October Review - Worst. Month. Ever.

To put things in perspective, I've had at least two 100k+ hand break even stretches before. I only put in 83k hands this month. I was intending to be coasting to close out the year so I don't have a problem with my volume. However, I do have a problem with the fact that I run so egregiously bad on Stars I'm really regretting putting in the extra 100k VPPs for the 600k milestone this year. I also lost SNE status this month, so my effective rakeback from FPPs decreased significantly compared to the previous 9 months.

I don't mind that I run awfully against fish. I have for months and months and months, in addition to a huge chunk of 2009. I don't even mind that much if I run awfully against everyone. The key is the degree of awful. I played poker 22 days this month. I had one day where I was at or above AIEV (I posted about it, it was a big deal). On Friday, I was out just under 2000bbs AIEV. On Saturday, I was out just over 2000bbs AIEV. Yes, that's 20 BIs per session - and they weren't even terribly long sessions. Here's a peek at Saturday's runbad:


Given my style it's pretty tough to run this bad. On Friday I lost 14 consecutive (yes, 14) pair over pair AIPFs. The odds of such a streak is astronomical to say the least. Obviously, some were only for 20bbs against SSers, but the odds defying aspect doesn't care if it's for 1bb or 1000. It's just really tough playing poker when unless a player is drawing stone dead, I'm bluffing with 0 equity. It's especially tough when my game selection is good enough that I'm getting 100bb stacks in on the flop with QQ on 653 vs J2o (I'm drawing dead in this case, unfortunately). They just won't fold, which a long long time ago was a very good and very profitable thing. Not so much anymore.

At any rate, despite the low volume and my runbad going so far beyond ridiculous I don't really think I can describe it, I did actually not lose money this month. Here's the paltry total:


The bottom line
$3273.90 winnings
+$2197.19 FPP value (39.235.55 VPPs * 3.5 FPP/VPP * 1.6c/FPP - oh how I miss you 5x multiplier!)
+$42.90 FTP rakeback
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$5513.99 USD total profit. Outside of December 2009 which I took almost entirely off, my lowest profit month since the summer of 2008 before I was even playing professionally. Obviously I didn't play a whole lot this month, but that still says something.

I intend to play a similar amount of volume (perhaps a tad more) in November, and reach the 600k milestone right around December 6th. Some of you will know why. I'll be basically done with poker for the year at that point, though I may put in some FTP volume afterwards. Oddly enough, while I haven't played much on FTP lately in the hands I have played I continually do NOT run in the bottom millionth percentile of AIEV and Sklansky variance there. How strange.

RIP Mouse

After running poorly over the past week or so, I ended up with a broken mouse. For many online grinders this is a common occurrence, as tilt frequently sends mice into walls or worse. About a month back there was a great picture on 2p2 of the aftermath of a player's punch through his 30" monitor. My mouse however was not smashed in a fit of tilt, and in fact looks and feels perfectly fine. Unfortunately though, the hardware seems to be broken just enough to turn many of my single clicks into double clicks. I first noticed this while gaming, but assumed it was a recently introduced bug in the game I was playing. I finally realized this wasn't the case once single clicks on desktop items would occasionally result in an open command, and after uninstalling/reinstalling drivers the symptoms persisted.

My first Logitech G9 gaming mouse gave me a little over two solid years of service, providing millions of clicks. Rest in peace old friend. After looking over a few flashy alternatives, I decided to stick with the model that had been very good to me, and picked up a Logitech G9x replacement which is just about exactly the same as the G9 (both the older G9s and G9x were actually more expensive now than they were two years ago as a brand new product, strange).

I was lucky enough to be in attendance last night as the Flames hammered the Sharks 4-0 at the Dome. It was a very entertaining first period for sure and the Flames have now put in back to back dominating performances. This team might have something, though it's too early to say much.

Well I'll Be Damned

I enjoyed my Saturday.

The Flames only really played for one period against the Oilers, but it was a dominant and thoroughly entertaining period. More importantly, it was all they needed to get a win.

Like Friday, I put in a pathetic amount of volume but won a lot of money playing the pokers. I joked in yesterday's post about one day actually being above AIEV in a session, and today it happened. No fooling. Not a trivial amount either, 300bbs!

Graph of Friday and Saturday:


One HH from today to illustrate my run good:
PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $1.00 BB (9 handed)

MP2 ($102.95)
Hero (MP3) ($131.50)
CO ($77.90)
Button ($56.85)
SB ($112.35)
BB ($96.50)
UTG ($90.65)
UTG+1 ($100)
MP1 ($100)

Preflop: Hero is MP3 with A♥, K♥
UTG bets $5, 3 folds, Hero calls $5, CO calls $5, Button raises to $56.85 (All-In), 2 folds, UTG calls $51.85, Hero raises to $131.50 (All-In), 1 fold, UTG calls $33.80 (All-In)

Flop: ($244.65) 5♣, Q♦, A♦ (3 players, 3 all-in)

Turn: ($244.65) 2♣ (3 players, 3 all-in)

River: ($244.65) A♣ (3 players, 3 all-in)

Total pot: $244.65 | Rake: $3

Results:
Button had J♥, Q♥ (two pair, Aces and Queens).
UTG had 10♥, J♣ (one pair, Aces).
Hero had A♥, K♥ (three of a kind, Aces).
Outcome: Hero won $241.65

It's Late and I Can't Think Of A Title

Since my previous blog entry I started to run downright terrible, eating a downswing of just under ~$2k, probably in the 12-15BI range. Thankfully I put together a pretty solid Friday session profiting just over $1.4k in 5.5k hands, while coming oh-so-close to being at AIEV for the day. Been quite some time since that happened, close but no cigar I guess. Somewhat disturbing that I only managed 5.5k hands today and it didn't feel like I was slacking that terribly. I used to crank out 10-12k hands on Fridays like clockwork, and while I am intending to be taking it easy this month (along with the remainder of the year), at least a little more volume wouldn't hurt. I suppose the low volume is partially because it was tough getting 24 tables open so much of my session was 12-18 tabling. Perhaps I should make a better effort to split volume to maximize hands per hour, I haven't been playing much on FTP at all recently. On the plus side, as my volume proportionally has been at higher stakes over the past months my VPPs/hand is quite a bit higher comparatively to when I was putting in 12k hand sessions in the past, so it'd perhaps only take 9k hands or so to end up with the same number of VPPs, which as every Stars player knows are what makes the world go round!

I have two hands from Friday to post. The first is simply an instance of a regular spazzing out. He's a pretty spewy reg who has been break even at best for the past year or more. I think his turn jam is pretty interesting because he obviously thinks I'm going to be folding AK along with KK+, which against a guy who spazzes postflop as much as he does probably isn't the case. Note that we're 5 handed, and the villain basically never ever has AK, he'd be 4b/calling preflop. He's repping JJ/TT/QJ/QT. I actually think his shove would be pretty good if he had a better image. Were I to jam in a similar spot against a good thinking regular I'd imagine everything but boats folds a lot, which come to think of it is awfully exploitable.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $1.00 BB (5 handed)
UTG ($107.05)
MP ($58.50)
Button ($100)
Hero (SB) ($120)
BB ($101)

Preflop: Hero is SB with Q♥, Q♣
UTG bets $3, 2 folds, Hero raises to $12, 1 fold, UTG calls $9

Flop: ($25) Q♠, 10♦, Q♦ (2 players)
Hero checks, UTG checks

Turn: ($25) J♥ (2 players)
Hero bets $12.50, UTG raises to $95.05 (All-In), Hero calls $82.55

River: ($215.10) 9♣ (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: $215.10 | Rake: $2

Results:
Hero had Q♥, Q♣ (four of a kind, Queens).
UTG mucked 5♠, 5♥ (two pair, Queens and fives).
Outcome: Hero won $213.10


The second hand was my largest pot of the day by far. The preflop opener was a maniac whale type, while the caller and eventual villain in the hand was a fish who while not being completely ridiculous preflop (I believe I had him running around 28/12 or so), absolutely loved to 3b and would spew stacks like crazy postflop. He also would never, ever, ever, fold to a 3b. Because the fish loved to 3b so much and was facing an open from the whale, it's next to certain that he can't have TT+ in his range as he would have 3b pre. Thus, I'm only worried about 8x and 7x on the turn, in addition to T9 and 66 on the river. As there's tons of combos of overcards/gutters/FDs/22-55 left in his range that I beat, it's actually not that heroic of a call, but I do still only have AK high so that has to count for something!

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $4.00 BB (8 handed)
BB ($200)
UTG ($304)
UTG+1 ($337.45)
MP1 ($788)
MP2 ($182.60)
CO ($442)
Button ($400)
Hero (SB) ($400)

Preflop: Hero is SB with K♠, A♦
1 fold, UTG+1 bets $12, 2 folds, CO calls $12, 1 fold, Hero raises to $56, 2 folds, CO calls $44

Flop: ($128) 8♦, 7♦, 7♣ (2 players)
Hero bets $64, CO calls $64

Turn: ($256) 8♥ (2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $72, Hero calls $72

River: ($400) 6♠ (2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $250 (All-In), Hero calls $208 (All-In)

Total pot: $816 | Rake: $3

Results:
Hero had K♠, A♦ (two pair, eights and sevens).
CO had K♦, 10♦ (two pair, eights and sevens).
Outcome: Hero won $813

On the gaming front, I've started up a second playthrough of Persona 4. I recall it being a straight up great game that simply wasn't quite as good as Persona 3, and unfortunately also didn't finish terribly strong. Thus far it's been a whole lot of fun, which is refreshing about being let down a little by Valkyria and moreso by Atelier: Rorona. WoW also released the framework for Cataclysm recently, and I like the changes. As a tank you can definitely tell that after aiming to make content far more "easily accessible" in WotLK, the goal for Cataclysm is to put the challenge back some. Sure, it means you might not be able to use the dungeon finder and roll through content with randoms and zero coordination, but is that really so bad?

Hope the Flames don't let me down tomorrow against the Oilers after such a piss poor effort against Florida. I really want to get behind this team and have high hopes for the season, but they're making it tough!

Steady As She Goes

Poker so far this month has been solid, though uneventful in terms of super interesting hands or other things that I feel the need to post. It is nice to not be running completely awful for a change however! I finished work on the third episode of my Cardrunners video series yesterday, so that should be added to the CR schedule soon.

The Flames opened their season in Edmonton, and it was painful to watch. Hopefully it doesn't set a tone for the season. You could pretty sum up the game with the fight that happened in the last five minutes where Ivanans was utterly KO'd and had to be helped off the ice after regaining a shred of consciousness. Oh, and the Patriots traded Randy Moss for a 3rd round pick. Given that the deal happened he must be a cancer in the room, but you'd think you could at least get more for him.

The two games I had been playing through lately, Valkyria Chronicles 2 and more recently Atelier Rorona both failed me in different ways. Valkyria had solid gameplay but a less than compelling presentation of the story and got so repetitive it doesn't look like I'll be making it through. Atelier on the other hand wasn't at all what I was expecting and when it ended I was sure it was one of the half way point "fake" endings so many RPGs have used in the past as a plot device. Nope, it was over. Really? Yup, over.

Here's a hand from today just 'cause:
PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $6.00 BB (5 handed)
BB ($231)
UTG ($600)
MP ($618)
Hero (Button) ($600)
SB ($629)

Preflop: Hero is Button with 7♣, 6♣
1 fold, MP bets $18, Hero calls $18, SB raises to $84, 1 fold, MP calls $66, Hero calls $66

Flop: ($258) 7♠, 5♦, 4♥ (3 players)
SB checks, MP bets $124, Hero raises to $266, 2 folds

Total pot: $506 | Rake: $2