November Review - Somewhat Satisfactory

For a low work, low volume month I'm not disappointed with my November results. They aren't terribly flashy, partly due to running awful at midstakes. Thankfully I ran OK at small stakes, and thus the combined variance results in a modest winnings total but nice winrate. Obviously, running better at midstakes but less so at small stakes would flip things into more net winnings over a lower winrate, something I saw a bit of in previous months this year. Either way, for ~85k hands of effort I can't complain.

The graph:


The bottom line:
$5077.38 table winnings
+$2099.55 FPP value (37,492 VPPs * 3.5 FPPs/VPP * 1.6c/FPP)
+$995 coaching
+$53.55 FTP rakeback
-----------------------------------------------
$8225.48 USD total profit.

December shall be even more slack than the two months that preceded it. I intend to knock off the 600k milestone on Stars which is 15k or so VPPs away. After that, if I play at all it'll be on FTP. To start 2011 I will most definitely return to playing more respectable volume, I hope in the 150-175k hands/month range.

Follow Up

To follow up my last post, I did put in a brief additional 1000 hand session Saturday night. It turned out to be a good idea as I added a quick $500 to my profit for the day, the vast majority of which was due to a good reg 4b overshoving AQo 3 handed (with the third player being a whale) into my AA 100bbs deep at 400NL. Yay for me being able to fade the second queen!

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $4.00 BB (3 handed)

Button ($484)
SB ($158.70)
Hero (BB) ($406)

Preflop: Hero is BB with A♣, A♥
Button bets $12, SB calls $10, Hero raises to $54, Button raises to $484 (All-In), 1 fold, Hero calls $352 (All-In)

Flop: ($824) 8♦, Q♠, 7♣ (2 players, 2 all-in)

Turn: ($824) 7♦ (2 players, 2 all-in)

River: ($824) 4♦ (2 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: $824 | Rake: $1

Results:
Button had A♦, Q♣ (two pair, Queens and sevens).
Hero had A♣, A♥ (two pair, Aces and sevens).
Outcome: $824 returned to Hero


He's a very good player, but no idea why he'd overshove with AQ there. You'd think either four betting to a normal size and then calling a shove if you think I'm shipping/spewing wide enough or folding to a shove if not would be significantly better, as the jam allows me to play pretty much perfectly. Though thinking about it a bit more, I suppose he could believe that because I should be three betting a depolarized range due to the presence of the whale, overshipping gives him the most fold equity against 77-TT type hands. I don't think that's the case though. He probably has the same FE with either size, with a typical 24-25bb sizing either allowing me to spew (and induce value) or allowing him to get away from the hand if he thinks I'm shipping tight.

Sir, It Appears You Have Dealt Me Four Cards

I had a somewhat interesting if not financially significant occurrence today. After a whale left a table (which in this case was of the $600NL 50bb variety), I quickly performed a player search on his screen name and found he had sat seconds ago at a 6-max $600 50bb table. After I sat in and was dealt into a hand however, I noticed that I was dealt four cards, as it wasn't 6-max NLH but instead PLO. My PLO game isn't awful, but with a few of what I can only assume were regulars joining I elected to only play a single orbit. In the only hand of interest, the fish opened and was called by myself and what I can only assume was a regular in the blinds. Given the preflop and flop action I'm 99% confident my turned set is the nuts, and I definitely think I should have full potted the turn. Fortunately for me the presumed regular bricked his draw, though unfortunately for me he didn't turn it into a bluff when checked to on the river.

Anyway, here's the hand:
PokerStars Pot-Limit Omaha, $6.00 BB (4 handed)
UTG ($300)
Button ($399.50)
Hero (SB) ($300)
BB ($300)

Preflop: Hero is SB with 8♣, A♦, J♥, 8♦
1 fold, Button bets $21, Hero calls $18, BB calls $15

Flop: ($63) A♣, 4♠, 9♠ (3 players)
Hero checks, BB checks, Button checks

Turn: ($63) 8♥ (3 players)
Hero bets $48, BB calls $48, 1 fold

River: ($159) 3♦ (2 players)
Hero checks, BB checks

Total pot: $159 | Rake: $2

Results:
Hero had 8♣, A♦, J♥, 8♦ (three of a kind, eights).
BB didn't show
Outcome: $159 returned to Hero

I haven't put in much volume at all today, which is definite fail on my part. Sitting at 2.9k hands played on a Saturday doesn't happen often. Perhaps I'll play a late night session shortly, though it's not the end of the world if I slack off as I only need another ~17k VPPs or so to hit my 600k VPP milestone which will mark the end of my grinding year on Stars.

Downgrading Classics

Poker today thus far has been passable thanks to one fish at a 600NL 50bb table who was kind enough to put his money in drawing dead, along with fading a one outer or two against regulars. Couldn't fade a one card flush draw with only the river to come at 400NL or hold with AK vs AQo on AK6r though unfortunately. I'll most likely put another session shortly.

The Flames won in a shootout in Philly today, after the Flyers had an overtime winner waved off because Pronger put his hand up in front of Kiprusoff's face a moment before the puck was fired. I like the spirit of the call in that they don't want people to pull crap like Avery tried with Brodeur last season, but they may have taken it a little too far in this instance. That being said, after the way the zebras have treated the Flames over the last five games I don't feel bad about a call in the good guys' favor. The Patriots woke up and murdered the Lions in the second half yesterday which was enjoyable.

On the gaming front, I finished the Ys 3 remake and have moved on to the DS "re-envisioning" of Lufia 2. The original Lufia 2 holds a special place in my heart, and at the very best, the remake is shaping up to be significantly inferior. Why they decided to mess so much with what worked in the first place I'll never know. At least the upgraded soundtrack is very nice. I also ordered preowned copies of Ys 6 and FF1 for the PSP from Gamestop.com (yes, .com not .ca, as the Canadian version did not have Ys 6). Although the shipping wasn't cheap it wasn't ridiculously expensive either - and once being shipped from Texas the games arrived in less than 24 hours. Apparently, UPS Express doesn't mess around. WoW had the Cataclysm strike last week, and the new pre-expansion content available to everyone in the old world is fantastic. Kudos to Blizzard.

How Familiar

Another weekend day, another 550bbs below AIEV. Really frustrating how the one of the hottest 6.5k hand runs of my life is +250bbs AIEV, and a standard bad run is 550bbs below. A really bad run is 1000bbs+ below.

I was one outed twice today, once by 77 on A7x vs my AA. The other time was with the nut flush vs a gutshot to the straight flush at midstakes. This hand also made me laugh - after the flop one of them has 2% equity, the other 1%. Obviously it's a nothing pot at a 100NL 50bb table, but you'd think I could maybe at least win the side pot once in a while when someone isn't quite drawing dead?

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $1.00 BB (7 handed)
SB ($43.70)
BB ($47)
UTG ($17)
MP1 ($21.80)
MP2 ($14.40)
Hero (CO) ($62.90)
Button ($18.50)

Preflop: Hero is CO with A♥, Q♥
1 fold, MP1 bets $21.80 (All-In), MP2 calls $14.40 (All-In), Hero calls $21.80, 1 fold, SB calls $21.30, 1 fold

Flop: ($80.80) 9♥, 10♥, J♥ (4 players, 2 all-in)
SB checks, Hero bets $41.10 (All-In), 1 fold

Turn: ($80.80) 9♣ (3 players, 3 all-in)

River: ($80.80) 10♣ (3 players, 3 all-in)

Total pot: $80.80 | Rake: $3
Main pot: $58.60 between MP1, MP2 and Hero, won by MP1
Side pot 1: $22.20 between MP1 and Hero, won by MP1

Results:
MP1 had 10♦, 2♦ (full house, tens over nines).
MP2 had A♣, 9♦ (full house, nines over tens).
Hero had A♥, Q♥ (flush, Ace high).
Outcome: MP1 won $77.80

Condensed Weekday Rungood

November shall be, by intent, a low volume month. This means I tend to take off many weekdays, and put in a proportionally large amounts of volume on Fridays and Saturdays. After the fairly epic runbad to end October and at midstakes during the first half of November, my poker exploits this week feel like quite a heater. The results are especially remarkable as they have come over a very small amount of hands I decided to chip in on weekdays. I had a hugely successful 3.25k hand session on Monday, and followed that up with a $450 250 hand hit and run on Wednesday, and then a solid 2k hand mini session on Thursday.

The combination of those three days is what I would imagine is my sexiest 5.5k hand stretch ever, as you can see below:


It's not like this mini-heater is all from midstakes or 200NL success either - half the profit comes from the 3.75k hands that were played at 100NL. To put things in perspective, I've never had a single day as profitable as the stretch above, even though on high volume weekend days I have put 8-15k hands regularly. Definitely a very refreshing time, short as it may be.

Upgrading

Today I had two new kitchen appliances delivered. A new stove to replace one which I'm told by my girlfriend didn't work well and was obviously getting on in years, and a new dishwasher to replace one that most definitely didn't work well anymore. Something is wrong when you are doing whatever it takes to avoid using drinking glasses because they just don't come out clean.

Going from a black to stainless steel theme in the kitchen certainly classes the place up a bit as well.



On the poker front, I experienced a nice little upswing over around 2.5k hands on Monday. You can be certain you ran well when of the 22 hands you played in which you won or lost over 25bbs, 20 were wins and 2 were losses. While my results for the month so far overall are still crippled by being a huge amount under AIEV (much of which unfortunately came at mid stakes, see recent post for graph), my winrate thus far at small stakes has been more than satisfactory. Hopefully the latter continues for the rest of the month.

Going to see the Flames take on the Coyotes tomorrow. They have to stop sucking at some point, right? Maybe they should try to recruit Michael Vick, I'm sure he could pick up hockey easily enough.

I Could Really Use...

... one day where I'm only 500bbs below AIEV.

To illustrate, here's my last 50k hands:


Yeah, that's 4k AIEV. It comes to around $6.5k Sklansky bucks if I run SECT. That's after being out slightly more AIEV in ~30k hands to close out October.

For clarity, I'm not expecting to win 1 out of 10 flips. But it would be nice if I could win every 10th pair over pair AIPF, or every 5th top set versus back door draw. I just shouldn't have to bring my AIEV line above $1k each weekend day I want to break even in real dollars.

The Ys 3 remake for the PSP is good. It's not in the same ballpark as Ys 7, but definitely enjoyable. Looking forward to the Ys 1+2 remake that is coming out in early 2011. Unfortunately, near the end of Blazing Souls the gaping flaws I had somehow managed to ignore for much of the game drastically reduced the enjoyability, and coupled with a crash bug that should absolutely never have made it through QA (as a software developer myself, NO EXCUSE FOR THIS), made the remainder of the game no fun at all.

One more thought - spurred by Ys III using one of the more cliche RPG plot devices known to man. When there is an immeasurably powerful evil sealed away by four ancient objects which some big bad is trying to gather, and you already have two of them: DO NOT GATHER THE REMAINING OBJECTS. Instead, take the two you have half way around the globe, lock them in a boxes and drop them to the bottom of the ocean in different locations. Of course, that wouldn't make for a very exciting game; but my God, in how many games do the well meaning but obviously functionally retarded heroes need do all the work for the resurrection of the ancient evil?

Whoops

I probably shouldn't have mentioned in my last post the Patriots being the only bright spot of my sports world, especially the night before what should have been a relatively easy test against Cleveland. Whoops.

On the plus, while I only played ~850 hands on Sunday I profited a tad over $1/hand so it was a very refreshing heater. I'm hoping to put in slightly higher volume over the final three Friday/Saturday combos this month so I can roll into December sitting around ~585k VPPs. A super slack 15k VPPs in December to knock off the 600k VPP milestone and $4k free equity that comes with it should wrap up the year nicely.

Typical

After 17k hands thus far in November I'm only a hair over 1000bbs below AIEV, so a pretty average run for me thus far. The Supernova quarterly million dollar freeroll was today, and it looked like I was going to double up reasonably early on but forgot that one out is not zero outs and therefore I am drawing dead just like in cash games:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, 0 Tournament, 100/200 Blinds (9 handed)
BB (t17544)
UTG (t8900)
UTG+1 (t10450)
Hero (MP1) (t10848)
MP2 (t5976)
MP3 (t7950)
CO (t7729)
Button (t25112)
SB (t8406)

Hero's M: 36.16

Preflop: Hero is MP1 with K♠, K♦
2 folds, Hero bets t450, 5 folds, BB calls t250

Flop: (t1000) 5♠, A♣, K♣ (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets t600, BB raises to t1620, Hero raises to t3600, BB raises to t17094 (All-In), Hero calls t6798 (All-In)

Turn: (t21796) 9♥ (2 players, 2 all-in)

River: (t21796) 5♥ (2 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: t21796

Results:
BB had 5♣, 5♦ (four of a kind, fives).
Hero had K♠, K♦ (full house, Kings over fives).
Outcome: t21796 returned to BB

How do I ever manage to win money when any non-zero equity cannot lose once the money goes in against me you ask? Fortunately there are people willing to get it in drawing dead, as below:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $6.00 BB (6 handed)
Hero (BB) ($300)
UTG ($111)
MP ($658.15)
CO ($300)
Button ($300)
SB ($279)

Preflop: Hero is BB with 6♣, 6♠
4 folds, SB bets $18, Hero calls $12

Flop: ($36) 2♥, 10♠, 6♦ (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $18, SB raises to $54, Hero calls $36

Turn: ($144) A♥ (2 players)
SB bets $207 (All-In), Hero calls $207

River: ($558) 4♦ (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: $558 | Rake: $3

Results:
SB had 8♦, Q♥ (high card, Ace).
Hero had 6♣, 6♠ (three of a kind, sixes).
Outcome: Hero won $555

There's also people willing to spazz massively overbet/fold to help my red line. The hand below sure looks like a chip dump, but as the money is going to me I can be certain it wasn't. Misclick maybe? The villain was a huge fish.

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold'em, $1.00 BB (9 handed)
Button ($100)
SB ($100)
BB ($120.50)
UTG ($36.90)
UTG+1 ($103)
MP1 ($72)
MP2 ($45.85)
MP3 ($48.85)
Hero (CO) ($100)

Preflop: Hero is CO with J♥, J♣
1 fold, UTG+1 calls $1, 3 folds, Hero bets $4, 3 folds, UTG+1 calls $3

Flop: ($9.50) 3♠, 2♣, 3♦ (2 players)
UTG+1 bets $61, Hero raises to $96 (All-In), 1 fold

Total pot: $131.50 | Rake: $3

Results:
Hero didn't show J♥, J♣.
Outcome: Hero won $128.50

To be fair, the second hand was on FTP so I wasn't actually drawing dead against ATC, but you get my point.

Outside of poker, the Flames make me sad while the Patriots make me happy. Despite Blazing Souls being flawed in many ways I'm having a lot of fun with it. I just can't seem to put my finger on why, especially considering it has no coherent plot or character development to speak of. Looking forward to the collector's addition of the Ys remake being in my mailbox this week. The PSP just keeps on adding RPGs to its library.

Finally, the third video of my Cardrunners series goes live on Monday. Hope those of you who are CR members enjoy it.