...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.