September Review - Ship It!

As I don't intend to play at all this evening, my month finished with an hour long mini-heater last night. September as a whole has been an extremely refreshing month after running so bad during the bulk of July and August. I also cleared my first ever Supernova milestone bonus, which contributed an early $1200 of free money (if all goes according to plan, I'll hit the $2200 bonus near the end of October).

To begin, here is a breakdown of my play in both tabular and graphical form:


That's one sexy graph.

Because PokerEV can't handle extremely large volumes of hands, I posted mid-month EV and luck graphs back in this post. At that point overall, I had run very close to average (marginally bad, if you want to be picky). Here is my EV and all-in luck for the 2nd half of the month:


As you can see above, during the 2nd half of the month I ran well in terms of Sklansky EV, and marginally good in terms of all-in EV.

Here are my Set-o-meter results for the entire month:

Wow. Looks like I had damn bad luck flopping sets this month. Heater versus cooler hands seem to be pretty much neutral.

Combining my first half EV/luck, second half EV/luck, and Set-o-meter results, I think it is fair to say I probably ran very very close to dead on average this month. That said, even running average feels amazing after July/August.

Time to look at my September goals:
1) Play 150k+ hands.
Uh, I could have sworn I met this goal, but my table/graph say different. I guess Pokertracker's original filter I was using was counting hands played between 12:00AM and 6:00AM on Sept 1st, while the filter used in the graph/table exclude these (correctly, as they were counted in August). Failed it seem, though marginally. Oops.

Note that this since I've started playing, this is the first month I played less hands than the month previous. I'm ok with this to be honest, the 200k I put in during August was too much (and was a result of how abysmally I ran). 150k seems like a good number for a month while playing part time.

2) VPIP > 13, PFR > 10, ATS > 28
Fail. Sometimes I play a 13/10 ATS 30 game, and sometimes I end up around 11/9 ATS 25. They don't feel terribly different when I'm playing them. It may be result of whether or not my session is during a weekend, where I tend to focus on stealing/exploiting regs less and valuetowning the donks more. Who knows. Either way, obviously I need to make a better conscious effort here.

Unofficial 3) Make five figures of profit
Achieved and exceeded by a non-trivial margin. See below.

The bottom line:
$7844.40 winnings + $3074.06 rakeback* + $1200 milestone bonus + $30.90 staking profit** = $12149.33 total profit

*54,894 VPPs x 3.5 FPPs/VPP x 1.6c/FPP = $3074.06
**25% of the profit made by my single stakee at 10NL. He has since been playing 25NL under a stake from myself, so I expect I'll have some staking related profit next month too!

Earnings wise, a very solid month. I think the 2.68ptBB/100 winrate is a good value for a 24 tabler, and quite accurately reflects where my game is currently at. The one thing I'm concerned about going forward is finding the motivation to play higher and keep improving. More on this when I address my October goals in an upcoming post.

Finally, as one of my October goals will be to start a "fresh" DB (I'll actually import my last 150k hands or so into it for HUD purposes), I decided to do another lifetime graph.

So, here is the start of my career through the end of September 2008:

Add to that ~$14k rakeback and my $1.2k milestone and you'll be close to my yearly profit. Not too shabby so far.

Not A Bad Weekend

I put in 22k hands over the weekend, running very well on Saturday in terms of equity, but ran into an incredibly sick number of cooler hands on Sunday to limit my earning to ~$1.8k ($1.4k winnings, $400 rakeback). Here are the graphs:



I had several really weird hands during my sessions, the strangest of which I'll post below. Villain is a ~15/12/4 reg who seems pretty aggro. Note that I probably play the hand pretty badly, I'll try to analyze it street by street in the HH.

Keep in mind that we are 185bb deep.

Poker Stars, $0.50/$1 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 7 Players
SB: $186.90 (186.9 bb)
Hero (BB): $237.15 (237.2 bb)
MP1: $198.80 (198.8 bb)
MP2: $100 (100 bb)
MP3: $154.35 (154.4 bb)
CO: $69.30 (69.3 bb)
BTN: $100 (100 bb)

Pre-Flop: Hero is BB with Th Qs
5 folds, SB raises to $4, Hero raises to $14.50, SB calls $10.50

Villain likes to steal blinds, so I bluff 3-bet. He should be very reluctant to call here since we are so deep, and the deeper the stacks the more position matters.

Flop: ($29) 9s Ts Jh (2 players)
SB bets $25, Hero calls $25

One would think that a big pair would have 4-bet preflop given the stack sizes. Thus, villain's hand looks very much like a set here that doesn't want to peel a card. That said, we have deep stacks and an OESD + pair, so I'm just not ready to fold with my implied odds. That said, trying not to be results oriented, folding may actually be the correct play here.

Turn: ($79) 2s (2 players)
SB bets $50, Hero calls $50

I pick up a flush draw as well. If villain has a set, then my flush outs are good and I have a 14 out draw, getting 2.5:1 on my money with solid implied odds as well. He could also have some 2-pair hands I have Q outs against. I probably don't have much fold equity (people always prove to me I have more FE than I think I do however), so shoving doesn't seem great. Shoving is probably better than calling here though. What an ugly spot. I play bad and call.

River: ($179) Kd (2 players)
SB bets $97.40 and is all-in, Hero calls $97.40

Gin card for us, snap call. WTF on villain's part, way to bluff off 185BBs.

Results: $373.80 pot ($3.00 rake)
SB showed Ac 6c (high card Ace) and lost (-$186.90 net)
Hero showed Th Qs (a straight, Nine to King) and won $370.80 ($183.90 net)

Cooler Wednesday -> Heater Thursday

I played a nasty session on Wednesday where I finished something like -$250, and as one might imagine my EV (especially all-in luck) was absolutely abysmal. Fortunately I went on a nice heater on Thursday to follow it (around +$600 with rakeback) so things normalized quite quickly.

Here are EV and all-in luck graphs for the two sessions combined:


The big spike around hand 4750 was me getting it all in with a donkey 150BB deep. I had KK versus his AK on a KQx flop. It was a 3-bet pot preflop.

On the month as a whole I am right around $9.9k profit thus far, with a weekend and a couple weekdays to go. Barring a major downswing, my unofficial profit goal for the month should be realized. On one hand it's a lot of money which is awesome, on the other it's a figure I've known I'm capable of for awhile, I just needed to not run terrible as I did in July and August. I guess it'll be more of a relief than anything else.

A Fun Hand

Over the weekend I struggled, ran fairly poorly, and made around $1k total. Half of it was rakeback, which sucks.

I did however have one really great hand awhile ago, likely on Thursday night against a massive donk. He was running something like 60/20, and loved to bluff overbet rivers. We had recently played a pot where he limped in MP, I raised from the BU with AJ. Flop came AQx and I bet, he called. Turn T, check check. He overbets ~$40 into a $25 pot on the blank river. I call and he shows T7o, I scoop.

I'm not sure how he ran his stack up after the previous hand left him with $50 or so, but note that we are 150BB deep here.

Poker Stars, $0.50/$1 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 8 Players
BTN: $89.75 (89.8 bb)
SB: $127.10 (127.1 bb)
BB: $64.30 (64.3 bb)
UTG+1: $150.50 (150.5 bb)
MP1: $132.30 (132.3 bb)
MP2: $100 (100 bb)
Hero (MP3): $153.95 (154 bb)
CO: $114.45 (114.5 bb)

Pre-Flop: Hero is MP3 with 3h 3s UTG+1 raises to $2, 2 folds, Hero calls $2, 4 folds

Standard.

Flop: ($5.50) 2s Js Jh (2 players)
UTG+1 checks, Hero checks

No reason to bet here, especially against a big donk.

Turn: ($5.50) Qh (2 players)
UTG+1 checks, Hero checks

Same as flop, likely no value in betting unless we want to induce a spaz raise and call down, which doesn't seem fun.

River: ($5.50) 3c (2 players)
UTG+1 checks, Hero bets $5, UTG+1 raises to $53, Hero raises to $151.95 and is all-in, UTG+1 calls $95.50 and is all-in

Best river ever. I expected him to raise my river bet with air here a lot, but when he raised so much I got all tingly. When he called my value shove I half expected to see a random Q or something of the sort. Instead he slowplayed three streets with trips only to get owned for 150BB pot on the river. NH sir. Thank God he didn't have quads.

Results: $302.50 pot ($3 rake)
Hero showed 3h 3s (a full house, Threes full of Jacks) and won $299.50 ($149 net)
UTG+1 mucked Jd Th (three of a kind, Jacks) and lost (-$150.50 net)

Run Bad, Win Monies

Haven't played much lately, but I put in sessions on Monday (ran bad), and Thursday (ran bad). I ended up basically break even on Monday (marginally positive iirc) and here is my EV graph from Thursday:


The best part about my Thursday session however, was that I owned the souls of a couple regs. In the first instance, I took a very non-standard line with AA. I was HU on the flop OOP as the PFR, took c/c lines on flop and turn, vbet small on river and paid off by JJ. In the same spot against the same reg with KK, I instead bet a very dry flop, and got raised. Because I had not c-bet with AA, he probably thought I had air. I called, turn checked through. On river I spiked a K for the boat (I figured I was ahead anyway), and v-bet half pot, which ended up being around half the remaining effective stacks. He insta-shoved 77, which was absolutely retarded (on a 66J2K no flush board).

The other instance was against a complete playmachine spewtard who I have serious regwarz with. During this hand I almost pulled off the trifecta, which is check raising all three postflop streets. Unfortunately we weren't deep enough for me to pull off the full thing. Here's the hand:

Poker Stars, $0.50/$1 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 9 Players
UTG: $51.95 (52 bb)
UTG+1: $162.15 (162.2 bb)
MP1: $97 (97 bb)
MP2: $130.15 (130.2 bb)
MP3: $100.10 (100.1 bb)
CO: $28.50 (28.5 bb)
BTN: $130.05 (130.1 bb)
Hero (SB): $151.15 (151.2 bb)
BB: $252.50 (252.5 bb)

Pre-Flop: Hero is SB with Jc Js
6 folds, BTN raises to $3, Hero calls $2.50, BB folds

Sometimes I'd 3-bet here as I know he steals really light. I don't mind calling either.

Flop: ($7) Jd Jh 9h (2 players) Hero checks, BTN bets $4.50, Hero raises to $15, BTN calls $10.50

I love raising here because he knows that I'm doing it with air a lot of the time. I think my smaller raise size makes it seem a little more bluffy than usual.

Turn: ($37) Th (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $31, Hero raises to $129, BTN calls $81.05 and is all-in

Since I figure he'll put me on air if I check, I do so. He bets big, I jam. Good game.

River: ($261.10) Qc (2 players, 1 is all-in)

Results: $261.10 pot ($3 rake)
Hero showed Jc Js (four of a kind, Jacks) and won $258.10 ($128.05 net)
BTN mucked 2h Qh (a flush, Queen high) and lost (-$130.05 net)

Weekend Recap and Half Month Graphs

I played 26k hands between Thursday and Sunday, running pretty average during two of the sessions and poorly during the other two. Thus, I ran bad overall on the weekend, but managed around 1.5k total profit (1k winnings, 500 rakeback).

Here are my EV and luck graphs for the period:



The last couple months I haven't been able to publish end of month EV graphs due to PokerEV's inability to load extremely large hand samples (more RAM might fix this problem for me, hard to say). Thus, as I'm at the half way point of the month I decided to fire off EV and luck graphs up until this point to see how I've been running. Here they are:


As you can see, I've actually run marginally bad on the month so far. Considering I've put up what I consider to be impressive results, this really just goes to show just how poorly I ran during August and late July. After going through that, running marginally bad feels like running good!

Finally, here's a fun hand from very late Saturday night. The villain in this hand is a 90/60/3 uberdonk (yes, you read that right) who is already down ~$600 on the night. Note that we are 190BB deep. With only 100BB behind I would probably not have called flop, even against this spewtard.

Poker Stars, $0.50/$1 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 8 Players

BTN: $217.40 (217.4 bb)
SB: $20 (20 bb)
BB: $100 (100 bb)
UTG+1: $127.85 (127.9 bb)
MP1: $100 (100 bb)
MP2: $167.65 (167.7 bb)
MP3: $235.75 (235.8 bb)
Hero (CO): $190.45 (190.5 bb)

Pre-Flop: Hero is CO with Ks Qs
3 folds, MP3 raises to $2, Hero calls $2, BTN calls $2, 2 folds

Flop: ($7.50) As Tc 8h (3 players)
MP3 bets $3.75, Hero calls $3.75, BTN folds

Turn: ($15) Jh (2 players)
MP3 checks, Hero bets $14, MP3 raises to $28, Hero raises to $84, MP3 calls $56

River: ($183) 5c (2 players)
MP3 bets $1.70, Hero raises to $100.70 and is all-in, MP3 calls $99

Results: $384.40 pot ($3 rake)
Hero showed Ks Qs (a straight, Ten to Ace) and won $381.40 ($190.95 net)
MP3 mucked 7c 9c (a straight, Seven to Jack) and lost (-$190.45 net)

I'm winning this pot. Why? 'Cause fuck you that's why.

I had another pretty solid session last night, playing just under 4k hands for +3BI in winnings. Here the EV graph:


The hand which inspired the post title is below. The villain in the hand is a 15/13/4 reg who doesn't suck. He probably views me as a 13/10 TAG who is solid but perhaps a little nitty. I meant to 3-bet preflop but misclicked, and for some reason really didn't feel like check/folding the flop. After he check/called the turn bet, his range became skewed significantly towards AQ, KK, and AA (with some KQ and JJ mixed in as well). These hands all definitely can find a fold to a strong river bet.

Poker Stars, $1/$2 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 9 Players
CO: $191.20 (95.6 bb)
BTN: $242.90 (121.5 bb)
SB: $262.30 (131.2 bb)
BB: $200 (100 bb)
UTG: $148 (74 bb)
UTG+1: $227.80 (113.9 bb)
MP1: $69.20 (34.6 bb)
MP2: $142.80 (71.4 bb)
Hero (MP3): $218.95 (109.5 bb)

Pre-Flop: Hero is MP3 with Kd Ad
UTG folds, UTG+1 raises to $8, 2 folds, Hero calls $8, 4 folds

Flop: ($19) 6h Qd 3s (2 players)
UTG+1 bets $14, Hero calls $14

Turn: ($47) 2h (2 players)
UTG+1 checks, Hero bets $33, UTG+1 calls $33

River: ($113) 4d (2 players)
UTG+1 checks, Hero bets $90, UTG+1 folds

Results: $113 pot ($3 rake)
Hero mucked Kd Ad (high card Ace) and won $110 ($55 net)

Insert Witty Title Here

After a session of running terribly on Monday, I bounced back on Tuesday with a solid heater. Here is the EV graph of the two sessions combined:


Over those hands I was running $120 bad in all-in luck.

Want to know how to win a buyin worth of Sklansky bucks while losing two buyins of actual money? Here's how:

(Villain is a 40/3 donkey)
Poker Stars, $0.50/$1 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 8 Players
SB: $93.45 (93.5 bb)
BB: $150.70 (150.7 bb)
UTG+1: $56.60 (56.6 bb)
MP1: $185.30 (185.3 bb)
MP2: $58.80 (58.8 bb)
MP3: $125.05 (125.1 bb)
CO: $101.50 (101.5 bb)
Hero (BTN): $251.25 (251.3 bb)

Pre-Flop: Hero is BTN with 6d 6c
UTG+1 folds, MP1 calls $1, MP2 calls $1, 2 folds, Hero raises to $6, SB folds, BB raises to $18, MP1 calls $17, MP2 folds, Hero calls $12

Flop: ($55.50) 2h 6h 4d (3 players)
BB checks, MP1 bets $20, Hero raises to $112.50, BB folds, MP1 raises to $167.30 and is all-in, Hero calls $54.80

Turn: ($390.10)7d (2 players, 1 is all-in)
River: ($390.10) Qh (2 players, 1 is all-in)

Results: $390.10 pot ($3 rake)
MP1 showed Jh Kh (a flush, King high) and won $387.10 ($201.80 net)
Hero mucked 6d 6c (three of a kind, Sixes) and lost (-$185.30 net)

Preflop 3-bet Sizing

Many months ago I wrote a long post about sizing preflop 3-bets, which after glancing over probably is a mix of good and bad advice. I'm going to take another shot at it today, as I think it is an area where a stakee needs improvement.

Consider a $10NL, with 100BB effective stacks. In general, we are 3-betting preflop either for value or as a bluff. Our sizes obviously need to be consistent between the two. When three betting for value, we want our raise size to be big enough to deny small pairs odds to set-mine profitably against us. This usually means our opponent should have to commit ~10% or more of their stack to call. If they are only getting 8-10:1 on a call with a small pair, calling is certainly -EV for them. That said, we don't want to make our 3-bets so huge that we lose more than we have to when bluffing.

With those points in mind, I typically size my 3-bets as follows (with 100BB effective stacks, more on this later). Against a 3x open raise, I 3-bet to 13x. Villain has to call 10BB, which makes set mining -EV. Against the more common 4x open raise, I 3-bet to 15x. Villain has to call 11BB, which again makes calling with small pairs unprofitable.

Finally, we must adjust our 3-bet sizes to the effective stacks in the hand. If our opponent and ourselves are both 150BB deep, we should 3-bet more than usual. Raising a 4x preflop raise to 18-19x in this scenario is not unreasonable. Conversely, if we are playing with 50BB effective stacks, raising a 4BB raise to 10BB is likely optimal, as our opponent calling with pairs smaller than our 3-bet range is now -EV for him due to stack sizing.

Strong Weekend

See graph:


With rakeback I shipped right around $2.5k.

I'm also going to be staking/coaching a friend starting at 10NL, so I'll be writing an article later on an area in which he needs improvement. Stay tuned.

September Goals

My month is off to a decent start. Holiday Monday's session was poor, though it ended up marginally positive. Since then I've had +5 and +2 BI short sessions, which combined with my $1.2k milestone bonus and rakeback from the ~10k hands I've played makes for a decent chunk of change.

One thing I've noticed is that when I'm posting a solid winrate, I am playing looser and stealing more blinds. During my stretch of running terribly during late July and almost all of August, I tightended up and stole one hell of a lot less, which obviously hurt my winrate.

With that in mind, I'm only going to have two real goals for the month:

1) Play 150k+ hands.
I managed nearly 200k last month, but due to video game releases and (hopefully) not running as bad, 150k this month should be a good challenge.

2) VPIP > 13, PFR > 10, ATS > 28
I think I am definitely more profitable when I open looser from position, and these stats will reflect that I am keeping this in mind.

Unofficial 3) Make five figures of profit
Since this is partially determined by luck I'm not going to make it an official goal, but it is definitely something I've been hoping to accomplish. If I do 1) and 2) it is not entirely unreasonable.

Milestones Are Good

I hit my first milestone bonus of the year yesterday, at 200k VPPs. What this effectively means is that I get a free $1200, which is a nice start to my September.

Why isn't it $2000 you ask, when that is the bonus amount? Each milestone bonus costs 50,000 FPPs, which is worth $800 when converted to cash buying the $4k boni available at Supernova. Thus, our $2000 bonus actually costs us $800, making the first milestone worth $1.2k total. I should end up clearing the 300k milestone bonus ($2.2k free money) in mid to late October, and the 400k ($3.2k free money) in early to mid December. Good times.

August Review - All's Well That Ends Well?

I'm not going to talk too much about my month as a whole, because I've probably bitched enough as it is. The cliffnotes are basically that I ran terribly for the first 28 days of August. Thankfully, during the last three days I went on a significant heater that, in combination with my disgusting volume (and thus, massive rakeback earnings) allowed me to set a new personal best for monthly profit.

Here is my winnings graph. Note that the spike from around hand 175k on all happened between Friday the 29th and Sunday the 31st.


Here's the PT table. The winrate sucks, and I played a ridiculous amount of hands. Yay for 24 tabling!


The bottom line:
$3279 cash winnings + $80 donkament winnings (weekly Supernova freeroll, yay) + *$4138 rakeback = $7497 total.

*73895 VPPs x 3.5 FPPs/VPP x 1.6c/FPP = $4138 rakeback

Ship the new personal best month. Here's hoping for a better September where winnings > rakeback.