I recently drove up to Asheville to play in a regional chess tournament called Land of the Sky XXV. It was the biggest chess tournament I've ever played in, and I really enjoyed how it was run and had a lot of respect for the level of chess competition in attendance. I also really enjoyed working out at CrossFit Asheville on Saturday morning before the second round, and had a great experience training with their amazing community.
I really enjoyed the trip especially because I had such great results in the tournament, which consisted of the slowest time control games I'd ever played in. A couple of my games lasted almost 5 hours each! I made my first 3rd category norm, with an approximate tournament performance rating of 1518, which raised my USCF rating from 1305 to 1438, my highest rating yet.
Here is a record of my round 3 game, which I feel is probably my best played chess game to this point. At the time, it was the highest rated opponent I'd beaten in rated competition (I beat a slightly higher rated opponent the very next round!). I chose this as my best game based on the relatively little I gave him to work with according to later engine analysis. The following are annotations from my perspective before I put this game in any engine for further analysis. As such, it serves its purpose of briefly highlighting what I was thinking at certain key parts of the game. Some of the analysis is slightly off, such as the fact that my willingness to abandon the a-pawn for king penetration in the endgame was not completely sound. Although, it did force him to play sharply, and I managed to create a situation where he would make a losing mistake.
Taylor,James (1305) - Fischer,C. (1476) [D36]
Land of the Sky XXV Asheville (3), 28.01.2012
Time control: 40/2, SD/30
[Taylor,James]
1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 the Slav, which I can't recall facing before in a tournament
3.Nc3 I didn't really know how to respond, so I just went forward with a natural move
3...Nf6 4.Bg5 getting out my dark bishop, since h6 is not threatening due to Bxf6 and doubling pawns
4...e6 5.e3 Be7 6.cxd5 exd5 7.Bd3 Nbd7 8.Nge2 I decide to go with the pressure on e4, which I doubt he'll be able to meet
8...Nh5? 9.Bxe7 his Nh5 just doesn't seem right, and I go ahead and exchange his good bishop
9...Qxe7 10.Qc2 really wanted to play g4-g5, but couldn't pull the trigger on it
10...Nhf6 11.0-0 0-0 12.Rfe1 Re8 13.Ng3 planning e4
13...Ne4? 14.Ncxe4 his Ne4 walks into my controlled square and loses a pawn outright
14...dxe4 15.Nxe4 g6 perhaps to prevent my pressure on h7
16.Rab1 I decide to go forward with ideas of a minority attack as well
16...Nf6 17.Nxf6+ clearing some space and simply exchanging down
17...Qxf6 18.b4 Qg5 19.f4 I think this is the best way to meet his potential threat of Bh3, although it creates the backwards central pawn
19...Qf6 20.b5 Bd7 21.bxc6 Bxc6 22.Qf2 it seems the minority attack was a little less effective due to his ability to retake with the bishop, so I decide to just shore up my position and defence of e3. This move also allows me to try to get in e4 and e5, which is my goal for the position
22...Rad8 23.Rb4 still trying to get in e4
23...Qe7 24.Rb2 this move was made a little hastily, and I didn't see the combination that follows coming
24...Rxd4 25.exd4 Qxe1+ 26.Qxe1 Rxe1+ 27.Kf2 Re7 28.g3 I still feel good about my chances here with the passed pawn, so I go ahead and take my time getting my pawns on dark squares before trying to get my king active
28...Bd5 29.a3 b6 30.Rb5 getting my rook active with tempo
30...Bc6 31.Re5 I would welcome an exchange here, and would probably retake with the f-pawn to keep the passed pawn and make it connected
31...Kf8 32.Ke3 Rd7 I think this is a mistake. Now I am blocking his king on the e-file
33.Be4 Ba4 34.f5 going around to the queenside is going to be futile, so I try to take advantage of my control of the kingside and get my f-pawn out of the way for my king to advance
34...Rc7 35.fxg6 Rc3+ and Rxa3 allowing gxh7 would be ruinous for him, I think
35...hxg6 36.Kf4 leaving the defense of e4, but it is unthreatened at the moment.
36...Rc3 37.Kg5 I'm willing to give up the a3 pawn for the tempos gained in getting decisive king penetration, similar to a game by Capablanca I recently reviewed
37...Kg7 38.Re7 he's threatening f6+, winning the rook, but my pieces are too well placed and my king too active now, while he's been focused on winning the a3 pawn. I'm threatening to win the g6 pawn due to the pin, after which the f7 and a7 pawns will likely fall
38...Bc2 39.Bd5 declining the exchange to create another threat!
39...Kf8 40.Rxf7+ I really wanted to play Kf6 here, threatening something like Bxf7 and Re8#, but I saw Kf6 Rxa3 Bxf7 Rf3+ and Rxf7 as the likely continuation. f3 is an important square for my bishop to control. I ended up just going for the simple Rxf7+ and Rxa7, which actually saves the a3 pawn as well as keeps his king on the 1st rank and my bishop centralized
40...Ke8 41.Rxa7 Rd3 42.Bf7+! an excellent tactic which saves the d-pawn, wins his g-pawn, and exchanges bishops
42...Kd8 43.Bxg6 Rd2 44.Bxc2 Rxc2 45.h4 Rd2 46.Rb7 Rxd4 47.Rxb6 and a winning endgame
47...Ke8 48.Rf6 cutting off the king
48...Ra4 49.Rf3 he said after the game that he thought it would be a draw if I didn't have the a-pawn, probably since rook endgames tend to be drawish. However, I can win this situation against the strongest engines, without the a-pawn, AND without his king blocked from defending against promotion.
49...Ra5+ 50.Kg4 Ke7 51.h5 Ra8 52.Kh4 Ra4+ 53.g4 I was making these moves like clockwork and I think he realized he could resign by now
53...Ke6 54.h6 Ra8 55.g5 1-0
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Finished Olympic cycle, Hitting Weaknesses
On my third week of the Olympic lifting cycle, I wasn't able to get any milk, so I still ate Paleo, but lost a few pounds that week. The next week, I was only able to get 5 gallons for the week instead of 7. So over the last part of the cycle, I wasn't able to follow my milk plan exactly. However, I have been eating Paleo for 38 days now, the longest stretch I have ever completed. I will most likely have a few drinks this weekend, ending my Paleo stretch. I'm at about 163 pounds right now, and hope to continue gaining as I'm drinking about 6 gallons of milk a week right now.
By the end of my 4 week Olympic lifting cycle, I was able to set a Front Squat PR of 280#, tie my Back Squat PR at 325#, tie my Back Squat 3RM PR at 300#, and tie my Clean & Jerk PR at 225#. Even though I only tied my Clean & Jerk PR, I felt much more comfortable with heavy weights, lifting 225# a few times during the cycle. I did not set a Snatch PR, as I managed to lift 165# a few times towards the end of the cycle. I think I had the power to lift this easily plus more, but my technique needs a lot of improvement. There was not a lot of reps at lower weights in this cycle, just a whole lot of heavy single days, which probably didn't help in getting rid of technique faults. My biggest problem was shifting my weight towards my toes as the bar rose over my knees, instead of shifting the weight back to my heels, leading me to miss a lot of snatches in front when the weight got heavy, and even included a couple misses on heavy cleans in this manner. On the final max day, the program called for a deadlift max after the Olympic lifting, even though there was no deadlifts during the 4 week program. I pulled 335#, which was 10# off my PR, which I set when I weighed 10# more, so that is easily my best pull at this bodyweight.
Right now I am going forward with a cycle in which I have taken ideas from many sources to create a 10 week lifting cycle to improve my weaknesses, specifically my deadlift, presses, and other gymnastics movements. My deadlifting is by far my weakest lift and biggest weakness. According to OPT's numbers, both my front squat and my power clean are almost exactly in line with my back squat, but if you dot the lines going by these three lifts, my deadlift should be about 20% higher than it is (405# vs 335#)! This is a huge margin, and I'm tired of not being able to do 315# deadlifts for reps like a number of athletes at a similar level. The hallmark of my 10 week program is that it includes a full cycle of the Coan deadlift program. This program promises to add significant weight to one's deadlift. I am excited about that, because I'm hypothesizing that my weak deadlift is only hurting my ability in other movements as well. The program calls for one brutal session of deadlifting and related assistance exercises once per week for 10 weeks. That day includes working up to a specific heavy double, triple, or single, and then usually 5-8 sets of 3 of a lower weight to build capacity for volume. Included in the program on the deadlift day is circuits of all of the most important assistance work for the deadlift, which I hope will expose and fix any weak link for me, specifically straight legged deadlifts, bent over rows, strict pullups, and good mornings. The strict pullups are my functional substitution for lat pull-downs and is the only way I'm modifying the program.
I haven't worked out the exact details of the rest of the 10 week cycle, but I have worked out which days will be working on a given skill. The day after deadlifting is a day of pressing, with sets of max effort handstand pushups and handstand work. Then there is a day off. That is followed by a day for front squats or back squats and light Olympic lifting technique work. A day for bench press, pushup intervals, and other gymnastics work is next. Lastly, there is a moderate Olympic lifting day before another day off and the next week of the cycle.
By the end of my 4 week Olympic lifting cycle, I was able to set a Front Squat PR of 280#, tie my Back Squat PR at 325#, tie my Back Squat 3RM PR at 300#, and tie my Clean & Jerk PR at 225#. Even though I only tied my Clean & Jerk PR, I felt much more comfortable with heavy weights, lifting 225# a few times during the cycle. I did not set a Snatch PR, as I managed to lift 165# a few times towards the end of the cycle. I think I had the power to lift this easily plus more, but my technique needs a lot of improvement. There was not a lot of reps at lower weights in this cycle, just a whole lot of heavy single days, which probably didn't help in getting rid of technique faults. My biggest problem was shifting my weight towards my toes as the bar rose over my knees, instead of shifting the weight back to my heels, leading me to miss a lot of snatches in front when the weight got heavy, and even included a couple misses on heavy cleans in this manner. On the final max day, the program called for a deadlift max after the Olympic lifting, even though there was no deadlifts during the 4 week program. I pulled 335#, which was 10# off my PR, which I set when I weighed 10# more, so that is easily my best pull at this bodyweight.
Right now I am going forward with a cycle in which I have taken ideas from many sources to create a 10 week lifting cycle to improve my weaknesses, specifically my deadlift, presses, and other gymnastics movements. My deadlifting is by far my weakest lift and biggest weakness. According to OPT's numbers, both my front squat and my power clean are almost exactly in line with my back squat, but if you dot the lines going by these three lifts, my deadlift should be about 20% higher than it is (405# vs 335#)! This is a huge margin, and I'm tired of not being able to do 315# deadlifts for reps like a number of athletes at a similar level. The hallmark of my 10 week program is that it includes a full cycle of the Coan deadlift program. This program promises to add significant weight to one's deadlift. I am excited about that, because I'm hypothesizing that my weak deadlift is only hurting my ability in other movements as well. The program calls for one brutal session of deadlifting and related assistance exercises once per week for 10 weeks. That day includes working up to a specific heavy double, triple, or single, and then usually 5-8 sets of 3 of a lower weight to build capacity for volume. Included in the program on the deadlift day is circuits of all of the most important assistance work for the deadlift, which I hope will expose and fix any weak link for me, specifically straight legged deadlifts, bent over rows, strict pullups, and good mornings. The strict pullups are my functional substitution for lat pull-downs and is the only way I'm modifying the program.
I haven't worked out the exact details of the rest of the 10 week cycle, but I have worked out which days will be working on a given skill. The day after deadlifting is a day of pressing, with sets of max effort handstand pushups and handstand work. Then there is a day off. That is followed by a day for front squats or back squats and light Olympic lifting technique work. A day for bench press, pushup intervals, and other gymnastics work is next. Lastly, there is a moderate Olympic lifting day before another day off and the next week of the cycle.
Friday, September 16, 2011
Under the Heavy Bar
Yesterday was the last session of the first week of the 4-week Olympic cycle. The session called for heavy singles of snatch, clean & jerk, and front squat with some down sets after the singles. I hadn't been under the bar for a heavy snatch or clean & jerk in several months so I didn't really know how it would go. I first missed at 155# on the snatch, but got it on my second attempt, and it didn't feel too bad. I tried 165# 4-5 times, getting progressively closer to a made attempt, first missing in front of me, then catching but not stabilizing for 2-3 misses, and finally missing it behind me. At that point I really thought there was still potential to make the lift on the session, but I want to stress quality lifts on the heavy single days, so I just went on to the clean & jerk. I got up 205# easy, and got 215# on the first attempt as well. However, I missed the clean on 225# on two attempts, so I just went on to the front squat feeling fatigued at this point but knowing I'll make it soon. After all the lifting, I still managed to match my front squat PR of 265# on the single.
Overall I felt it was a good session for my first heavy Olympic lifting in several months. I'm feeling good about my chances to set some PR's on this cycle. I have 6 days of heavy singles of snatch and clean & jerk coming up over the next two weeks of the cycle, not including a max day at the end of the cycle.
Overall I felt it was a good session for my first heavy Olympic lifting in several months. I'm feeling good about my chances to set some PR's on this cycle. I have 6 days of heavy singles of snatch and clean & jerk coming up over the next two weeks of the cycle, not including a max day at the end of the cycle.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Food Supply
I'm now finishing up my 10th day of Paleo, 8th day of GOMAD, and 5th day of a 4 week Catalyst Athletics Olympic lifting cycle. So far I have been eating a very clean Paleo. My biggest problem is that I basically haven't been eating enough and often enough. I've been somewhat lazy on cooking and let my day's gallon of milk comprise too high a percentage of my calories. I've often only been eating twice a day with few snacks. The good news is that I have been eating big breakfasts, usually 5 eggs, some chicken, okra from the garden, and however much milk. I've also been getting a lot of sleep. I'm going to try to eat more frequently and take in more vegetables including sweet potatoes going forward. Today when I went to pick up my order of 7 gallons of milk, I learned that the milk supply was short, so I was only able to get 5 gallons for the week. I'm going to use this as an excuse to cook a lot more food.
I just finished building my Olympic lifting platform in the basement today. The hardest part of building it was cutting the rubber stall mats. The key to cutting them is pulling them apart as you cut. We ended up clamping the mat to some supported wooden beams close to the cut so that the weight of the mat would help pull apart the cut as it progressed. This really helped the reciprocating saw that we used tear through the rubber. The platform is made of $130 worth of plywood and stall mats. Not a bad price for a neat 8'x8' space to lift.
Tomorrow the plan calls for heavy singles of snatch, clean and jerk, and front squat. I haven't snatched more than 135# or clean and jerked over 200# in a while. However, I would not be surprised if I was able to match my PR's with the 6 or so pounds I've put on and considering all the squatting I've been doing over the past few weeks.
I just finished building my Olympic lifting platform in the basement today. The hardest part of building it was cutting the rubber stall mats. The key to cutting them is pulling them apart as you cut. We ended up clamping the mat to some supported wooden beams close to the cut so that the weight of the mat would help pull apart the cut as it progressed. This really helped the reciprocating saw that we used tear through the rubber. The platform is made of $130 worth of plywood and stall mats. Not a bad price for a neat 8'x8' space to lift.
Tomorrow the plan calls for heavy singles of snatch, clean and jerk, and front squat. I haven't snatched more than 135# or clean and jerked over 200# in a while. However, I would not be surprised if I was able to match my PR's with the 6 or so pounds I've put on and considering all the squatting I've been doing over the past few weeks.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Diet Experimentation
As of today, I'm going through an experimental phase of nutrition specifically focused on weight gain, hopefully that of mostly lean muscle. My plan is to eat entirely Paleo, with the large exception of drinking a gallon of milk every day. I have both drank a gallon of milk a day for 30 days before and eaten Paleo for 33 days before. However, I have never attempted both of these tasks at the same time, and I believe I can improve on the implementation of each.
In my previous attempt at a gallon of milk a day for 30 days in June of 2010, I squatted for a progressively increasing single heavy set of 20 reps three times a week, with no metabolic conditioning workouts, while drinking gallons of USDA Organic pasteurized milk. I went from 161 lbs at 9.4% body fat on May 26 to 174 lbs at 12.5% body fat on September 15, roughly gaining 6.5 lbs of lean mass and 6.5 lbs of fat over that timeframe. In October of 2010 I did a period of Paleo eating for 33 days. I had my body fat tested again on November 3 and was 160 lbs at 7.3% body fat. The combination of both experiments, plus some traveling in between, netted me 2.5 lbs of lean muscle and 3.5 lbs less fat, going from 9.4% body fat to 7.3% body fat.
It will be interesting to see what the results are like from undertaking both experiments at once. I will be able to improve upon the health and efficiency of drinking a gallon of milk a day by this time drinking natural milk instead of USDA Organic. In the previous period of Paleo eating, I took a protein powder, usually post-workout, that I'm sure included some sugars and artificial ingredients. During this period, I will be focusing my efforts of following the Paleo diet on the quality of fats, especially those used in cooking, watching product labels to not accept the intake of minor synthesized ingredients, limiting fruits with high glycemic indices, minimize liquid consumed with meals, and never feeling hungry. I will still be taking a post-workout protein powder – Stronger Faster Healthier Fortify, as well as supplementing with creatine, fish oil, magnesium, and potentially some digestive enzymes in the case of drinking a lot of milk with a meal. Obtaining all macronutrients with meals and never feeling hungry should not be a problem with the gallon of milk a day, but drinking a lot of liquid with meals may be a problem, and I'm hypothesizing that milk is a very basic solution and would further hinder digestion.
I don't necessarily expect to gain lean muscle and lose fat at the same time during this experiment, but I'm hoping that an abrupt reduction in milk intake after the period could see the fat gained disappear rather quickly. I haven't decided whether I will try to eliminate milk consumption after the period or just drastically reduce it.
In conjunction with this period, I'm going to start a Catalyst Athletics Olympic lifting cycle. I'm building a platform for lifting in the basement and will build jerk platforms to double as a squat rack. I'm going to limit metabolic conditioning workouts to hopefully a maximum of 6 over the period. My current PR's relating to Olympic lifting are 170# Snatch, 225# Clean & Jerk, 325# Back Squat, 265# Front Squat, 185# Overhead Squat, and 345# Deadlift. I hope to improve upon all of these over the period.
In my previous attempt at a gallon of milk a day for 30 days in June of 2010, I squatted for a progressively increasing single heavy set of 20 reps three times a week, with no metabolic conditioning workouts, while drinking gallons of USDA Organic pasteurized milk. I went from 161 lbs at 9.4% body fat on May 26 to 174 lbs at 12.5% body fat on September 15, roughly gaining 6.5 lbs of lean mass and 6.5 lbs of fat over that timeframe. In October of 2010 I did a period of Paleo eating for 33 days. I had my body fat tested again on November 3 and was 160 lbs at 7.3% body fat. The combination of both experiments, plus some traveling in between, netted me 2.5 lbs of lean muscle and 3.5 lbs less fat, going from 9.4% body fat to 7.3% body fat.
It will be interesting to see what the results are like from undertaking both experiments at once. I will be able to improve upon the health and efficiency of drinking a gallon of milk a day by this time drinking natural milk instead of USDA Organic. In the previous period of Paleo eating, I took a protein powder, usually post-workout, that I'm sure included some sugars and artificial ingredients. During this period, I will be focusing my efforts of following the Paleo diet on the quality of fats, especially those used in cooking, watching product labels to not accept the intake of minor synthesized ingredients, limiting fruits with high glycemic indices, minimize liquid consumed with meals, and never feeling hungry. I will still be taking a post-workout protein powder – Stronger Faster Healthier Fortify, as well as supplementing with creatine, fish oil, magnesium, and potentially some digestive enzymes in the case of drinking a lot of milk with a meal. Obtaining all macronutrients with meals and never feeling hungry should not be a problem with the gallon of milk a day, but drinking a lot of liquid with meals may be a problem, and I'm hypothesizing that milk is a very basic solution and would further hinder digestion.
I don't necessarily expect to gain lean muscle and lose fat at the same time during this experiment, but I'm hoping that an abrupt reduction in milk intake after the period could see the fat gained disappear rather quickly. I haven't decided whether I will try to eliminate milk consumption after the period or just drastically reduce it.
In conjunction with this period, I'm going to start a Catalyst Athletics Olympic lifting cycle. I'm building a platform for lifting in the basement and will build jerk platforms to double as a squat rack. I'm going to limit metabolic conditioning workouts to hopefully a maximum of 6 over the period. My current PR's relating to Olympic lifting are 170# Snatch, 225# Clean & Jerk, 325# Back Squat, 265# Front Squat, 185# Overhead Squat, and 345# Deadlift. I hope to improve upon all of these over the period.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Ideas and Hand Review
I recently got a copy of Dusty Schmidt's new book “Treat Your Poker Like a Business”. Dusty is one of the most successful online poker players ever, and I really enjoy reading his blog. From the three years I have followed his blog, I would say that Dusty is so successful mainly because he is such a determined and focused individual. Dusty is willing to help his fellow man and is wise and opinionated. While I don't always agree with his opinions, his blog is very inspiring and has largely influenced my ideas of a great model for a professional poker player's life.
Dusty's book has relatively little in it about playing poker hands. You can judge this book very well by its title, as it is very specific, detailed, and insightful about how to be successful playing poker by examining everything about your poker with a business mindset. In fact, I would argue that it's very valuable simply as a book about good business principles. I would definitely recommend it for anyone reading my blog who has an interest in business, poker, or would just like to get a very interesting viewpoint on the life of a disciplined professional poker player.
One thing that I found very interesting recently was how several people I know who'd read my blog seemed to be taken aback, even slightly disapproving of me losing 20k in Vegas and I not thinking it is a big deal. I think it stems from some misunderstanding. Make no mistake that I do consider 20k to be a decent amount of money. However, it would be suicidal to any poker player to play the stakes I was if their mindset would be that 20k is a big loss. That is maybe one of my most obvious edges over the common opponent. Money is inventory for the poker player, you simply need it to make more, and that is something Dusty talks about in his book. The moment you start to think of a buy-in as rent, you are done. While it is true that I do not regularly play 50/100, the main reason is that sized game is much tougher online and therefore I have a large percentage of my bankroll in investment accounts and real estate. I took a calculated risk with a perceived real edge with quantifiable downside. Some of the questions or expressions I received after coming back from a trip in which I lost money seemed to make a mockery of my judgment. If you're wondering how much money my brother and I lost playing the slots, you just missed the point of this paragraph.
At different times in the past I have truly treated poker like a business and in other times I have not. We all struggle with doing this to perfection, but starting with this new year, I'm going to focus on treating my poker playing with a business mindset as best I can. This morning I woke up early and made myself scrambled eggs for breakfast. Getting up earlier is something on which I've been working to improve. I think it will improve my productivity as a poker player and as a student. Additionally, getting up early will ensure I always have time to eat a solid breakfast in the morning, which will set the stage for keeping up a good diet throughout the day and in turn good exercise.
I have been working out and eating very well recently. I'm always getting closer and closer to following the Paleo diet, which would be ideal, and I'm becoming much more proficient at CrossFit. Pull ups are one of my weakest exercises, and I have set myself on the right track to doing them way better. At the time that I started CrossFit I could probably only do 2 or 3 pull ups. Basically, I have been scaling every workout with pull ups in it because I need resistance to be able to complete the workouts. Doing this is a good way to increase my strength for dead-hang pull ups, but I still didn't know how to do the “kipping” form to do better pull ups until recently. My current kipping form leaves a lot to be desired, but on Saturday I was able to do 25 pull ups during the workout and on Tuesday 18. I feel the main difference in amount of pull ups between the two days is from the other exercises involved in the workout. Relative to other exercises that could have been included in the workout, I would say Saturday's (pushups and squats) had little effect and Tuesday's (deadlifts) much more effect on my pull up capacity, so the way I figure it, my current range is about 18-25 pull ups for the workouts, depending on how they are interspersed.
Some people seem to think that the kipping form of a pull up is cheating or some ridiculous nonsense. While no doubt dead hang pull ups are harder, to understand why the logic is faulty, one must simply look to the functional CrossFit methodology and interpret the movement as having gymnastic roots. All kipping does is create horizontal momentum which is skillfully translated into vertical momentum to assist with the pull up. From a free hang, the same amount of work in a physical sense is achieved as that of a dead hang pull up, just with a different overall muscle group composition. From a gymnastic viewpoint, the movement is very functional. If the immediate goal is getting one's chin over the bar, kipping pull ups are the most efficient method.
I don't think I'm the only one that does this, but I really enjoy reading my facebook “live news feed”, especially since it is now mostly filled with people's status updates. It's such a great way to figure out what people are thinking. Poker is all about getting inside people's minds and figuring out what they are thinking and then very perceptively determining what they are likely to do. Although people are obviously aware of what and where they are writing, I find that they tend to think about the status update as much different than the rest of the internet. Based on my experiences, I feel the average user may not fully grasp the scope of their updates or either chooses to ignore it. More interestingly, I believe most people subconsciously realize that people who read their status update will have seen it in a setting among others'. This assumption leads to easy insights about people's motives in that they are trying to stand out in a way that's related to the content of the update. The journalistic integrity of facebook news feeds is obviously nonexistant and so you have to take what you read with a grain of salt. Often inaccuracies in what people write can lead to insights about their thinking. For some people it may be their only direct contribution to the internet and therefore people are usually writing about topics for which they have great conviction. I think these are explanations for how a medium has been created in which small blurbs of nearly pure thought or transparent motive can be reflected upon to create a whole lot of experience in examining human thought in a short amount of time.
This bowl season I learned a lot about how people think while watching football. Even the most rational people usually throw out logic while watching sports events for which they have a bias, whether it be team or sport related. Some sharp sports bettors whose opinions I was reading were betting heavy on us not to cover in the Orange Bowl. When we were quickly down 14-0 I simply accepted the reality that our team had been overrated for this matchup and would probably go on to lose the game. That's not to say I was completely fine with the result or that I didn't stick around for hope of a comeback, I was just simply at peace with what was occurring. I think most people's emotional problems come from an inability to accept reality or some irrational illusion of it. In sports betting, people become obsessed with the idea of “beating” Vegas, and assume that must be impossible. While that's generally a solid viewpoint, its premise is incorrect in that one doesn't need to be better at setting lines than Vegas. All that's required is a certain amount of logic, intuition, and math to figure out where their lines don't reflect true prices. Exploiting, not beating. Sports betting is essentially options trading where the outcome of the sporting event is the traded underlying security.
In fact, sports betting is similar to poker in the way that poker is similar to options trading. The traded underlying security of a poker hand is its hand ranking, which can be changed after any betting round by a number of ways only limited by the deck being finite. The poker hand's worth, being a derivative security of hand ranking, must be judged by the player intuitively by doing path-dependent backwards analysis in real time. The actual worth of a poker hand is based on the pot size at the point of occurrence of either everyone folding or the hand winning at showdown. The actual worth is never known at any decision point (without regard to an unbeatable hand on the river), but the Real Options Analysis worth is intuitively judged from looking at the current pot size and previous betting actions to evaluate the likelihood of different paths that will result in various pot sizes at showdown and probabilities of either having the best hand or everyone folding along the way.
One thing that some of my family was asking me around Christmas was whether I thought my classes have helped me in my poker playing. I answered yes to some degree, but poker requires a lot of independent study. This is true, but I think I've actually underestimated the effect that my classes have in fact helped my poker playing. Some of my family and friends enjoy playing the lottery. I could go into a huge discourse on an estimation of EV for playing the lottery, but I think it unnecessary and suffice it to say that the lottery is ridiculously -EV. That I never play the lottery is an obvious way in which my poker study and to some extent my classes have affected my thinking. Not even mentioning the fact that the lottery has ridiculous variance which is not attractive and that it works against the universal premise of the marginal utility of money, just look at the EV and variance. EV is not affected by variance, but variance is affected by EV. Therefore we can posture of an equivalent game with equal EV but different variance that will have the same long-term value. Here I ask anyone if they would play a game which required them to pay 35 cents with nothing else to it. This is the zero variance version of the lottery.
I'm not knocking the lottery. I think it is a great system, essentially being a tax on the imperceptive that creates potential for the future through education. However, I look at poker no differently. My goal is to make the world a better place than I left it. I view myself as an entrepreneurial Robin Hood, exploiting the Dunning-Kruger effect, thereby discovering the self-confidence I've lacked, and much like the efficient allocation of capital to public corporations, in the long term money will flow through me from those with excess, as defined by their inability to keep from losing it to me at the poker table, towards those in need. Today I have helped support a farming group in Uganda by funding part of a micro-finance loan for buying farming supplies. If you don't know what Kiva is, you should check it out. Kiva's mission is “to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty” by “empowering individuals to lend to unique entrepreneurs around the globe”.
I really enjoy exploring the art of intuitive and deductive thought processes. Success in poker requires improving your thought processes so poker is a very natural fit for what I enjoy doing. It's no secret that all successful poker players discuss hands a lot and bounce ideas back and forth. It's the best way we know to learn poker along with playing.
During the session I played this morning, I was just 3 tabling $100PLO and making a note of every single hand I found the least bit interesting. I want the commentary on most hands that follow to be short, specifically only things that I was thinking about during the hand as it went down, in order to look like a stream of thought. The others will have a lot of post-hand analysis. I have already looked over some of the hands I've talked about on this blog in the past and can find slight ways in which my thought process was off or contained some incorrect reasoning. Even the stuff you don't find interesting is in some way interesting. Here is my version of the session I played this morning. Hopefully it will be very interesting to look back upon later for further reflection.
Hand 1: 100bb deep, cutoff opens for pot, I call next with QJT7ds and both blinds call. Could 3-bet this hand here but at this table there is a lot of value in keeping the blinds in and I have a lot of nut straight potential. I flop 843 with two backdoor flush draws. Original preflop raiser bets 2/3 pot and I flat him because there are a lot of great turn cards for my hand with position. Both of the blinds call again and the turn is an offsuit 9. The original raiser bet half pot and I potted here with a 16 nut wrap without too much consideration. The 82/0 SB called with TT52 and I was somewhat surprised to see him take down the pot on a brick river and that he had 65% equity on the turn.
Hand 2: Aggressive guy in middle position opens for pot with a 40bb stack. Folds to me on the button with AAK8ss and I time out. This was the last straw. Timing out is happening a little too often with my transition to the Stars software and is definitely hurting my win rate. I need to focus on playing less tables until I'm adjusted to the software like a business cutting losses.
Hand 3: Against a very loose and aggressive cutoff open 130bb deep, I 3-bet T987ss. He calls and the flop is K22 with a different flush draw. He checks and I bet 2/3 pot, he calls. The turn is another 2. The key is to use what your perceived range is, namely that he probably thinks I have aces, against him here to fold his either-way counterfeited hand. I bet 35% of the pot on the turn and he snap-folded.
Hand 4: Limped pot and I check in the BB w/QT64r. Flop is QT7r and SB leads, I call, one other player calls. Turn is 4 bringing flush draw, SB leads, I pot and get it in vs him 85bb deep on the hand. He shows J877 and I start to wonder how often I'm really getting it in good enough there.
Hand 5: I open JJ62r from the button and get called by solid BB. Checks to showdown on Ad6x4d3d5x board. He shows AAK3 with the nut blocker and I scoop with my six-high straight. I guess he was going to checkraise every street, maybe not the river, but instead I showed down a hand with 2% equity on the flop. Interesting hand, wonder if I should always be c-betting this flop because my hand has very little showdown value or even usually ability to get to showdown.
Hand 6: Two limpers and I pot (A7)A5 from the SB 100bb deep and get called by the BB and button. Flop is 977 with a club draw and checks around to see a 4c turn. I check and call a half-pot bet from the 60/30 button. Turn is an offsuit 8 and goes check/check and I'm good vs QJ96ds. Not sure if there's any other line I could have taken, because I don't think I can play it so aggressively as to stack worse 7's when they all have good equity vs me and I'm nearly dead when behind. I could be convinced that not c-betting the flop is bad, but if called is my plan to just check call down given the board?
Hand 7: Good player in the cutoff opens for pot and I call 110bb deep in the BB with AAJ2sss. I don't think this is a hand I can 3-bet here but I could be persuaded otherwise. Flop is JJ5 and I have a backdoor flush draw. In retrospect a bet/3-bet looks pretty sweet, but the flop gets checked thru and the turn is a 9 giving me a flush draw. I lead turn and he calls. The river is a 4 giving me a flush. Very interesting river card because it does very little for my relative hand strength. I should have value bet the river though. As played he checks behind QQJ2 and pretty much owned me on this hand.
Hand 8: This is a hand with post-hand commentary. I'm pretty sure this is a prime example of a hand that should certainly be led most of the time. A 75/10/2.5 with 50bb opens the cutoff for a minraise and I call in the BB with (AT6)T. As I was writing this I was just about to leave out the fact that I think you could argue for a fold preflop, since I didn't think of that while playing, but I'm wondering if that in itself could be a leak in my preflop play. With a 75/10 it just depends on whether you feel that he opens 10 percent of hands whenever the hell he feels like it or if he methodically opens the best 10% of hands. There may be enough value with the nut flush potential and top or medium set to play here even if the latter is true about his game. The flop is AdTd8c. I check, he bets half pot, and I pot. He calls and we go to the turn with 1.5pot left behind and it's a 5d completing the flush. I simply pot out here planning to give my opponent 38% odds on his shove that I will have to call getting 7:1 even though he will know he doesn't have any fold equity. Although that's really not as much of a consideration in this spot because when he calls he either has me at 22.5% with a flush or nearly dead with top set of aces. Given that I checkraised the flop, I have to make this play. The play hinges on the ability to ever fold out top set of aces which we have no equity against or if called by the nut flush, there is a 22.5% chance of rivering a full house. He's going to have a lot of flushes here but because he is so loose and also so aggressive on the flop, he will have a lot of J9xx hands that I would love to have fold the turn and A8xx hands that I don't get any further action from anyhow.
Hand 9: Unconventional but strong player in the cutoff open limps and I 3x on the button with 120bb's and KQ97ds. The SB and BB call and limper calls. The flop is JT4 without my flushdraw but I have backdoor flush possibilities and a 17-wrap with all nut straight outs. However, it's on a board with a flush draw, reducing the hand's equity vs opponents' ranges. BB leads and cutoff pots, and I cold-call. I'm wondering if I should just be folding here considering the action might get reopened by the BB and one opponent could have top set and the other the nut flush draw. If that's the case I have about 30.3% equity, so after cold-calling it would be impossible to fold (I ran my hand vs Ac7d6d5c and JsJh3c2c, which balances redraws OK I think). In any case, the BB folded on the flop and then the turn was the 5c and he potted.
Hand 10: The 75/10 from earlier limps the button and I check with T(T42). Flop comes A96r and goes check/check. Turn is an offsuit 7 and I pot it. He calls and the river is a K. I think this is a good spot to pick up the pot by potting it again, making it unlikely he will call twice with two pair on this board, especially when you might be value betting AKxx, as he is unlikely to have it. I will of course get called by 85xx but the TT's are nice blockers to the nut straight, reducing the hands that will call combinatorically.
Hand 11: Loose aggressive cutoff opens and I 3-bet with QQ33ss on the button 110bb deep. Flop is QJ4 with 2 hearts but I have a backdoor flush draw. Check-pot-pot-pot on the flop. Turn T of hearts. Obviously, I am now behind. River T of clubs. Wow.. was that me hitting a redraw? That was euphoric.
Hand 12: Solid reg opens on the button 100bb deep. I call JT(T8) in the SB. Is this too loose? The hand went to showdown and he had K(64)2, so probably not.
Hand 13: Solid reg opens in middle position and I flat with (KJ)(T6), button calls. The flop is KJJr. Flop goes pot-pot-pot and I am good vs AJ82sss. I would think this should certainly be the bottom of his getting in range here. Too loose? Nah.
Hand 14: I open KK(J9) UTG and am called by solid reg in the BB. Flop is JT6 with 2 diamonds. He checks, I check behind. Damn, I should be c-betting with this hand here. Turn is a 7d. I don't really think you can turn the second nut blocker into a bluffraising hand since he's going to be super polarized here.
Hand 15: 55/30/2 opens in middle position, I call in the BB with KQT6ds, but we are slightly over 200bb deep. Flop is Q87 giving me two backdoor flush draws. I lead and get called. Turn is a 6 putting a flush draw but not either of mine. I lead out again and he folds. I like the way I played this hand. On the turn I can easily fold if raised, but if he calls me, I have outs/chop outs vs some of his hands and am actually getting value from others while definitely folding some hands with good equity vs me.
Hand 16: Solid reg opens on my BB and I 3-bet 175bb deep with QJ76ds. Flop is KhJdTd and I have second nut backdoor hearts to go with my open ended straight draw and second pair. He checks, I bet 2/3 pot. I don't think I like my c-bet here. I do have decent equity vs most of his range, but not vs most of his range that continues, and we are deep. It would seem a good candidate for a semi-bluff, but the key to look at here is that I'm repping broadway. This is a locked down board as Phil Galfond would say, and AQxx is only so much of my range here, so I'd rather save my semi-bluffs for hands like nut flush draws, sets, and two pair/wrap type hands I will have, maybe even Q9xx with diamonds type hands. Anyway, he calls, and the turn is the 3h. This is a pretty good card for my hand so when he checks, I bet again. He calls. River is the 8d completing the flush draw from the flop and I just checked behind. He turns over AK96ds (with nut heart draw) and scoops the pot with top pair. He obviously would have folded to a river bluff but I was surprised to see how thinly he peeled the flop. It's gotta be literally the bottom of his range. Oh well, I guess that's why you 3-bet deep and in position. Hand would have played much better without c-betting the flop though. As it were he had very good equity vs my hand.
Hand 17: Cutoff opens and I 3-bet AA85ss on the button 100bb deep, the 55/30/2 BB cold calls and the cutoff calls. I flop the nut flush on Q76 all spades. Checks to me, I bet close to pot and am called by the BB. The turn is the 8s and goes check/check. I messed up this hand. I should have put him in here on the turn. I have the nut flush and figured he would just get in the 2nd nut flush on the flop or bomb it on a non-pairing turn card. Since I have the 5s, there are almost no flushes below that. This leaves JTssxx, J9ssxx, and T9ssxx, one of which is a straight flush and the others have no equity vs me. All 3 of those hands and I will be getting it in on the river for sure if the turn goes check/check and the river is non-board pairing. I messed up my analysis of the hand, because I would never cold call a 3-bet with 77xx or 66xx hands and few QQxx hands. I just wasn't considering him having a set because I wouldn't often, and that's how I've been doing most of my range analysis while trying to learn PLO. The other problem with my logic is the fact that we're getting it in on the river vs the 2 flushes and 1 straight flush is not relevant, because they will all call the turn anyhow, and furthermore, if the river is board-pairing, the 2 flushes will fold and the straight flush will obviously not. If I bomb the turn I can make him fold his set's 23% equity in the 70bb pot or call with the worst of it. At least I realized my mistake, because when the river was a board-pairing 7, I checked behind the nut flush and he showed sixes full.
Hand 18: Cutoff open limps and solid reg I'm 140bb deep with completes and I check the BB with KQ86ds. Flop is A88 with a flush draw. SB pots and I call, cutoff folds. Turn is a 6, the SB pots again, and I repot. I don't think I should be raising here this light unless I'm going to have a ton of bluffs here. But I don't think I should be floating very light. I'm putting myself in a spot where I hate being reraised and have no equity when beat.
Hand 19: Poster cutoff checks, I 3x on the button with AA42ss and get called by both blinds and the poster. Flop is J72 with my heart draw. Checks to the poster who minbets, and I just pretend like he didn't, so raise him to a 2/3 pot bet. The 50/20/5 I started the hand 135bb deep with check/3-bets less than pot. Folds to me and I call. Turn is an offsuit T and he bets under 2/3 pot. I call. The river is a 2 of hearts giving me the nut flush but pairing the board and he leads all-in giving me 3:1 on a call.
Hand 20: I open TT99r in middle position and am called by the 55/30/2 button who I'm 195bb deep with. The flop is Qd8c4s. I pot and he calls. Turn 3d. I barrel and he calls. The river is the 7d bringing the backdoor flush. I check and he bets 4/5 pot. Given we have some serious blockers to wrap type hands and 65xx would probably be checking behind on the river, does it make his hand range from the flop so comprised of made hands that a checkraise bluff would be profitable on the river? Probably not because a lot of his range for calling two barrels, even made hands that won't raise, will have backdoor flush draws that will continue upon turning the flush draw. I think this play would be profitable if there was also a flush draw on the flop that missed.
Hand 21: UTG limps, button pots, I repot in the BB with AAJJr even though I'm 145bb deep with the button. UTG limper cold calls, button repots, and I repot. UTG shows KK63sss and button shows AAT5r. Button rivers tens and fives on me. I lost 145bb's on the hand while never more than 35% to win the main pot and yet won over 10 big blinds worth of EV on the hand. Such is PLO.
Dusty's book has relatively little in it about playing poker hands. You can judge this book very well by its title, as it is very specific, detailed, and insightful about how to be successful playing poker by examining everything about your poker with a business mindset. In fact, I would argue that it's very valuable simply as a book about good business principles. I would definitely recommend it for anyone reading my blog who has an interest in business, poker, or would just like to get a very interesting viewpoint on the life of a disciplined professional poker player.
One thing that I found very interesting recently was how several people I know who'd read my blog seemed to be taken aback, even slightly disapproving of me losing 20k in Vegas and I not thinking it is a big deal. I think it stems from some misunderstanding. Make no mistake that I do consider 20k to be a decent amount of money. However, it would be suicidal to any poker player to play the stakes I was if their mindset would be that 20k is a big loss. That is maybe one of my most obvious edges over the common opponent. Money is inventory for the poker player, you simply need it to make more, and that is something Dusty talks about in his book. The moment you start to think of a buy-in as rent, you are done. While it is true that I do not regularly play 50/100, the main reason is that sized game is much tougher online and therefore I have a large percentage of my bankroll in investment accounts and real estate. I took a calculated risk with a perceived real edge with quantifiable downside. Some of the questions or expressions I received after coming back from a trip in which I lost money seemed to make a mockery of my judgment. If you're wondering how much money my brother and I lost playing the slots, you just missed the point of this paragraph.
At different times in the past I have truly treated poker like a business and in other times I have not. We all struggle with doing this to perfection, but starting with this new year, I'm going to focus on treating my poker playing with a business mindset as best I can. This morning I woke up early and made myself scrambled eggs for breakfast. Getting up earlier is something on which I've been working to improve. I think it will improve my productivity as a poker player and as a student. Additionally, getting up early will ensure I always have time to eat a solid breakfast in the morning, which will set the stage for keeping up a good diet throughout the day and in turn good exercise.
I have been working out and eating very well recently. I'm always getting closer and closer to following the Paleo diet, which would be ideal, and I'm becoming much more proficient at CrossFit. Pull ups are one of my weakest exercises, and I have set myself on the right track to doing them way better. At the time that I started CrossFit I could probably only do 2 or 3 pull ups. Basically, I have been scaling every workout with pull ups in it because I need resistance to be able to complete the workouts. Doing this is a good way to increase my strength for dead-hang pull ups, but I still didn't know how to do the “kipping” form to do better pull ups until recently. My current kipping form leaves a lot to be desired, but on Saturday I was able to do 25 pull ups during the workout and on Tuesday 18. I feel the main difference in amount of pull ups between the two days is from the other exercises involved in the workout. Relative to other exercises that could have been included in the workout, I would say Saturday's (pushups and squats) had little effect and Tuesday's (deadlifts) much more effect on my pull up capacity, so the way I figure it, my current range is about 18-25 pull ups for the workouts, depending on how they are interspersed.
Some people seem to think that the kipping form of a pull up is cheating or some ridiculous nonsense. While no doubt dead hang pull ups are harder, to understand why the logic is faulty, one must simply look to the functional CrossFit methodology and interpret the movement as having gymnastic roots. All kipping does is create horizontal momentum which is skillfully translated into vertical momentum to assist with the pull up. From a free hang, the same amount of work in a physical sense is achieved as that of a dead hang pull up, just with a different overall muscle group composition. From a gymnastic viewpoint, the movement is very functional. If the immediate goal is getting one's chin over the bar, kipping pull ups are the most efficient method.
I don't think I'm the only one that does this, but I really enjoy reading my facebook “live news feed”, especially since it is now mostly filled with people's status updates. It's such a great way to figure out what people are thinking. Poker is all about getting inside people's minds and figuring out what they are thinking and then very perceptively determining what they are likely to do. Although people are obviously aware of what and where they are writing, I find that they tend to think about the status update as much different than the rest of the internet. Based on my experiences, I feel the average user may not fully grasp the scope of their updates or either chooses to ignore it. More interestingly, I believe most people subconsciously realize that people who read their status update will have seen it in a setting among others'. This assumption leads to easy insights about people's motives in that they are trying to stand out in a way that's related to the content of the update. The journalistic integrity of facebook news feeds is obviously nonexistant and so you have to take what you read with a grain of salt. Often inaccuracies in what people write can lead to insights about their thinking. For some people it may be their only direct contribution to the internet and therefore people are usually writing about topics for which they have great conviction. I think these are explanations for how a medium has been created in which small blurbs of nearly pure thought or transparent motive can be reflected upon to create a whole lot of experience in examining human thought in a short amount of time.
This bowl season I learned a lot about how people think while watching football. Even the most rational people usually throw out logic while watching sports events for which they have a bias, whether it be team or sport related. Some sharp sports bettors whose opinions I was reading were betting heavy on us not to cover in the Orange Bowl. When we were quickly down 14-0 I simply accepted the reality that our team had been overrated for this matchup and would probably go on to lose the game. That's not to say I was completely fine with the result or that I didn't stick around for hope of a comeback, I was just simply at peace with what was occurring. I think most people's emotional problems come from an inability to accept reality or some irrational illusion of it. In sports betting, people become obsessed with the idea of “beating” Vegas, and assume that must be impossible. While that's generally a solid viewpoint, its premise is incorrect in that one doesn't need to be better at setting lines than Vegas. All that's required is a certain amount of logic, intuition, and math to figure out where their lines don't reflect true prices. Exploiting, not beating. Sports betting is essentially options trading where the outcome of the sporting event is the traded underlying security.
In fact, sports betting is similar to poker in the way that poker is similar to options trading. The traded underlying security of a poker hand is its hand ranking, which can be changed after any betting round by a number of ways only limited by the deck being finite. The poker hand's worth, being a derivative security of hand ranking, must be judged by the player intuitively by doing path-dependent backwards analysis in real time. The actual worth of a poker hand is based on the pot size at the point of occurrence of either everyone folding or the hand winning at showdown. The actual worth is never known at any decision point (without regard to an unbeatable hand on the river), but the Real Options Analysis worth is intuitively judged from looking at the current pot size and previous betting actions to evaluate the likelihood of different paths that will result in various pot sizes at showdown and probabilities of either having the best hand or everyone folding along the way.
One thing that some of my family was asking me around Christmas was whether I thought my classes have helped me in my poker playing. I answered yes to some degree, but poker requires a lot of independent study. This is true, but I think I've actually underestimated the effect that my classes have in fact helped my poker playing. Some of my family and friends enjoy playing the lottery. I could go into a huge discourse on an estimation of EV for playing the lottery, but I think it unnecessary and suffice it to say that the lottery is ridiculously -EV. That I never play the lottery is an obvious way in which my poker study and to some extent my classes have affected my thinking. Not even mentioning the fact that the lottery has ridiculous variance which is not attractive and that it works against the universal premise of the marginal utility of money, just look at the EV and variance. EV is not affected by variance, but variance is affected by EV. Therefore we can posture of an equivalent game with equal EV but different variance that will have the same long-term value. Here I ask anyone if they would play a game which required them to pay 35 cents with nothing else to it. This is the zero variance version of the lottery.
I'm not knocking the lottery. I think it is a great system, essentially being a tax on the imperceptive that creates potential for the future through education. However, I look at poker no differently. My goal is to make the world a better place than I left it. I view myself as an entrepreneurial Robin Hood, exploiting the Dunning-Kruger effect, thereby discovering the self-confidence I've lacked, and much like the efficient allocation of capital to public corporations, in the long term money will flow through me from those with excess, as defined by their inability to keep from losing it to me at the poker table, towards those in need. Today I have helped support a farming group in Uganda by funding part of a micro-finance loan for buying farming supplies. If you don't know what Kiva is, you should check it out. Kiva's mission is “to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty” by “empowering individuals to lend to unique entrepreneurs around the globe”.
I really enjoy exploring the art of intuitive and deductive thought processes. Success in poker requires improving your thought processes so poker is a very natural fit for what I enjoy doing. It's no secret that all successful poker players discuss hands a lot and bounce ideas back and forth. It's the best way we know to learn poker along with playing.
During the session I played this morning, I was just 3 tabling $100PLO and making a note of every single hand I found the least bit interesting. I want the commentary on most hands that follow to be short, specifically only things that I was thinking about during the hand as it went down, in order to look like a stream of thought. The others will have a lot of post-hand analysis. I have already looked over some of the hands I've talked about on this blog in the past and can find slight ways in which my thought process was off or contained some incorrect reasoning. Even the stuff you don't find interesting is in some way interesting. Here is my version of the session I played this morning. Hopefully it will be very interesting to look back upon later for further reflection.
Hand 1: 100bb deep, cutoff opens for pot, I call next with QJT7ds and both blinds call. Could 3-bet this hand here but at this table there is a lot of value in keeping the blinds in and I have a lot of nut straight potential. I flop 843 with two backdoor flush draws. Original preflop raiser bets 2/3 pot and I flat him because there are a lot of great turn cards for my hand with position. Both of the blinds call again and the turn is an offsuit 9. The original raiser bet half pot and I potted here with a 16 nut wrap without too much consideration. The 82/0 SB called with TT52 and I was somewhat surprised to see him take down the pot on a brick river and that he had 65% equity on the turn.
Hand 2: Aggressive guy in middle position opens for pot with a 40bb stack. Folds to me on the button with AAK8ss and I time out. This was the last straw. Timing out is happening a little too often with my transition to the Stars software and is definitely hurting my win rate. I need to focus on playing less tables until I'm adjusted to the software like a business cutting losses.
Hand 3: Against a very loose and aggressive cutoff open 130bb deep, I 3-bet T987ss. He calls and the flop is K22 with a different flush draw. He checks and I bet 2/3 pot, he calls. The turn is another 2. The key is to use what your perceived range is, namely that he probably thinks I have aces, against him here to fold his either-way counterfeited hand. I bet 35% of the pot on the turn and he snap-folded.
Hand 4: Limped pot and I check in the BB w/QT64r. Flop is QT7r and SB leads, I call, one other player calls. Turn is 4 bringing flush draw, SB leads, I pot and get it in vs him 85bb deep on the hand. He shows J877 and I start to wonder how often I'm really getting it in good enough there.
Hand 5: I open JJ62r from the button and get called by solid BB. Checks to showdown on Ad6x4d3d5x board. He shows AAK3 with the nut blocker and I scoop with my six-high straight. I guess he was going to checkraise every street, maybe not the river, but instead I showed down a hand with 2% equity on the flop. Interesting hand, wonder if I should always be c-betting this flop because my hand has very little showdown value or even usually ability to get to showdown.
Hand 6: Two limpers and I pot (A7)A5 from the SB 100bb deep and get called by the BB and button. Flop is 977 with a club draw and checks around to see a 4c turn. I check and call a half-pot bet from the 60/30 button. Turn is an offsuit 8 and goes check/check and I'm good vs QJ96ds. Not sure if there's any other line I could have taken, because I don't think I can play it so aggressively as to stack worse 7's when they all have good equity vs me and I'm nearly dead when behind. I could be convinced that not c-betting the flop is bad, but if called is my plan to just check call down given the board?
Hand 7: Good player in the cutoff opens for pot and I call 110bb deep in the BB with AAJ2sss. I don't think this is a hand I can 3-bet here but I could be persuaded otherwise. Flop is JJ5 and I have a backdoor flush draw. In retrospect a bet/3-bet looks pretty sweet, but the flop gets checked thru and the turn is a 9 giving me a flush draw. I lead turn and he calls. The river is a 4 giving me a flush. Very interesting river card because it does very little for my relative hand strength. I should have value bet the river though. As played he checks behind QQJ2 and pretty much owned me on this hand.
Hand 8: This is a hand with post-hand commentary. I'm pretty sure this is a prime example of a hand that should certainly be led most of the time. A 75/10/2.5 with 50bb opens the cutoff for a minraise and I call in the BB with (AT6)T. As I was writing this I was just about to leave out the fact that I think you could argue for a fold preflop, since I didn't think of that while playing, but I'm wondering if that in itself could be a leak in my preflop play. With a 75/10 it just depends on whether you feel that he opens 10 percent of hands whenever the hell he feels like it or if he methodically opens the best 10% of hands. There may be enough value with the nut flush potential and top or medium set to play here even if the latter is true about his game. The flop is AdTd8c. I check, he bets half pot, and I pot. He calls and we go to the turn with 1.5pot left behind and it's a 5d completing the flush. I simply pot out here planning to give my opponent 38% odds on his shove that I will have to call getting 7:1 even though he will know he doesn't have any fold equity. Although that's really not as much of a consideration in this spot because when he calls he either has me at 22.5% with a flush or nearly dead with top set of aces. Given that I checkraised the flop, I have to make this play. The play hinges on the ability to ever fold out top set of aces which we have no equity against or if called by the nut flush, there is a 22.5% chance of rivering a full house. He's going to have a lot of flushes here but because he is so loose and also so aggressive on the flop, he will have a lot of J9xx hands that I would love to have fold the turn and A8xx hands that I don't get any further action from anyhow.
Hand 9: Unconventional but strong player in the cutoff open limps and I 3x on the button with 120bb's and KQ97ds. The SB and BB call and limper calls. The flop is JT4 without my flushdraw but I have backdoor flush possibilities and a 17-wrap with all nut straight outs. However, it's on a board with a flush draw, reducing the hand's equity vs opponents' ranges. BB leads and cutoff pots, and I cold-call. I'm wondering if I should just be folding here considering the action might get reopened by the BB and one opponent could have top set and the other the nut flush draw. If that's the case I have about 30.3% equity, so after cold-calling it would be impossible to fold (I ran my hand vs Ac7d6d5c and JsJh3c2c, which balances redraws OK I think). In any case, the BB folded on the flop and then the turn was the 5c and he potted.
Hand 10: The 75/10 from earlier limps the button and I check with T(T42). Flop comes A96r and goes check/check. Turn is an offsuit 7 and I pot it. He calls and the river is a K. I think this is a good spot to pick up the pot by potting it again, making it unlikely he will call twice with two pair on this board, especially when you might be value betting AKxx, as he is unlikely to have it. I will of course get called by 85xx but the TT's are nice blockers to the nut straight, reducing the hands that will call combinatorically.
Hand 11: Loose aggressive cutoff opens and I 3-bet with QQ33ss on the button 110bb deep. Flop is QJ4 with 2 hearts but I have a backdoor flush draw. Check-pot-pot-pot on the flop. Turn T of hearts. Obviously, I am now behind. River T of clubs. Wow.. was that me hitting a redraw? That was euphoric.
Hand 12: Solid reg opens on the button 100bb deep. I call JT(T8) in the SB. Is this too loose? The hand went to showdown and he had K(64)2, so probably not.
Hand 13: Solid reg opens in middle position and I flat with (KJ)(T6), button calls. The flop is KJJr. Flop goes pot-pot-pot and I am good vs AJ82sss. I would think this should certainly be the bottom of his getting in range here. Too loose? Nah.
Hand 14: I open KK(J9) UTG and am called by solid reg in the BB. Flop is JT6 with 2 diamonds. He checks, I check behind. Damn, I should be c-betting with this hand here. Turn is a 7d. I don't really think you can turn the second nut blocker into a bluffraising hand since he's going to be super polarized here.
Hand 15: 55/30/2 opens in middle position, I call in the BB with KQT6ds, but we are slightly over 200bb deep. Flop is Q87 giving me two backdoor flush draws. I lead and get called. Turn is a 6 putting a flush draw but not either of mine. I lead out again and he folds. I like the way I played this hand. On the turn I can easily fold if raised, but if he calls me, I have outs/chop outs vs some of his hands and am actually getting value from others while definitely folding some hands with good equity vs me.
Hand 16: Solid reg opens on my BB and I 3-bet 175bb deep with QJ76ds. Flop is KhJdTd and I have second nut backdoor hearts to go with my open ended straight draw and second pair. He checks, I bet 2/3 pot. I don't think I like my c-bet here. I do have decent equity vs most of his range, but not vs most of his range that continues, and we are deep. It would seem a good candidate for a semi-bluff, but the key to look at here is that I'm repping broadway. This is a locked down board as Phil Galfond would say, and AQxx is only so much of my range here, so I'd rather save my semi-bluffs for hands like nut flush draws, sets, and two pair/wrap type hands I will have, maybe even Q9xx with diamonds type hands. Anyway, he calls, and the turn is the 3h. This is a pretty good card for my hand so when he checks, I bet again. He calls. River is the 8d completing the flush draw from the flop and I just checked behind. He turns over AK96ds (with nut heart draw) and scoops the pot with top pair. He obviously would have folded to a river bluff but I was surprised to see how thinly he peeled the flop. It's gotta be literally the bottom of his range. Oh well, I guess that's why you 3-bet deep and in position. Hand would have played much better without c-betting the flop though. As it were he had very good equity vs my hand.
Hand 17: Cutoff opens and I 3-bet AA85ss on the button 100bb deep, the 55/30/2 BB cold calls and the cutoff calls. I flop the nut flush on Q76 all spades. Checks to me, I bet close to pot and am called by the BB. The turn is the 8s and goes check/check. I messed up this hand. I should have put him in here on the turn. I have the nut flush and figured he would just get in the 2nd nut flush on the flop or bomb it on a non-pairing turn card. Since I have the 5s, there are almost no flushes below that. This leaves JTssxx, J9ssxx, and T9ssxx, one of which is a straight flush and the others have no equity vs me. All 3 of those hands and I will be getting it in on the river for sure if the turn goes check/check and the river is non-board pairing. I messed up my analysis of the hand, because I would never cold call a 3-bet with 77xx or 66xx hands and few QQxx hands. I just wasn't considering him having a set because I wouldn't often, and that's how I've been doing most of my range analysis while trying to learn PLO. The other problem with my logic is the fact that we're getting it in on the river vs the 2 flushes and 1 straight flush is not relevant, because they will all call the turn anyhow, and furthermore, if the river is board-pairing, the 2 flushes will fold and the straight flush will obviously not. If I bomb the turn I can make him fold his set's 23% equity in the 70bb pot or call with the worst of it. At least I realized my mistake, because when the river was a board-pairing 7, I checked behind the nut flush and he showed sixes full.
Hand 18: Cutoff open limps and solid reg I'm 140bb deep with completes and I check the BB with KQ86ds. Flop is A88 with a flush draw. SB pots and I call, cutoff folds. Turn is a 6, the SB pots again, and I repot. I don't think I should be raising here this light unless I'm going to have a ton of bluffs here. But I don't think I should be floating very light. I'm putting myself in a spot where I hate being reraised and have no equity when beat.
Hand 19: Poster cutoff checks, I 3x on the button with AA42ss and get called by both blinds and the poster. Flop is J72 with my heart draw. Checks to the poster who minbets, and I just pretend like he didn't, so raise him to a 2/3 pot bet. The 50/20/5 I started the hand 135bb deep with check/3-bets less than pot. Folds to me and I call. Turn is an offsuit T and he bets under 2/3 pot. I call. The river is a 2 of hearts giving me the nut flush but pairing the board and he leads all-in giving me 3:1 on a call.
Hand 20: I open TT99r in middle position and am called by the 55/30/2 button who I'm 195bb deep with. The flop is Qd8c4s. I pot and he calls. Turn 3d. I barrel and he calls. The river is the 7d bringing the backdoor flush. I check and he bets 4/5 pot. Given we have some serious blockers to wrap type hands and 65xx would probably be checking behind on the river, does it make his hand range from the flop so comprised of made hands that a checkraise bluff would be profitable on the river? Probably not because a lot of his range for calling two barrels, even made hands that won't raise, will have backdoor flush draws that will continue upon turning the flush draw. I think this play would be profitable if there was also a flush draw on the flop that missed.
Hand 21: UTG limps, button pots, I repot in the BB with AAJJr even though I'm 145bb deep with the button. UTG limper cold calls, button repots, and I repot. UTG shows KK63sss and button shows AAT5r. Button rivers tens and fives on me. I lost 145bb's on the hand while never more than 35% to win the main pot and yet won over 10 big blinds worth of EV on the hand. Such is PLO.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
December Vegas Trip
I’ve never blogged extensively about any of my trips to Vegas so maybe this will be interesting to read and look back on. Early in the morning the day after my last final, my brother, Mike, Clark, and I all headed to the airport to fly out to Vegas. In a way, we are all much different types of poker players. I am the college student who just so happens to be very good at poker and is considering making a career of it. However, each of my traveling partners has planned to come out to Vegas with me via different paths and they have different goals.
My brother Ben works for a small, private engineering consulting firm and boasts very flexible hours and plays tons of online poker. He got into poker after my success with a decent amount of guidance from me. He has played significantly more hands online this year than I have ever played in my life, and he spends a great deal of time studying and learning about the game. He is a marginal winner in small stakes online games over hundreds of thousands of hands. He is a very conservative person by nature, and it remains to be seen how he will adjust to playing live poker, as he’s never been to Vegas before. I am pretty confident that he could beat 5/10 live in Vegas and would probably stake him for it, but he wants to play 2/5 on his own dime on this trip, which I think is a fine starting point.
Like Ben, Mike has probably played more hands of poker than me this year, and he is also a marginal winner online, although in smaller games than my brother. However, Mike has never built up a big bankroll because he’s always been paying bills out of his winnings. One big thing working against Mike for this trip is that he specializes in games with a cap on the amount bet per hand and has little experience playing deeper stacked games that require important decisions on the turn and river. This combined with the fact that Mike does not spend nearly as much time working to improve his poker game as my brother has me a little worried about his transition to the types of games he will be playing in on this trip. That’s not to say he doesn’t want the end result of being a better poker player, he just simply either does not have the time to or does not want to put in the type of work and effort required to make some big jumps in poker skill. Having said all of that, I was going to stake Mike for 1/2 while we are out there. I am not too worried that this is larger stakes than he plays for online or that he has little experience playing live. Mike knows a lot about the poker world and has some experience with the type of mentality and technical poker skills it takes to be a winner. In addition, there are enough tourists and players with absolutely no clue playing 1/2 in Vegas who are practically lighting money on fire such that I expect Mike to do just fine. I’m interested to see what kinds of big hands Mike gets in and how he plays them.
Clark recently landed a very nice job and views poker as a hobby that could potentially be very profitable. While Ben and Mike are similar in several ways, Clark is a much different player. He doesn’t play too much online poker and prefers to play live where the competition is easier. Also unlike Ben and Mike, Clark got into poker even before I did but did not take the same approach to the game as me. Nowadays he calls me up often to talk about hands he’s played and I believe has learned a ton of poker concepts and ways of thinking about poker hands from us talking through decision points. Clark picks up concepts quickly and is a people person by nature. I’m confident in his ability to play deeper stacked live poker, and I agreed to stake him for 2/5 on this trip. This will be the third time I’ve staked Clark for some live games in public cardrooms.
I give these synopses of my traveling partners not only because they are obviously relevant to the trip, but because they are also the main people with whom I discuss poker. While they have all no doubt learned a lot about poker from me, they have all taught me something about my own game and have influenced the way I view myself as a poker player.
We all managed to get on the same flight out there that would hopefully land about 11am Pacific Time. I originally got this flight because I was thinking about playing in a $5k buy-in tournament that started at noon at the Bellagio. However, after sitting on the plane for about an hour, they finally announced that all passengers were to exit the plane as technical difficulties were going to delay the flight indefinitely. Not a good sign for the beginning of our trip. As we got off the plane, we saw there was a flight directly across from our gate that was going to Vegas and we all managed to get on it as standby passengers. This was fine except we had to come back to the Vegas airport later that evening to get our checked bags. Luckily it is only a 10 minute cab ride from the Bellagio.
Since we didn’t get into Vegas when I had hoped, I didn’t enter the $5k tournament. This ended up being fine because it didn’t draw that many players and the field looked decently tough. I played some 10/20 in the afternoon after checking in and won about 600 bucks. At 5pm in the Fontana room there was a $1600 buy-in super satellite that roughly paid an entry into the $15k main event starting Monday for every 10 players entered. The Fontana room is usually a type of lounge or bar that has an incredible view of the strip and the Bellagio Fountains, but for this week it’s where the poker tournaments were running, which was cool because I got to sit right by the windows in one of the satellites I played and it almost seemed like playing poker outside. I decided I wasn’t going to buy in to the $15k Bellagio 5-Diamond Doyle Brunson Classic, which is its official name, unless I was able to satellite in. However, I thought I’d give myself a reasonable shot at it since there were a number of opportunities to do so.
I played pretty well in the 5pm satellite. I lasted about 3 hours then busted on a pretty interesting hand. I had slightly above average chips, about 14k at 200/400 with a 25 ante. A guy that just got moved to the table opens for 1k and I flat with AhJd one off the button. The flop is J84 with 2 hearts and he checks to me. I bet 2200 and he min-checkraises me to 4400. I ship it and he tank calls with AKo. Turn is a king, gg. I didn’t play anything else that night but watched Eric Baldwin ship yet another tourney, the 1k rebuy, that was finishing up right after my tournament for about 265k. Eric won the event that I final tabled at this year’s WSOP and is an excellent live tournament player and great guy. This nearly clinched Player of the Year for him, which he did end up winning, and I’m glad to see him win that prestigious honor.
The next day was pretty uneventful. I woke up really early Vegas time and played in a shorthanded 10/20 game with a 40 straddle. On one of the first few hands, I 5-bet shipped JJ vs Nenad Medic out of the small blind with about a 70bb stack and won on a low flop against what almost certainly was AK. After he beat me out of a pretty large pot about an hour later I quit the game down about 600. The game wasn’t that good, and I’ve become an expert at game selection and when to quit. These are two vastly underrated skills for the professional poker player that I’ve developed very well. The game wasn’t good, didn’t look like it was going to get better soon, none of my opponents were tilting, and I had just lost a large pot – pretty much a perfect quitting time. Anyway, the rest of the day I played two of the $1600 super satellites and busted both at the same 200/400/25 level that I had busted the day before. Once after getting in enough of my stack preflop with AQo such that I had a potsized bet left, shipping the flop, and having someone flop a set on me, and the other by running QQ into KK with 20bb.
On Monday the $15k tournament started and it looked like it sported a very tough field. I played a soft single table sit-n-go satellite with an $1800 buy-in that paid one seat to the main event. Then I remembered how much I hate those things. Not only did I have to wait around nearly an hour for enough players to start after I bought in, but you start 10-handed and the blinds rise so fast that eventually everyone’s shipping in their 8bb stacks and as such it becomes a race to see who gets luckiest. The players in those in general play pretty bad, but the structure terribly limits your edge. I busted on a super standard 7bb shove with A5o and ran into A2o that flopped a deuce. I decided to give up on entering the $15k tournament and just play cash games the rest of the trip. That night I played a pretty long session of 10/20. The game was super soft but I couldn’t win any of a very rich businessman’s money even though he dropped like 15k in the game. I played until the game broke and ended up losing $400. So nothing eventful had really happened yet; I decided to give up on playing in the $15k tournament, especially after seeing how tough the field ended up being, and already I’m down 7k on the trip. But there were 2 full days left of cash games to be played.
On Tuesday I spent some time studying PLO concepts and then went down in the afternoon to play some 10/20. The games were alright and I managed to actually make a couple hands and won $1600. Here is an interesting hand from that 10/20 game. I’m sitting with about 5k and 5 limpers to me in the small blind. I complete and the big blind checks. So 7 of us to a flop of 5d3c2d. I check it checks around to a regular in middle position who bets out 80, the next player makes it 260 and the button cold-calls the 260. I’m next to act and I make it 1100. A guy in early position who had only invested the $20 he put in preflop tank folds and later exclaims it was the biggest fold he ever made with a set of deuces (lol). Snap folds back around to the button who tank calls my raise and has about 1200 left or so going into the turn. The turn is an offsuit K and I put the guy all-in and he tanks again and folds. I’ll let the reader guess what I had, but I think my hand is pretty face up and for this reason I was considering even making a larger raise on the flop, especially since I was quite a bit deeper against some of the guys in the hand. I find it kind of funny how sometimes in live poker you have to just sit around waiting for the opponent to tank and make some kind of decision. Maybe it’s just how experienced and good I am that I am never surprised by the next card or whatever action somebody takes. It’s probably just the lack of the ability of most people I was playing against to actually put me in tough spots. I guess that’s just good game selection. I seriously doubt I ever took more than 30 seconds to make any decision the entire time I was out in Vegas this past week.
Anyhow shortly after this hand I happened to look over and see that a 25/50 game just started and it had the wealthy businessman from the night before as well as a guy that said he was traveling with Guy in it. Right from the start we made a mandatory 100 straddle and this game filled up so fast. I actually lost a decent sized pot and had to go get some money from the main cage to top up. I ended up losing a few k while the game was great, but won it back as it got worse and actually ended perfectly even in that game. I took a dinner break instead of waiting around to make it into the main game and came back to play in the game a couple hours later as it got going again at 25/50 with a 100 ante on the big blind. I ended up winning $2600 in this game even though it was pretty tough.
Then as the game broke I spent several hours playing Chinese poker against Alec Torelli. I have played some against him online before and he is a cool guy and interesting person to meet. We were playing for high for $100/pt, which I actually haven’t spent as much time practicing, but I felt pretty confident in my game. I started off quickly up almost 3k, but I started to doubt my edge, even though because of the nature of the game I know I was giving up almost nothing, because some of the Vegas regs seemed to think Alec was hustling me and he played well and set his hands so fast. A lot of it probably had to do with how amateurish I look trying to decide the payouts and how slow I set my hands. But then a Vegas reg came and sat in the game who had apparently not really ever played Chinese before and dropped several k. After he left, we started to alternate between deuce to seven and high for a little while but probably only played about 5 or 6 of those hands total. We ended the session on a downswing and I lost about 1500 playing Chinese, which is only 15pts of course. There is a whole lot of variance in high with bonuses, probably less so in 2-7. I still have improvement that I can make in both games I think. Eventually I want to get to be almost unbeatable at those forms of Chinese. Then I have to somehow get quicker at setting my hands to get more hands per hour.
Wednesday I came into the poker room in the early afternoon to check out the action and was surprised to see that there was already a very juicy 50/100 PLO game running with both Sammy and Devilfish in it. I was feeling pretty confident about my PLO game and walked over just in time to see Devilfish show down AJ74 rainbow from early position on a 665K3 board to scoop a large pot from Sammy. I immediately put my name on the list but someone told me the list was incredibly long. So I put my name down for 10/20 and 25/50NL too. I played 10/20 for a few orbits before we started a three blind 25/50/100PLO must-move. The game was tough, but I was just going to test the waters since I think I was one of the first on the list for the main game. I only played several orbits before being called for the 25/50NL game. I was glad to leave the PLO game because it wasn’t that good and they had raised the stakes of the main game so we were no longer a must-move. Also 25/50/100 PLO is easily too high stakes for me, especially considering my lack of PLO experience. I did make a couple good plays though. One that stood out in my mind was there was an open limper in early position playing 6 handed, I limped behind with QJhT2h, there was another limper behind me, and we saw the flop 4 way. The flop came T64 with 2 diamonds and 1 heart giving me top pair with a backdoor flush draw. The early position limper bet 400, I called, and the others folded. The turn was the Qh, giving me top two with a flush draw. He checked to me, I bet 800, and he called. The river was the Kc and he pretty quickly led into me for 2500. He’s obviously repping broadway, but I didn’t think there would be that many combos in his range for leading the flop and that his hand probably had way more missed draws the way he played it. I think it’s also like the perfect river card to lead bluff against an unknown so I decided to call and was good. I ended up winning several pots in the PLO game in the several orbits I was there for a 9k win. This meant it was actually the first time I was in the black for the entire trip.
However, it didn’t last for too long. I was up about 6k in the 25/50 with 100 ante NL game at my highest, about 2 or 3 hours into the session, before I lost a series of pots, and then got stacked on the following after topping up every time. I’m about 12k deep at this point, and a Vegas regular who I’d never played with before and just got moved to the table within the hour raised to 200 from middle position. There was 1 caller and I made it 900 from the SB with red kings. The initial raiser calls and the next guy folds. We see a flop of QJ8 with a diamond draw. This flop really sucks as his range is going to have a lot of two pair and even sets in it. We’re deep enough that I hate getting raised on the flop if I c-bet, and there are a ton of turns that suck if I c-bet and am called, so I decide to check. He bet 2k when I checked. I actually thought about folding because I really got the feeling that he was super strong when he bet, but I figured that would be too weak tight and I’m not nearly confident enough in my ability to spot tells on a Vegas reg to do that. I figure my hand is nearly face up if I check-call, so I checkraised all-in and got snapped by JJ. It’s possible I should have check/called, and it’s possible that he wouldn’t have bet the flop with like AQ/KQ, but I don’t really have a plan for a ton of turns if I do that and we’d still have 9k effective in a 6k pot so it would really suck and I’d probably end up folding the best hand on a lot of later streets. I’m still not really sure what I make of this hand. On the last hand of the night I started with about 9.5k. Early position raised to 200 and got 4 callers, and I see AQo in the BB. I made it 1100 and only one guy folded so I got 4 callers also. So there’s about 6k in the pot and the flop is QQ5 rainbow. I decide to check since I had been playing pretty ABC for a while and I had a read on a couple guys in the pot that they would be likely to continue in the pot on later streets even without a queen if I showed any weakness. The way I figured it I would stack any other queen and get felted by 55, bet or no bet, since the pot was so large relative to my stack. Anyhow, it got checked through and the turn was a 4 with still no flush draw. I bet 2500, get called by the initial preflop raiser, then Elky on the button insta-shipped it and I called and the third guy in the pot folded. He was full with 44 and had me drawing very slim. Obviously the outcome is probably different if I c-bet the flop, but my read was correct on the initial preflop raiser in that he put in 2500 with what was almost certainly not a Q. Anyhow I dropped like 28k in that 25/50/100 game and flew back with my brother the next morning, so ended up losing about 23.5k on the trip. Overall I feel like I played very well on the trip and just ran below average. I am very satisfied with my live game. One of the main things I learned is that I think I gave most live regs credit for being more tricky than they actually are. Some regs just play completely abc and will never make a creative move to get you off a specific holding. When they take certain lines they will always have it and I need to adjust to that in the future.
I know this post doesn’t contain much about our Vegas trip other than poker or much about Ben, Mike, and Clark like it might have seemed it would from the beginning. Clark left Monday and Mike left Tuesday night, and overall we all didn’t do that well, but since I didn’t even really see them play any I’ll leave their takes on the trip for themselves.
Right now I’m at my parents’ house, and I’ve been studying some PLO and feel like I’m getting better and better at the game. Also I saw Avatar in 3d last night and it has some excellent special effects and graphics. I give it 3-4 stars out of 5. Merry Christmas!
Also, check out these two links:
Very interesting article about poker and life from David Sklansky:
http://www.twoplustwo.com/magazine/issue33/sklansky-schoonmaker-poker-good-for-you.php
Hilarious Bling Blang Blow video in Edgar Allan Poe form:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPvyBxuKePE
My brother Ben works for a small, private engineering consulting firm and boasts very flexible hours and plays tons of online poker. He got into poker after my success with a decent amount of guidance from me. He has played significantly more hands online this year than I have ever played in my life, and he spends a great deal of time studying and learning about the game. He is a marginal winner in small stakes online games over hundreds of thousands of hands. He is a very conservative person by nature, and it remains to be seen how he will adjust to playing live poker, as he’s never been to Vegas before. I am pretty confident that he could beat 5/10 live in Vegas and would probably stake him for it, but he wants to play 2/5 on his own dime on this trip, which I think is a fine starting point.
Like Ben, Mike has probably played more hands of poker than me this year, and he is also a marginal winner online, although in smaller games than my brother. However, Mike has never built up a big bankroll because he’s always been paying bills out of his winnings. One big thing working against Mike for this trip is that he specializes in games with a cap on the amount bet per hand and has little experience playing deeper stacked games that require important decisions on the turn and river. This combined with the fact that Mike does not spend nearly as much time working to improve his poker game as my brother has me a little worried about his transition to the types of games he will be playing in on this trip. That’s not to say he doesn’t want the end result of being a better poker player, he just simply either does not have the time to or does not want to put in the type of work and effort required to make some big jumps in poker skill. Having said all of that, I was going to stake Mike for 1/2 while we are out there. I am not too worried that this is larger stakes than he plays for online or that he has little experience playing live. Mike knows a lot about the poker world and has some experience with the type of mentality and technical poker skills it takes to be a winner. In addition, there are enough tourists and players with absolutely no clue playing 1/2 in Vegas who are practically lighting money on fire such that I expect Mike to do just fine. I’m interested to see what kinds of big hands Mike gets in and how he plays them.
Clark recently landed a very nice job and views poker as a hobby that could potentially be very profitable. While Ben and Mike are similar in several ways, Clark is a much different player. He doesn’t play too much online poker and prefers to play live where the competition is easier. Also unlike Ben and Mike, Clark got into poker even before I did but did not take the same approach to the game as me. Nowadays he calls me up often to talk about hands he’s played and I believe has learned a ton of poker concepts and ways of thinking about poker hands from us talking through decision points. Clark picks up concepts quickly and is a people person by nature. I’m confident in his ability to play deeper stacked live poker, and I agreed to stake him for 2/5 on this trip. This will be the third time I’ve staked Clark for some live games in public cardrooms.
I give these synopses of my traveling partners not only because they are obviously relevant to the trip, but because they are also the main people with whom I discuss poker. While they have all no doubt learned a lot about poker from me, they have all taught me something about my own game and have influenced the way I view myself as a poker player.
We all managed to get on the same flight out there that would hopefully land about 11am Pacific Time. I originally got this flight because I was thinking about playing in a $5k buy-in tournament that started at noon at the Bellagio. However, after sitting on the plane for about an hour, they finally announced that all passengers were to exit the plane as technical difficulties were going to delay the flight indefinitely. Not a good sign for the beginning of our trip. As we got off the plane, we saw there was a flight directly across from our gate that was going to Vegas and we all managed to get on it as standby passengers. This was fine except we had to come back to the Vegas airport later that evening to get our checked bags. Luckily it is only a 10 minute cab ride from the Bellagio.
Since we didn’t get into Vegas when I had hoped, I didn’t enter the $5k tournament. This ended up being fine because it didn’t draw that many players and the field looked decently tough. I played some 10/20 in the afternoon after checking in and won about 600 bucks. At 5pm in the Fontana room there was a $1600 buy-in super satellite that roughly paid an entry into the $15k main event starting Monday for every 10 players entered. The Fontana room is usually a type of lounge or bar that has an incredible view of the strip and the Bellagio Fountains, but for this week it’s where the poker tournaments were running, which was cool because I got to sit right by the windows in one of the satellites I played and it almost seemed like playing poker outside. I decided I wasn’t going to buy in to the $15k Bellagio 5-Diamond Doyle Brunson Classic, which is its official name, unless I was able to satellite in. However, I thought I’d give myself a reasonable shot at it since there were a number of opportunities to do so.
I played pretty well in the 5pm satellite. I lasted about 3 hours then busted on a pretty interesting hand. I had slightly above average chips, about 14k at 200/400 with a 25 ante. A guy that just got moved to the table opens for 1k and I flat with AhJd one off the button. The flop is J84 with 2 hearts and he checks to me. I bet 2200 and he min-checkraises me to 4400. I ship it and he tank calls with AKo. Turn is a king, gg. I didn’t play anything else that night but watched Eric Baldwin ship yet another tourney, the 1k rebuy, that was finishing up right after my tournament for about 265k. Eric won the event that I final tabled at this year’s WSOP and is an excellent live tournament player and great guy. This nearly clinched Player of the Year for him, which he did end up winning, and I’m glad to see him win that prestigious honor.
The next day was pretty uneventful. I woke up really early Vegas time and played in a shorthanded 10/20 game with a 40 straddle. On one of the first few hands, I 5-bet shipped JJ vs Nenad Medic out of the small blind with about a 70bb stack and won on a low flop against what almost certainly was AK. After he beat me out of a pretty large pot about an hour later I quit the game down about 600. The game wasn’t that good, and I’ve become an expert at game selection and when to quit. These are two vastly underrated skills for the professional poker player that I’ve developed very well. The game wasn’t good, didn’t look like it was going to get better soon, none of my opponents were tilting, and I had just lost a large pot – pretty much a perfect quitting time. Anyway, the rest of the day I played two of the $1600 super satellites and busted both at the same 200/400/25 level that I had busted the day before. Once after getting in enough of my stack preflop with AQo such that I had a potsized bet left, shipping the flop, and having someone flop a set on me, and the other by running QQ into KK with 20bb.
On Monday the $15k tournament started and it looked like it sported a very tough field. I played a soft single table sit-n-go satellite with an $1800 buy-in that paid one seat to the main event. Then I remembered how much I hate those things. Not only did I have to wait around nearly an hour for enough players to start after I bought in, but you start 10-handed and the blinds rise so fast that eventually everyone’s shipping in their 8bb stacks and as such it becomes a race to see who gets luckiest. The players in those in general play pretty bad, but the structure terribly limits your edge. I busted on a super standard 7bb shove with A5o and ran into A2o that flopped a deuce. I decided to give up on entering the $15k tournament and just play cash games the rest of the trip. That night I played a pretty long session of 10/20. The game was super soft but I couldn’t win any of a very rich businessman’s money even though he dropped like 15k in the game. I played until the game broke and ended up losing $400. So nothing eventful had really happened yet; I decided to give up on playing in the $15k tournament, especially after seeing how tough the field ended up being, and already I’m down 7k on the trip. But there were 2 full days left of cash games to be played.
On Tuesday I spent some time studying PLO concepts and then went down in the afternoon to play some 10/20. The games were alright and I managed to actually make a couple hands and won $1600. Here is an interesting hand from that 10/20 game. I’m sitting with about 5k and 5 limpers to me in the small blind. I complete and the big blind checks. So 7 of us to a flop of 5d3c2d. I check it checks around to a regular in middle position who bets out 80, the next player makes it 260 and the button cold-calls the 260. I’m next to act and I make it 1100. A guy in early position who had only invested the $20 he put in preflop tank folds and later exclaims it was the biggest fold he ever made with a set of deuces (lol). Snap folds back around to the button who tank calls my raise and has about 1200 left or so going into the turn. The turn is an offsuit K and I put the guy all-in and he tanks again and folds. I’ll let the reader guess what I had, but I think my hand is pretty face up and for this reason I was considering even making a larger raise on the flop, especially since I was quite a bit deeper against some of the guys in the hand. I find it kind of funny how sometimes in live poker you have to just sit around waiting for the opponent to tank and make some kind of decision. Maybe it’s just how experienced and good I am that I am never surprised by the next card or whatever action somebody takes. It’s probably just the lack of the ability of most people I was playing against to actually put me in tough spots. I guess that’s just good game selection. I seriously doubt I ever took more than 30 seconds to make any decision the entire time I was out in Vegas this past week.
Anyhow shortly after this hand I happened to look over and see that a 25/50 game just started and it had the wealthy businessman from the night before as well as a guy that said he was traveling with Guy in it. Right from the start we made a mandatory 100 straddle and this game filled up so fast. I actually lost a decent sized pot and had to go get some money from the main cage to top up. I ended up losing a few k while the game was great, but won it back as it got worse and actually ended perfectly even in that game. I took a dinner break instead of waiting around to make it into the main game and came back to play in the game a couple hours later as it got going again at 25/50 with a 100 ante on the big blind. I ended up winning $2600 in this game even though it was pretty tough.
Then as the game broke I spent several hours playing Chinese poker against Alec Torelli. I have played some against him online before and he is a cool guy and interesting person to meet. We were playing for high for $100/pt, which I actually haven’t spent as much time practicing, but I felt pretty confident in my game. I started off quickly up almost 3k, but I started to doubt my edge, even though because of the nature of the game I know I was giving up almost nothing, because some of the Vegas regs seemed to think Alec was hustling me and he played well and set his hands so fast. A lot of it probably had to do with how amateurish I look trying to decide the payouts and how slow I set my hands. But then a Vegas reg came and sat in the game who had apparently not really ever played Chinese before and dropped several k. After he left, we started to alternate between deuce to seven and high for a little while but probably only played about 5 or 6 of those hands total. We ended the session on a downswing and I lost about 1500 playing Chinese, which is only 15pts of course. There is a whole lot of variance in high with bonuses, probably less so in 2-7. I still have improvement that I can make in both games I think. Eventually I want to get to be almost unbeatable at those forms of Chinese. Then I have to somehow get quicker at setting my hands to get more hands per hour.
Wednesday I came into the poker room in the early afternoon to check out the action and was surprised to see that there was already a very juicy 50/100 PLO game running with both Sammy and Devilfish in it. I was feeling pretty confident about my PLO game and walked over just in time to see Devilfish show down AJ74 rainbow from early position on a 665K3 board to scoop a large pot from Sammy. I immediately put my name on the list but someone told me the list was incredibly long. So I put my name down for 10/20 and 25/50NL too. I played 10/20 for a few orbits before we started a three blind 25/50/100PLO must-move. The game was tough, but I was just going to test the waters since I think I was one of the first on the list for the main game. I only played several orbits before being called for the 25/50NL game. I was glad to leave the PLO game because it wasn’t that good and they had raised the stakes of the main game so we were no longer a must-move. Also 25/50/100 PLO is easily too high stakes for me, especially considering my lack of PLO experience. I did make a couple good plays though. One that stood out in my mind was there was an open limper in early position playing 6 handed, I limped behind with QJhT2h, there was another limper behind me, and we saw the flop 4 way. The flop came T64 with 2 diamonds and 1 heart giving me top pair with a backdoor flush draw. The early position limper bet 400, I called, and the others folded. The turn was the Qh, giving me top two with a flush draw. He checked to me, I bet 800, and he called. The river was the Kc and he pretty quickly led into me for 2500. He’s obviously repping broadway, but I didn’t think there would be that many combos in his range for leading the flop and that his hand probably had way more missed draws the way he played it. I think it’s also like the perfect river card to lead bluff against an unknown so I decided to call and was good. I ended up winning several pots in the PLO game in the several orbits I was there for a 9k win. This meant it was actually the first time I was in the black for the entire trip.
However, it didn’t last for too long. I was up about 6k in the 25/50 with 100 ante NL game at my highest, about 2 or 3 hours into the session, before I lost a series of pots, and then got stacked on the following after topping up every time. I’m about 12k deep at this point, and a Vegas regular who I’d never played with before and just got moved to the table within the hour raised to 200 from middle position. There was 1 caller and I made it 900 from the SB with red kings. The initial raiser calls and the next guy folds. We see a flop of QJ8 with a diamond draw. This flop really sucks as his range is going to have a lot of two pair and even sets in it. We’re deep enough that I hate getting raised on the flop if I c-bet, and there are a ton of turns that suck if I c-bet and am called, so I decide to check. He bet 2k when I checked. I actually thought about folding because I really got the feeling that he was super strong when he bet, but I figured that would be too weak tight and I’m not nearly confident enough in my ability to spot tells on a Vegas reg to do that. I figure my hand is nearly face up if I check-call, so I checkraised all-in and got snapped by JJ. It’s possible I should have check/called, and it’s possible that he wouldn’t have bet the flop with like AQ/KQ, but I don’t really have a plan for a ton of turns if I do that and we’d still have 9k effective in a 6k pot so it would really suck and I’d probably end up folding the best hand on a lot of later streets. I’m still not really sure what I make of this hand. On the last hand of the night I started with about 9.5k. Early position raised to 200 and got 4 callers, and I see AQo in the BB. I made it 1100 and only one guy folded so I got 4 callers also. So there’s about 6k in the pot and the flop is QQ5 rainbow. I decide to check since I had been playing pretty ABC for a while and I had a read on a couple guys in the pot that they would be likely to continue in the pot on later streets even without a queen if I showed any weakness. The way I figured it I would stack any other queen and get felted by 55, bet or no bet, since the pot was so large relative to my stack. Anyhow, it got checked through and the turn was a 4 with still no flush draw. I bet 2500, get called by the initial preflop raiser, then Elky on the button insta-shipped it and I called and the third guy in the pot folded. He was full with 44 and had me drawing very slim. Obviously the outcome is probably different if I c-bet the flop, but my read was correct on the initial preflop raiser in that he put in 2500 with what was almost certainly not a Q. Anyhow I dropped like 28k in that 25/50/100 game and flew back with my brother the next morning, so ended up losing about 23.5k on the trip. Overall I feel like I played very well on the trip and just ran below average. I am very satisfied with my live game. One of the main things I learned is that I think I gave most live regs credit for being more tricky than they actually are. Some regs just play completely abc and will never make a creative move to get you off a specific holding. When they take certain lines they will always have it and I need to adjust to that in the future.
I know this post doesn’t contain much about our Vegas trip other than poker or much about Ben, Mike, and Clark like it might have seemed it would from the beginning. Clark left Monday and Mike left Tuesday night, and overall we all didn’t do that well, but since I didn’t even really see them play any I’ll leave their takes on the trip for themselves.
Right now I’m at my parents’ house, and I’ve been studying some PLO and feel like I’m getting better and better at the game. Also I saw Avatar in 3d last night and it has some excellent special effects and graphics. I give it 3-4 stars out of 5. Merry Christmas!
Also, check out these two links:
Very interesting article about poker and life from David Sklansky:
http://www.twoplustwo.com/magazine/issue33/sklansky-schoonmaker-poker-good-for-you.php
Hilarious Bling Blang Blow video in Edgar Allan Poe form:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPvyBxuKePE
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