Saturday, October 30, 2010

Fwepping and follow-through

Is the title of this post sufficiently cryptic for you? I'll be very disappointed if it's not. In fact, I flat out dare you to tell me what on God's green earth it means! I'll go even further -- if you can simply tell me what the verb fwep means, I'll eat my shorts, my hat, and any other article of my clothing of your choosing.

The thing is, I'm not going to give you the time to tell me, because I'm going to tell you. I know that's sort of cheating, but there's not much you can do about it! :-)

Fwep is an acronym which stands for "fold with extreme prejudice". I'm trying to ramp up my fwepping skills. To the compleat fwepper, any unsuited, unpaired hand containing a deuce or a trey is immediately fwepped. No poker brain cells are sacrificed in the execution of this action. If you play long enough, as I'm beginning to believe I have, nothing can convince you that anything good can ever come of such a hand.

That's all very well and good, but what's the significance of "follow-through" in the title of this post? I'm glad you asked, I really am. What I'm talking about is the follow-through of a golf swing, and how it applies to poker. Bear with me; you'll be glad you did!

Full disclosure: I'm not a good golfer, never have been, and never will be. However, that doesn't preclude my being an avid golf fan, nor my having a finely-tuned sense of what it takes to play high-level golf, even though I don't have a snowball's chance in hell of ever attaining such a skill level.

I've penetrated, through ratiocination alone, the greatest secret of a successful golf swing. It seems so incredibly simple, and yet at the same time it's incredibly profound. It makes no sense at all, and yet on another level, it makes perfect sense. And I'm about to share it with you, gratis. All the aspiring golfers of the world should be waiting with bated breath for what I'm about to impart, even though this is a poker blog!

It's simply this: the ball won't go where you want without a proper follow-through. I'll bet you're feeling incredibly cheated by this facile dictum, but allow me to try to explain my wonderment. What I want to try to impart to you is the incredible mystery of the flight of the ball being influenced by the path of the clubhead AFTER THE IMPACT OF THE CLUBHEAD WITH THE BALL HAS ALREADY OCCURRED! Think of it for a second! That clubhead should be able to do whatever it wants after impact! It should be able to do an Irish jig, Brownian motion, or whatever crazy dance it wants after impact, right? Because, since it's no longer touching the ball, it shouldn't really matter what it does, right? Wrong! It matters! Oh, does it matter! There's literally nothing that matters more.

It's hard for the poor brain to comprehend, but the success of the golf shot depends on the totality of the swing, not simply the rather negligible moment of impact. If you finish well, it will have turned out that your impact was a good one; if you don't finish well, it will have turned out that your impact was all shot to hell. This seems to stand causality on its head; how can a later event influence an earlier one? That just isn't cricket, to use a British term. But oh my friends and oh my neighbors, it IS cricket.

Now I seem to hear you asking: how the hell is this blowhard going to apply his whacked-out theories about successful golf swings (and why should we even be listening, by the way, since he's already admitted he's a for-shit golfer?) to the sphere of poker? Patience, grasshoppers, patience!

I strongly believe that the success or failure of a poker hand largely depends on your committing wholeheartedly to its success or failure from the earliest possible moment. That means that you should either fold immediately, or hang in there till the very end. Of course, that's not really practicable for every success hand. However, it is practicable for every single failure hand! Fold your failure hands with extreme prejudice before the flop! And count yourself lucky!

Last night, I didn't quite achieve my pre-session goal of only seeing the flop half of the time, but I came close.

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 56 hands and saw flop:
- 8 out of 9 times while in big blind (88%)
- 7 out of 9 times while in small blind (77%)
- 20 out of 38 times in other positions (52%)
- a total of 35 out of 56 (62%)
Pots won at showdown - 4 of 7 (57%)
Pots won without showdown - 3

My discipline was rewarded; I like this fwepping thing!

delta: $12,600
balance: $781,749

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Too many flops

Last night, my stack experienced a wild ride in the first part of the session, then settled down into a long, smooth, and painful descent to the felt. Here are the stats:

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 77 hands and saw flop:
- 12 out of 13 times while in big blind (92%)
- 13 out of 14 times while in small blind (92%)
- 40 out of 50 times in other positions (80%)
- a total of 65 out of 77 (84%)
Pots won at showdown - 8 of 20 (40%)
Pots won without showdown - 2

Here's my train of thought on reviewing these stats:

1. my showdown percentage is too low
2. that's because I went to showdown too many times
3. that's because I saw too many flops

It just doesn't make sense to pay to see the flop with a flat out poor hand, or even with a marginal one. I realize that somewhere along the way I've lost my discipline. When I first started playing the higher stakes play tables again (in March of this year), I was really scared of the amounts, and didn't have a problem folding early and often. Since I had enough success to make it to my goal of a million play dollars (even though I haven't been able to stay at that level) I've become both jaded and complacent. Funnily enough, I realize I need to play with more fear!

My goal for tonight's session is to see the flop on at most half of the hands I'm dealt.

delta: $-40,000
balance: $769,149

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

An old failing

On Monday night, I succumbed to an old failing once again; on the most expensive lost hand of the night, I fell in love with a stealth two pair and was blind to the straight possibility on the board. My opponent had actually flopped the straight, and proceeded to extract maximum value from me.

This has happened way too many times. I still haven't been able to correct this blindness. Probably the only thing that saved me from the felt was the fact that the table quit on me, and I was wise enough not to join another one.

I'm perilously close to another even crossing, more's the pity.

delta: $-31,160
balance: $809,149

Monday, October 25, 2010

Drawing practice

I last played on PokerStars on Thursday night; I stayed on an even keel and came out slightly in the black. There's nothing very exciting to report about the session, so I'll focus this post on something else.

I've always had at least a slight interest in poker, and it's never suffered a decline. It had a big uptick when I first watched Texas Hold'em on ESPN around three years ago, and from that time I can say I've been seriously hooked. Four years ago, before the uptick, I ported an open source video poker game which had been developed for Linux to Windows. One drawback it had was that it required mouse input to play. Over this last weekend, I enhanced it to take keyboard input in addition, and have used it to get some good "drawing practice" in. What I mean by that is practice at getting better at evaluating a poker hand at a glance, making it second nature to pick which cards to hold.

Five card draw and Hold'em would seem to have little in common, but one thing they do share is the poker fundamental requirement of being able to recognize the drawing potential of a hand. Of course, all poker variants share that. The less mental energy you have to expend on the fundamentals, the more you have left over for the finer points of strategy! I'll be interested to see if the drawing practice helps my play.

delta: $2,000
balance:$840,309

Thursday, October 21, 2010

A pair of 200s

Friends and neighbors, this is my 200th post to this blog. Surely a time to take stock and reflect. I remember bragging in my 50th post that my gut feeling was that I was already a more successful blogger (in terms of number of posts) than over half the bloggers on the planet. I now realize that assertion was just so much boyish bluster. Why, you ask? I'll be glad to tell you. Actually, I just did! Think about it for a moment :-)

It's not such a big secret that people love to hear themselves talk, and I'm no different. Samuel Pepys sure knew what he was about. Writing a blog is definitely addictive. Seen properly in this light, there's little reason to brag about having a large number of posts to your name, and even less reason to believe that less than 50% of bloggers ever get to 50 posts.

But what about the other 200 I promised in the title of this post? I'm glad you asked! I hit 200 winning sessions (since I started record-keeping) very recently, on Tuesday night. This will be the last time my number of posts and my number of winning sessions are the same number, so I decided to celebrate them in unison. The only reason it was possible for them to be the same in the first place is that I started recording my sessions well before I started this blog.

Last night, I hit the felt again. Am I discouraged? No. Am I ready to go at it again? You bet!

delta: $-37,996
balance: $838,309

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

My new favorite hand

Lately, I've been getting dealt a pair of threes a lot, and winning with them. It's my new favorite hand! At least two times recently, my strong gut feeling that I'd be seeing another three on the flop has turned out to be true. Here's how this hand has fared for me the last two sessions:

Monday night's session, first instance:

my hand: 3s 3c
flop: 3d 4s 8s
turn: 4d
river: Ks
result: my full house of threes full of fours wins a pot worth $21,400

Monday night's session, second instance:

my hand: 3h 3d
flop: 2c 7c 3s
turn: Qc
result: I collect $2,400 after the turn since everyone else folds

Monday night's session, third instance:

my hand: 3d 3h
result: I fold before the flop when someone raises to $1,200

Monday night's session, fourth instance:

my hand: 3h 3c
flop: Kh 3d 8s
turn: 8c
river: 5s
result: my full house of threes full of eights wins a pot worth $38,670

Last night's session, first and only instance:

my hand: 3h 3c
flop: 3d 8h Qd
turn: As
river: 8c
result: my full house of threes full of eights wins a pot worth $19,800

As you may have inferred, I reneged on my pledge to stop saving hand histories.

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 16 hands and saw flop:
- 2 out of 3 times while in big blind (66%)
- 2 out of 3 times while in small blind (66%)
- 10 out of 10 times in other positions (100%)
- a total of 14 out of 16 (87%)
Pots won at showdown - 4 of 5 (80%)
Pots won without showdown - 1

delta: $19,533
balance: $876,305

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Looking, thinking, and listening

The title of tonight's post was the original title I'd decided on for last night's post before I sat down to write it. When I did sit down, however, the theme which bubbled up to the surface was the difference between short-term greed and long-term greed. I know it's not a good idea to clutter up a post with too many ideas, so I saved the original idea for tonight.

In the session before last night's, I lost the $110K I'd built up because I failed in three poker fundamentals -- looking, thinking, and listening. I've listed them in what I consider to be the correct order of their importance. If you're looking and thinking, very often you can get away with not listening. If you're looking and listening, you can sometimes get away with not thinking. However, no matter how much you're thinking and listening, you can rarely get away with not looking.

Here are my definitions of these three fundamentals:

Looking means determining what hands your opponents possibly have that beat yours.

Thinking means using logic to determine what hands your opponents probably have.

Listening means taking note of the betting patterns of your opponents.

By failing to look properly, I lost a hand where I had a set but my opponent had a straight.

By failing to think properly, I lost a hand where I had a full house but my opponent had a better one.

By failing to listen properly, I lost a hand where I had a flush but my opponent had a better one (the dreaded uberflush). I went all in, and hit the felt.

Thankfully, last night I suffered from none of these lapses.

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 61 hands and saw flop:
- 11 out of 13 times while in big blind (84%)
- 12 out of 13 times while in small blind (92%)
- 29 out of 35 times in other positions (82%)
- a total of 52 out of 61 (85%)
Pots won at showdown - 6 of 16 (37%)
Pots won without showdown - 6

delta: $21,585
balance: $856,772

Monday, October 18, 2010

Long-term greed

Last Thursday night, I did exceptionally well at the beginning of the session; I hit a high of over $110K in less than twenty hands. Unfortunately, I succumbed to short-term greed instead of long-term; I kept playing, and eventually lost not only all my winnings but also my whole original starting stack of $40K.

What I mean by long-term greed is the desire to see your stack grow ever larger over time, regardless of what it does in the short-term. That's the good kind of greed! What I mean by short-term greed is the desire to see your stack grow now, right now, whatever the cost. That's the bad kind of greed.

I've played long enough to know that short-term greed is always a temptation. I've also played long enough to know that the only way to grow your stack is to see it shrink occasionally. You can't let the downswings get you down; they're a part of poker life.

I'm really looking forward to playing tonight!

delta: $-40,000
balance: $835,187

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Unifin

The graph of last night's stack over time is one gigantic shark fin; I'm calling it a unifin. It represented almost perfect futility, closely resembling the graph of a hypothetical session where $800 is lost per hand for 50 straight hands.

That kind of night is just going to happen sometimes; there's no avoiding it. If I'd been smart, I would have cut my losses before I hit the felt.

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 53 hands and saw flop:
- 8 out of 8 times while in big blind (100%)
- 7 out of 7 times while in small blind (100%)
- 27 out of 38 times in other positions (71%)
- a total of 42 out of 53 (79%)
Pots won at showdown - 2 of 7 (28%)
Pots won without showdown - 3

delta: $-40,000
balance: $875,187

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Percentage at flop

I don't use a poker odds calculator while playing, but occasionally I like to use one the next day to see what the odds had been in certain situations. As I may have mentioned, I've written a calculator of my own so I can customize it as I see fit. As it turns out, the calculator on the PokerStars site doesn't provide a way to calculate the heads up odds at the flop when the opponent's hand is unknown, so that's one of the customizations I've done. I call these odds the percentage at flop odds. The more traditional case of the heads up odds at the flop when the opponent's hand is known I call the heads up flop odds.

Last night, I lost a bunch of chips on the following hand (opponent screen names have been removed):

Seat 1: (11200 in chips)
Seat 2: (32600 in chips)
Seat 4: (52800 in chips)
Seat 5: (5800 in chips)
Seat 6: (42600 in chips)
Seat 7: neostreet (21000 in chips)
Seat 8: (40100 in chips)
Seat 4: posts small blind 100
Seat 5: posts big blind 200
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to neostreet [Ac Qd]
Seat 6: calls 200
neostreet: calls 200
Seat 8: calls 200
Seat 1: calls 200
Seat 2: calls 200
Seat 4: calls 100
Seat 5: checks
*** FLOP *** [4c As Ad]
Seat 4: checks
Seat 5: checks
Seat 6: checks
neostreet: checks
Seat 8: checks
Seat 1: bets 200
Seat 2: raises 1000 to 1200
Seat 4: folds
Seat 5: folds
Seat 6: folds
neostreet: raises 1000 to 2200
Seat 8: folds
Seat 1: calls 2000
Seat 2: calls 1000
*** TURN *** [4c As Ad] [2c]
neostreet: bets 5000
Seat 1: raises 3800 to 8800 and is all-in
Seat 2: folds
neostreet: calls 3800
*** RIVER *** [4c As Ad 2c] [3d]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
neostreet: shows [Ac Qd] (three of a kind, Aces)
Seat 1: shows [Ah 5s] (a straight, Ace to Five)
Seat 1 collected 25600 from pot

My calculator tells me my percentage at flop odds of winning were 94.54%, but my heads up flop odds were only 69.29%. It's lucky for me Seat 1 only had $11K in chips at the start of the hand, or it's likely I would have hit the felt. I had some good luck after this hand, winning a pot worth $30K with a king high flush, and a pot worth $17K with a pair of kings.

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 32 hands and saw flop:
- 4 out of 5 times while in big blind (80%)
- 3 out of 5 times while in small blind (60%)
- 15 out of 22 times in other positions (68%)
- a total of 22 out of 32 (68%)
Pots won at showdown - 3 of 6 (50%)
Pots won without showdown - 2

delta: $2,800
balance: $915,187

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Session length

Last Friday, I played a long session -- 101 hands. One thing I've noticed about long sessions is that they don't pay; in almost every case, I would have done better to quit earlier. It's hard to quit, though, when you're having fun and haven't played that many hands.

I think there must be some ideal session length, and I know it's way less than a hundred hands. My guess is that it's about thirty five hands. In thirty five hands, you shouldn't be in any danger of hitting the felt, and there's a good chance you'll be dealt some quality hands which you can use to increase the size of your stack.

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 101 hands and saw flop:
- 18 out of 20 times while in big blind (90%)
- 22 out of 23 times while in small blind (95%)
- 53 out of 58 times in other positions (91%)
- a total of 93 out of 101 (92%)
Pots won at showdown - 11 of 24 (45%)
Pots won without showdown - 12

delta: $10,400
balance: $912,387

Friday, October 8, 2010

Odd crossing

On Wednesday night, my balance moved back to the plus side of $900,000. Here are the current counts of my crossings of the multiples of $100,000 boundaries:

$100,000 5
$200,000 3
$300,000 7
$400,000 5
$500,000 5
$600,000 15
$700,000 7
$800,000 5
$900,000 7
$1,000,000 2

Every time you cross over to the high side of a boundary, your crossing count becomes an odd number; every time you drop back down to the low side of a boundary, your crossing count becomes an even number. So in the best of all possible worlds, you only want to see odd crossing counts (or odd crossings, for short). An interesting fact is that in the ordered list of your crossing counts, once you hit a positive number, all the numbers to the right of it (if there are any) must be positive as well.

I suffered another lost pot due to an uberflush in Wednesday night's session, but recovered nicely.

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 62 hands and saw flop:
- 8 out of 10 times while in big blind (80%)
- 6 out of 8 times while in small blind (75%)
- 37 out of 44 times in other positions (84%)
- a total of 51 out of 62 (82%)
Pots won at showdown - 13 of 17 (76%)
Pots won without showdown - 3

delta: $11,500
balance: $901,987

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Lucky 13

Last night, I only played 13 hands. You know there are really only two scenarios which could have led to such a low number:

1. the last hand was strong, I fell in love with it, went all in, lost to a stronger hand, and had the self-control not to reup at another table

2. I won a disproportionate number of the 13 pots, realized a nice profit, and had the self-control to stop playing and take the profit

I'm happy to say that last night it was the second scenario.

I've been thinking about the golden ratio a lot, and have decided to kiss it goodbye. It served me very well on the road to my first play million (which I aim to re-achieve and then surpass), but it's silly to obsess over a statistic; too much desire to hit the ratio could too easily lead to poor poker decisions.

I've also been thinking a lot about how poker requires constantly learning new things, and re-learning old things one has gotten rusty on. This evergreen characteristic of poker is one of the reasons I love it, and why I'm never bored by it!

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 13 hands and saw flop:
- 1 out of 2 times while in big blind (50%)
- 1 out of 2 times while in small blind (50%)
- 7 out of 9 times in other positions (77%)
- a total of 9 out of 13 (69%)
Pots won at showdown - 1 of 2 (50%)
Pots won without showdown - 2

delta: $11,500
balance: $890,487

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Cluttered thinking

Last night, I played a massive number of hands -- 154. After most of them, I took the time and trouble to save the hand history. This made for cluttered thinking; I was devoting part of my time and attention to a purely clerical task, stealing CPU cycles from my poker decision-making. Admittedly, this is the way I've been operating for about a year, so I can't blame my recent poor results solely on this practice; nevertheless, I feel like I need to get back to basics, and remove all extraneous distractions. For the foreseeable future, I'll forgo saving the hand histories.

I went up about $11K early in the session, then trended downward the rest of the night. I've noticed that whenever I get up a significant amount, I start feeling a little antsy; I feel more comfortable playing when I'm breaking even on the night or am even slightly down. I think it's good practice to play when you're not feeling comfortable, so you can deal with the feeling to minimize its recurrence in the future.

One hand which really hurt came a little over a third of the way through the session; I was dealt two hearts and made a jack high flush (the jack was one of my hole cards). I lost to a queen high flush. I call this situation losing to an uberflush; it's happened to me at least twice so far in my poker career. One has to expect uberflushes to occur now and then, but they sure do sting!

delta: $-16,400
balance: $878,987

Monday, October 4, 2010

Blind spot

I seem to be stuck in a one step forward, one step back holding pattern. The longer this extends, the further away I get from the golden ratio. If it extends long enough, I'll never be able to get back to the golden ratio again. Obviously, I'm hoping that won't happen!

On Saturday night, the bulk of my losses all came on one hand. That hand helped show me a really big blind spot in my play-- namely, the inability to imagine my opponents having big pocket pairs. Here's how it went down:

Table 'Adrastea VI' 9-max (Play Money) Seat #4 is the button
Seat 2: (12000 in chips)
Seat 3: (37500 in chips)
Seat 4: (16100 in chips)
Seat 5: (62000 in chips)
Seat 6: (9500 in chips)
Seat 7: neostreet (39600 in chips)
Seat 8: (46300 in chips)
Seat 9: (40302 in chips)
Seat 5: posts small blind 100
Seat 6: posts big blind 200
Seat 2: posts big blind 200
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to neostreet [Ah Kc]
neostreet: raises 200 to 400
Seat 8: calls 400
Seat 9: calls 400
Seat 2: calls 200
Seat 3: calls 400
Seat 4: calls 400
Seat 5: calls 300
Seat 6: calls 200
*** FLOP *** [Jh Ad Qc]
Seat 5: checks
Seat 6: checks
neostreet: bets 800
Seat 8: raises 1200 to 2000
Seat 9: calls 2000
Seat 2: calls 2000
Seat 3: calls 2000
Seat 4: folds
Seat 4 leaves the table
Seat 5: folds
Seat 6: folds
neostreet: calls 1200
*** TURN *** [Jh Ad Qc] [8h]
neostreet: checks
Seat 8: bets 13200
Seat 9: calls 13200
Seat 2: calls 9600 and is all-in
Seat 3: folds
neostreet: calls 13200
*** RIVER *** [Jh Ad Qc 8h] [Ac]
neostreet: bets 24000 and is all-in
Seat 8: calls 24000
Seat 9: calls 24000
*** SHOW DOWN ***
neostreet: shows [Ah Kc] (three of a kind, Aces)
Seat 8: shows [Qd Qs] (a full house, Queens full of Aces)
Seat 9: mucks hand
Seat 8 collected 82800 from side pot
Seat 2: mucks hand
Seat 8 collected 51600 from main pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 134400 Main pot 51600. Side pot 82800. | Rake 0
Board [Jh Ad Qc 8h Ac]
Seat 2: Seat 2 mucked [Qh Th]
Seat 3: Seat 3 folded on the Turn
Seat 4: Seat 4 (button) folded on the Flop
Seat 5: Seat 5 (small blind) folded on the Flop
Seat 6: Seat 6 (big blind) folded on the Flop
Seat 7: neostreet showed [Ah Kc] and lost with three of a kind, Aces
Seat 8: Seat 8 showed [Qd Qs] and won (134400) with a full house, Queens full of Aces
Seat 9: Seat 9 mucked [Ks 8c]

I'm not sure I would have played the hand differently if I had been able to imagine the pocket queens, but that fact that I wasn't even able to imagine them is a bad sign; I really need to work on this blind spot.

delta: $-56,500
balance: $895,387

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Reversal of fortune

Last night I experienced a complete reversal of fortune. I went from my third worst session ever to my fourth best session ever. Just as I don't attribute the losing session entirely to bad play on my part, I don't attribute the winning session entirely to good play on my part. In fact, I freely admit that the winning session was largely due to luck. I was dealt some good hands, made them pay, and folded all the bad hands. Easy, right?

My final hand of the night, I won $4,800 with a pair of fives. I just knew I had to call it a night right there. I didn't want to make Lady Luck's facial muscles cramp up from all that smiling!

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 49 hands and saw flop:
- 3 out of 7 times while in big blind (42%)
- 4 out of 7 times while in small blind (57%)
- 23 out of 35 times in other positions (65%)
- a total of 30 out of 49 (61%)
Pots won at showdown - 8 of 9 (88%)
Pots won without showdown - 2

delta: $81,200
balance: $951,887

Friday, October 1, 2010

Backwards down the number line

The title of this post comes from a Phish song I like a lot. It describes what happened to my stack last night. I admit it, I went on tilt. It's been a while since the last time, but I don't kid myself that this time will be the last. Three things conspired to annoy me and put me on tilt:

1. at the first table I joined, one of the players was playing incredibly slowly, getting a time warning virtually every time the action was on him. I finally left in disgust.

2. shortly after I joined the second table, I discovered that the PokerStars software had hiccupped and removed the first 8 or so hands I'd played from the hand statistics. This has happened once or twice before, and it always ticks me off. I like stats, but need them to be accurate.

3. I'd been card dead most of the night, so when I flopped a pair of queens, I called all the bets down to showdown. I lost to pocket kings to hit the felt.

I should have called it a night right there, but was angry and joined another table. I quickly lost another $40K, for a grand total of just over $93K on the night. This wasn't my worst single session ever, but it does have the honor of being my third worst.

delta: -$93,050
balance: $870,687