 from each of them. I've been playing with these guys for a while, and there's one thing that I've noticed from the host. All it takes is one bad beat, one play where he gets the shaft a bit from the cards, and he's pissed. He stops talking, he stops laughing, he gets all intense and he focuses on the game like his life depends on it until he's back up to a good chipstack.

Obviously, in his case, that works out well for him. When he gets angry, he just gets focused as all hell and plays as well as he can until his chips are back. For some people, however, that same mentality will put them right on tilt and their chipstack will just proceed to melt away.

I notice that a lot of people in the poker world seem to be able to get very angry after just one or two bad beats. Someone'll be playing fine, having a good time, and as soon as that 2-outer hits, they get all inverted and pissed off and not only are they angry but they're on tilt too.

I don't quite understand that. Yes, bad beats happen. They happen all the time, everybody gets them, and all that cal. The thing is, everybody gives them out on occasion too. That's what really keeps me from getting too angry (most of the time) when that runner-runner straight or whatever else hits me. I know I've done the same before, and that I'll do it again. So, why should I get so mad when it happens to me every now and then?

Besides, when you give out a bad beat, you don't get ultra-excited and start playing really well, do you? If you're gonna go all hulk mode when you get 'em, you'll throw all your karma out of whack.

Jive Aces vs. Jive Aces

I just got instant messaged by a member of the band Jive Aces, whom I got the name for the blog from. He said that it might confuse people who were looking for the band site, and if it would be possible for me to change the blog name. I compromised with a disclaimer underneath the title, as you can now see.

It's kinda cool, though. Random dude from a reasonably successful swing band just up and IMs me out of the blue. Not an everyday occurance for a random guy out here in Connecticut.

Incidentally, after posting my last blog, I joined a 1.10 turbo hold 'em 45 person sit n go, and it's down to the final four. Guess posting about my bad spree ended it.

..and there I go in fourth. Ok, then. Picked up a $3.90 profit, still, so not bad.

Triple Draw Success (and some other less successful things)

I've had tremendous success at the Triple Draw 2-7 1.10 sit n gos on pokerstars. I wish I could see my stats for that specific game, but I don't have a sharkscope account so I can only get the general picture of all games in one statistic right now. Which, by the way, is improved:

Username Games Played Av. Profit Av. Stake Av. ROI Total Profit
Wlokos .........47 .......... $0 ........$1..........3% ........-$5

I know, I know, $-5 is nothing to be proud of. But, hey, my ROI% is officially a positive number, and the profit was worse before. Maybe soon I'll actually get it up to a positive number too.

But, anyway, the sad part of the story is that I'm still down in the bankroll department from the last time I blogged. My current bankroll's a mere $8.21 or so, which is around four dollars worse than last time (and I'm too lazy to check exactly what I had last time). This is because, despite the fact that I'm placing first or second (mostly first) in around 90% of the Triple Draw Sit n Gos I join (more on that later), I proceed to lose it all in other games. I've lost two $2.20 heads up Omaha Hi/Lo games and a couple of texas hold 'em sit n gos. I'm not sure why that is - I don't think I'm particularly weak in hold 'em, though I suppose that I could be wrong. Same with the omaha, but that was heads up, which I am less experienced in, so that probably explains that.

So, I'm working on trying to improve my hold 'em play, because I shouldn't have trouble at such low stakes.

And then there's the Triple Draw. The low stakes sit n gos for this one are so weak that it's almost guaranteed money. My strategy is pretty simple - I try to only be putting money in the pot for two reasons: A: It's shorthanded and I think I can steal the pot, or B: I think that I'm getting better odds to make my hand than my opponent. As in, he drew three and I drew two and improved to a one card draw for next round. That kind of thing.

I've been spending around two hours a day at home (including sleep, which has mostly but not in great quantity happened elsewhere), so I'm not working up to full capacity. Thus, this post is a bit shorter and less interesting or well thought out than the last few, but I wanted to post something. I'd been almost a week since my last post, after all.

The Slow Climb Upwards

Along with a couple unremarkable ventures into the world of Triple Draw 2-7 sit n gos, from which I've probably made all of a dollar of profit, I've taken part in two Limit Stud Hi/Lo tournaments, at the stakes of $1+.10. Not exactly the most thrilling stakes, but really, what more could I have done with a bankroll of $6?

Prior to this, I'd mainly done No Limit and Pot Limit for tournaments, so it was a bit of a change - and it taught me a few things about the limit stud MTTs:

-From the middle rounds and onward, you'd better be real careful.

Because, with five rounds of betting in each hand, all it takes is one hand to really set you back or take you out completely once the stakes start to escalate. Combine that with the fact that people were being very stubborn about not losing once we were down to around 150 people (from 310 and 360 respectively), and it was really easy to mess up that one draw that didn't connect and all of a sudden end up with 4000 chips at 500/1000 stakes. Considering that I might have been pretty comfortable with my chipstack prior to such a hand, it was a bit of a shock during the first tournament to realize how easy it was to lose those chips. I tightened up a bit on the draws and the 'I have a shot!' sort of lost hands that I need to fold regardless of the situation during the second tournament - and it made things a bit easier.

-It's annoying as hell to try to double up once you're at the desperate chipstack level in a hi/lo game.

Seriously, I'd get something like AKT with the ante eating me alive and push my money in as quickly as the stakes allowed me, only to end up against someone with a lovely A2458 low that would return my half of the pot right back - only a few hundred anted chips richer than before. I did that several times from short stack situations, and it was really getting annoying towards the end of my run.

-People can last forever despite the rising stakes.

I must've spent at least twenty minutes (in super fast internet poker hands) waiting for the last two people to lose that would push us into the money during my second tournament. Incidentally, I used that time to double up once or twice, which was nice, but it was a bit disheartening to continue to check how many people were still in and see that number refuse to budge at all. On the plus side, I was the one to knock out #42, and #41 quickly followed.

-I have some kind of knack for limit hi/lo stud.

In the first tournament of 360 people, I placed 11th for a $3.50ish profit. One day later (tonight), I placed 15th out of 311, netting a similar profit. That said, three hours of play does not end too happily when I lose so close to the final table and have only $3 to show for it, but it's still nice to place back to back in reasonably high positions. Plus, in my current attempt to climb my way up the bankroll ladder, any profit is a good profit.

Speaking of that bankroll, I've improved quite a bit since my last blog. Let's see if I can keep it growing.

Current Bankroll: $13.22.

The Micro Stakes and The Freeroller

I was on pokerstars, trying to freeroll up some kind of bankroll. At first, it was damned near impossible - anybody who's ever played in a freeroll on pokerstars knows how the tournaments tend to have 8000 people vying for 27 spots in a tournament that actually has cash prizes, where you fight with another 2000 people. It's not worth it whatsoever.

Luckily, a friend of mine had an account with some money, and he tossed me $3. This was two days ago. I've had success on other sites with the whole freerolling thing, along with playing a pretty good amount in real life at random games with people I know, so this wasn't the first time I'd played with real money. Just my first chance at pokerstars. The first thing I did was hit the omaha hi/lo .01/.02 table, and then a hold 'em table, and pull myself up to $6ish.

A few things I've noticed about the micro stakes internet tables:

-Your bluff is worth nothing.

Well, this isn't entirely true. You can bluff, and you can sometimes pull it off if you deem your table tight enough, but it's not worth it. The amount of times people fold will not make up for the amount of times that they call. Don't bother.

-You encounter some strange situations.

One table I was at had a guy who went all in every hand. I've seen this in freerolls, but at a normal table? He made some ridiculous beats to get up to around $6 from his first dollar, then me and one other guy who hung around at the table when everybody else'd left proceed to wait for the right hands and call him until he lost all of his money.

-It's really hard to avoid thinking 'well, I'm down $2/up $1/whatever'

In real life, those chips in front of you don't count themselves down to the exact cent after every hand. It's easy to avoid thinking about whether you've made or lost money so far, which is a good thing - because, unless you're losing hundreds of dollars and need to stop playing before you lose more, you don't want to be thinking about if you're down or up. Otherwise, you start to feel like you don't want to leave until you've gotten back that $10 you lost... And that never leads to strong play.

Online, you always know exactly how much you have. You can't avoid it, it's right there next to the cards you're playing. And it's really easy to fall into the trap of 'well, maybe I'll fold rather than fall into a loss for the session..'. Obviously, that sort of thinking needs to be squashed for any serious success.

-There's a lot of profit to be had by being selective about which tables you play at.

Online, there are so many different options of where to play, and it's so easy to watch them for a little and see which table you want to select. You shouldn't ignore that advantage. If you observe a table for a bit and see some solid play, find a different one. There are always, at least at the stakes I've been at so far, weak tables that are just waiting to be cleaned up. Finding those tables makes the job of actually playing the cards much easier.

My current bankroll on pokerstars is $6.70. Let's see if I can get this thing to grow into something worth playing with.

The Beginning

I was googling 'razz strategy' to look for some tips prior to a small online tournament, when I came across an article in a poker blog entitled 'Take The F Train'. I checked out some more of his posts, and then some other poker blogs, and I was pretty interested in the whole concept of a poker blog. I've been playing for quite a while, and having developed my game to at least a decent level, I thought it might be a fun project to undertake, both for the sake of helping out others and discovering some of the trouble spots in my own game.

So, this is the result. A little poker blog with a name lifted from a UK swing band. Hopefully I can have some fun and help some people out in the process.

Adios for now, maybe I'll actually get a poker related blog up soon.