July Review - Bleh

I came into July with high hopes. Given that the month contained five full weekends I expected that I would be able to put in good volume, and I was rapidly approaching my 400k milestone bonus. Unfortunately, due to a combination of factors (laziness, poor game quality at Stars, and Starcraft 2/Persona 3 Portable) my volume during July was poor at best. To make things worse, I ran very poorly over the hands I did play, crippling my winrate. The only saving grace for the month was that I was able to continue to find success bumhunting huge whales at midstakes, primarily at the 50bb max tables of 400NL and 600NL.



The bottom line:
$7276.29 table winnings
+$4544.96 FPP value (56,812 VPPs * 5 FPPs/VPP * 1.6c/FPP)
+$3000 milestone bonus ($3800 bonus - $800 FPP value to purchase)
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$14,821.25 USD total profit.

Most definitely a disappointing result, though it could certainly be worse I suppose. Hopefully WSOP events beginning to air on ESPN will help out the game quality for August, or perhaps Stars will fix their abysmal structure folly sooner rather than later. Wishful thinking most likely, but you never know.

What Happened to Thursday?

Today the games were as dead as I think I have ever seen them on a Thursday, which during US primetime hours is usually the third best day in terms of game quality behind Friday and Saturday. After a short 1k hand session, I gave up trying to grind. So much for me putting in a decent amount of volume this month. At least I ran passably in the hour I did play and ended up $450 off the tables.

Over the past three days I completed the single player campaign in Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty. It was a very well crafted experience, though some of the plot left me thinking "rrrrreally?". I've since played through a few of the single player challenge mission and a handful of multiplayer 1v1 league matches in which I've enjoyed decent success. I was able to use one of my favorite Protoss strategies from Brood War in one win (what I like to call the Dark Templar rush), and in another Terran on Terran match we both entirely crippled each others' economies but I had just enough units left to finish the job. All around, a great game so far and I'm having fun adjusting to all the units.

It's also worth mention that some US legislation was moved in the right direction today, backed mostly by Rep Barney Frank and the PPA. Definitely not time to start celebrating yet, but it's a start.

CPU Surgeon

I had an interesting Monday. My CPU has been running into some heat issues when under load if it is really hot in the house lately, so I went out to buy an upgraded heatsink. As I built my box myself, I knew I didn't have much in the way of room and some of the heatsinks available are huge. Thus, I went with the smallest model I could find.

My first problem occurred as I removed my existing stock heatsink. It came out very easily, but the processor came out with it. This was because the thermal compound between the two was cool and acted as superglue. There was absolutely no chance of separating the two in their current state. A quick google search later, and I learned that I had a bunch of options available. Long story short, I ended up getting the two apart by blowing hot air with a hair dryer into the heat sink, warming the thermal compound.

Unfortunately, upon attempting to reseat the processor and then install the new heatsink, I ran into worse difficulties. The first was the realization that the new heatsink wasn't going to fit. I have four DIMMs of RAM installed and I would need to remove one of them to make room for the new cooling, which wasn't an option. Given it was the smallest available, it really makes me wonder - my motherboard is a very standard model, so just how the hell do the people designing the cooling systems expect consumers to actually be able to use their product? At any rate, the next difficulty was that my processor wasn't seating properly, due to some bent pins that I assume got mangled when it was unceremoniously ripped out of its socket along with the heat sink. Now if you're familiar with processors, you know that repairing bent CPU pins is at best a dangerous game - after all there are 938 pins spaced over an area about a third of that of a credit card. After some hard work using a good pair of tweezers, I managed to straighten the seven or so pins enough that the CPU seated properly. Even better, the damn thing works, and is running cooler than before. I imagine the cooling is for two reasons: some of the (better quality) thermal cooling paste from the new heatsink transferred when I attempted installing it, and a lot of dust ended up being removed from case fans and the old heatsink itself (when it was exposed to the hair dryer). All is well that ends well I guess.

Point Form Positives

100% positive point form content in this post!

• I put together fairly successful sessions on two out of my three high volume days this weekend.


• Earlier this week I reached the 400k VPP milestone, binking a free $3k for my trouble.


• Persona 3 Portable is fantastic. Even better, it turns out PSP 3000s can be hooked up to TVs, unlike the earlier model I am currently using. I definitely plan to pick one up, as I have a library of quality PSP games I'd love to play on a bigger screen.


• Starcraft 2 is released this week! I'm not expecting it to be as groundbreaking for me as the original, but I imagine it'll bring me a lot of enjoyment nonetheless.


• I pulled off an epic comeback in NHL '94 action tonight. Truly the greatest hockey video game every made.


• After watching the first half of the Stamps/Riders game with the score at 7-7 before returning to the grind, I tuned in during the last minutes with the score at 40-11 for the Stamps. Good to see that Burris and company got their act together, and even sweeter that it was against Saskatchewan.

All Aboard the Fail Boat

For an organization that by and large had done so much right for so long, Pokerstars has begun to look embarrassingly bad lately. Their game structure changes which have been epic fail have not yet been remedied. Today, an article was posted on PTR exposing a ring of short stacking bots who have been around for YEARS. The analysis provided in the article leaves no room for reasonable doubt. If the Pokerstars game security team wasn't able to notice a trend like this, it means one of two things: they're grossly incompetent, or they liked the extra rake being generated and hoped that the players wouldn't uncover the ring of bots, making Stars look awful in the process.

You can find the PTR article here.

It's worth noting that if Stars simply followed FTP's suit and nixed 20bb poker, botting would become next to a non-issue - as writing a bot that could play anywhere close to break even poker with a 50bb+ stack is degrees of magnitude more difficult than with a 20bb stack.

Poker over the last few days has been painful as usual. I'll leave it at that. I'm thoroughly enjoying Persona 3 Portable. I didn't realize the first time through what a great soundtrack the game had. Looking forward to Starcraft 2 release as well as a new album from Rufio, a band that I enjoyed for years who broke up and then recently reformed - which seems to be a trend lately, as Allister got back together this year too! Looking forward to seeing Rufio live again (will be my fourth time I think) in September with Strung Out.

Widening the Gap and a Heroic Call

Poker today was awful as usual, another $500 below AIEV and $700 below Sklansky EV. For kicks, I decided to run SECT on my database since April, here's the result:


Yup, that's a $10k gap in EV. Note that almost exactly $7k of the EV gap is of the "all-in" variety. Given that since April I've only picked up around $20k in pure table winnings, and that gap over the last few months is really quite ridiculous. Good thing I was able to run average for a few months to start the year - still not sure how exactly Stars allowed that to happen.

Anyway, moving beyond the whining, I made what has got to my most heroic call against a regular in a long, long time today. I make a lot of very light calls against fish and especially big donks routinely, but because regulars are both far less likely to spazz and far more aware of my image, I very rarely make really big calls against regs. Today however was the exception. The hand is below, with my street by street commentary in red.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $2.00 BB (8 handed)
Button ($326.60)
SB ($335.65)
BB ($353.20)
Hero (UTG) ($204.60)
UTG+1 ($494.60)
MP1 ($504.75)
MP2 ($247.15)
CO ($500)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with 10♠, 10♦
Hero bets $9, 2 folds, MP2 calls $9, CO calls $9, 3 folds

This is a 100-250bb deep ante table, which explains my 4.5bb open size. MP2 is a loose passive fish, and CO is a very LAG reg who runs around 21/19 with a 8% 3bet in my database. He's a break even player at best and semi spewy, but I'm confident he understands things like showdown value.

Flop: ($33.20) 3♣, 7♦, 2♣ (3 players)
Hero bets $23, 1 fold, CO calls $23

Standard value cbet against the fish, who unfortunately folds but the reg calls. Reg folds to cbets 55% over the sample I have, and given my range is strong here leading into a loose/passive station on a low board, I doubt he's floating here very often. That being said, he loves to 3b and would have very likely squeezed QQ and definitely KK+. He likes to raise flops as well, and would probably be raising sets nearly always and the nut flush at least some of the time. So, his range looks a lot like 88-JJ, club draws, and straight draws. He can definitely have hand like 45 in his range here, he's very loose.

Turn: ($79.20) K♦ (2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $44, Hero calls $44

Given my thoughts regarding his range on the flop, this is the real decision point for the hand. I can't really bet for value and would def hate life if I bet and got shoved on, so I check. Because his range has a lot of draws that will bet here, and he's likely to check back 99-JJ, I elect to c/c. If we c/c we really should be committing ourselves to call a blank river. There is also the possibility that he binked a pair with KcXc, so it's not a fistpump call by any means.

River: ($167.20) J♦ (2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $130, Hero calls $128.20 (All-In)

He shoved the river rather quickly, and I timed all the way down thinking about what made sense, as during the actual hand I hadn't thought through my turn play as well as I should have. I'm 90% sure he's checking back all of his one pair hands here on the river - and that polarizes his range a ton. If he didn't slow play a set on the flop and he's not shoving a KcXc one pair hand, then his range is almost all missed draws we beat, the only two hands that beat us being KcJc and 4d5d. Thus, I decide to be a hero. It's interesting to note that while I would most probably play AA the same way, given the break down and my willingness to make a big call here he probably should be shoving a hand like KcQc for thin value and to add more combos to his "non-air" range at the river.

Total pot: $423.60 | Rake: $3

Results:
Hero had 10♠, 10♦ (one pair, tens).
CO had 8♣, 6♣ (high card, King).
Outcome: Hero won $420.60

You'd Think I'd Get Used To It

... but I just can't seem to get acclimatized to running close to permanently awful. Maybe after another year and a half I'll get used to it. Fun SECT of my last 50k hands:



A month where I'm only $1k out AIEV and $2k out Sklansky expectation would be really refreshing at this point. Running average with respect to those metrics for a month would be amazing but I know that's asking far too much. I should just be grateful Stars doesn't ship pots to the fish when they're drawing dead.

The Flames hired an assistant GM today, ex-Lightning GM Jay Feaster. Not quite sure how I feel about the move, but hopefully it does make Sutter more accountable. I'm not really a Basketball fan, but I follow all major sports and seeing the Miami Heat get megastacked with James/Bosh/Wade this week was interesting. I'm thankful the hard salary cap of the NHL (as opposed to the NBA's soft cap + luxury tax) doesn't allow similar stuff to happen in hockey.

Finished FFX, and afterwards loaded up my game of FFX-2 to play through the ending quickly. I remember thinking my first and only time through that FFX-2 was enjoyable and got a lot of undeserving hate. After just playing quickly through the end however, I can sort of see where the hate was coming from. Perhaps I was blinded by nostalgia for the far superior original during my original play through years ago. Anyway, Persona 3 Portable was released this week, so I'll be moving on to that next. It's been at least two years since I played through Persona 3 FES on the PS2, and given Persona 3 is very likely the best console RPG of the past 10 years or so (case could be made for FFX I guess), I'm looking forward to giving it another go.

Recent Classics

I've been playing through Final Fantasy X lately, for no reason in particular besides that it's a very good game. A few days back, upon glancing at the TV and noticing what I was playing, my best friend referred to it as a "classic". I was a bit surprised by this assessment, simply because it hadn't occurred to me that the game was that old, after all - it's a PS2 title. Given that it was released in 2001 however, 9 years of aging has got to be enough in the video game world for the term to apply. I immediately started to feel old after realizing this. Anyway, this will be my third time through the title, which in terms of replays puts it only behind FF6 and FF4 in terms of Final Fantasy titles for me (not including FF Tactics, as it's not a numbered FF - I've definitely played through it more than three times). Three playthroughs in nine years speaks volumes about the quality of the game. I really do wish they'd remake FF7, so I could give it a replay without having to grimace at the first generation PS1 3D graphics. They seemed so ground breaking at the time, but now I look back and still find SNES 2D attractive (PS1 2D games look fine too), but the bulk of PS1 3D games seem so visually handicapped.

At any rate, after my rather successful Friday session, I ended up running over $1k below AIEV on Saturday, and over $500 below AIEV on Sunday. Any hope I had for a month out less than twenty buyins of AIEV has faded. On the positive though, I did manage to bink a gin turn and stack a reg at 600NL on Sunday to save my session, and ran decently on Monday to ship a solid 3k hands.

I do have a hand from my Saturday session to post, in which I actually hold up because the money goes in with villain drawing dead! The villain in this hand is a reg who 3bets like a monkey and is overall quite spewy. I decide to 4b as a bluff preflop. I'm obviously not thrilled when he flats OOP (which seems pretty awful for him to be doing with just about any hand period) until I see the flop, and then having him spazz out drawing dead topped it all off nicely.

It's worth noting that a fish had posted a BB in MP1, which explains my open size as well as why SB is more likely to be 3-betting lighter than normal (as I'm presumably opening wider than normal due to the post).

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $2.00 BB (9 handed)
MP1 ($272.60)
MP2 ($318.15)
Hero (MP3) ($201.75)
CO ($173)
Button ($207.20)
SB ($200)
BB ($100.30)
UTG ($269)
UTG+1 ($224.25)

Preflop: Hero is MP3 with J♣, A♥
4 folds, Hero bets $9, 2 folds, SB raises to $26, 1 fold, Hero raises to $56, SB calls $30

Flop: ($114) 7♣, J♥, J♦ (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $35, SB raises to $144 (All-In), Hero calls $109

Turn: ($402) 3♣ (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: ($402) 8♦ (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: $402 | Rake: $3

Results:
SB had A♠, 5♠ (one pair, Jacks).
Hero had J♣, A♥ (three of a kind, Jacks).
Outcome: Hero won $402

A Worthy Hand History

Since I couldn't find a remotely interesting HH for yesterday's entry, here's one from today. This is a 100-250bb deep ante table at 200NL. The SB is a megadonk, running something like 70/30. He bluffed off 200bbs earlier with K high in a 3 bet pot, though that aside he hasn't been ridiculously maniacal postflop. Note that I'm 225bbs deep with SB, which is why I didn't even think about folding a suited ace preflop.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $2.00 BB (7 handed)
MP2 ($526)
CO ($500)
Button ($465.35)
SB ($451.35)
Hero (BB) ($581)
UTG ($441.30)
MP1 ($198.20)

Preflop: Hero is BB with A♠, 4♠
1 fold, MP1 bets $6, 3 folds, SB calls $5, Hero calls $4

Flop: ($20.80) A♦, 4♦, A♥ (3 players)
SB checks, Hero checks, MP1 bets $6, SB calls $6, Hero raises to $22, 1 fold, SB calls $16

Turn: ($70.80) 7♥ (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $46, SB raises to $104, Hero calls $58

River: ($278.80) K♥ (2 players)
SB bets $318.95 (All-In), Hero calls $318.95

Total pot: $916.70 | Rake: $3

Results:
SB had 7♣, 7♠ (full house, sevens over Aces).
Hero had A♠, 4♠ (full house, Aces over fours).
Outcome: Hero won $913.70

Really surprised he didn't bink a 7 on the river, though had I lost this hand to runner runner perfect perfect I think it might have been monitor out the window time.

Back to the Future

Yesterday was the first day of free agency in the NHL, and the Calgary Flames were expected (by those in the know at least) to be very active. The two major moves that happened however ended up being a blast from the past, bringing in two former Flames, one of which was a major surprise. Picking up Alex Tanguay on a $1.7 million dollar 1 year deal is a low risk proposition, the possibility of which had been hinted at by Ken King at his annual QA session a few days earlier.

Last year, the Flames made a blockbuster deal trading Dion Phaneuf to the Leafs (jury is still out on that one: but it'll likely end up being either an average trade or a terrible one for the Flames long term). This immediately caused Darryl Sutter's sanity to be called into question, but once cooler heads prevailed at the very least the trade did make some sort of sense, especially given the locker room issues. Shortly after that deal however, he traded an under performing (and pending UFA) Olli Jokinen and Brandon Prust to the Rangers for pending UFA Chris Higgins and overpaid Ales Kotalik. That trade made absolutely no sense at the time. As yesterday Sutter resigned Jokinen (two years, $3mil per year - way less than his previous contract) the trade now appears to be absolute lunacy. Higgins ended up bolting to Florida, so the Flames effectively gained a player who is very likely to be bought out or play in Europe at $3 million a season in Kotalik in exchange for a useful 4th liner in Prust. I just don't get how Sutter thought that deal could be anything other than lighting money on fire.

Personally, I certainly don't mind having Jokinen back on the team for $3 million/year. He had a rough season last year, and ran really bad in hockey terms (hit an enormous number of goal posts). It certainly wasn't what anybody was expecting, and the media response has been vicious. Hopefully both Jokinen and Tanguay have something to prove and make the media look stupid.

My last two days of poker were something of a blast from the past as well. The "near consistent mediocrity" of June has apparently passed. My Thursday session was awful, but I had a very sexy Friday profiting a little over $2k. Nothing much in the way of interesting hands to post.

Watching Cleo Lemon get absolutely punished in his CFL debut by the Stampeder defense (namely the corners when blitzing) was very entertaining. Even though the Stamps offense choked hard in the red zone they found a way to win. Can't wait for NFL season to start.