March Review - Disappointing Ten Dimes

As I talked about in my previous blog post, March was shaping up to be a pretty solid month until disaster struck. If I had been able to close out the month merely suffering regular person runbad things would have been ok, but that was not to be. Also, the Flames were unable to close out their remarkable run to save their season and make the playoffs (barring a miracle collapse of two other teams over the remaining few games to come, next to 0% chance they get in at this point), so March sucked from a fan perspective as well.

I didn't quite reach my volume goal for the month, but ~125k hands isn't a complete failure in that regard. Despite the massive downswing late in the month my overall winrate wasn't too bad. FTP finally allowed me to deposit so I've been mixing in a few tables there to clear the $600 bonus. There was also a reload bonus on Stars this month which helped, as well as a promotion for the 60 billionth hand, though I wasn't dealt into any milestone hands this time. During the 50 billionth equivalent I believe I was involved in two.

Graph:


The bottom line:
$6192.96 table winnings
+$2764.89 FPP value (49,373 VPPs * 3.5 VPPs/FPP * 1.6c/FPP)
+$200 stellar 100k VPP bonus
+$150 reload bonus
+$930 coaching
+$180 FTP first deposit bonus
+$0.35 FTP rakeback
-----------------------------------------------
$10,418.20 USD total profit.

The good news heading into April is that it is a month with five weekends, and that should spell increased volume. Said volume should make certain I hit the 200k VPP milestone bonus, so if my table winnings aren't a disaster it should be a nice month from a pure profit perspective. Sadly, my March profit is actually my highest total of 2011 thus far, beating January by ~$400. Hopefully April fixes that.

So Much For A Decent Month

After Friday I would have been happy to settle for winning one of every five pair over pair, AK vs Ace-rag AIPF, or 95/5 turn spots. Unfortunately that's asking far too much. Hell, running good for me is having my AIEV line somewhere in the vicinity of my actual winnings, instead of 2ptBB+ below. The worst part is that it's not like I have run passably for any sort of stretch since very early 2010. That's 2 million+ hands ago.

At any rate, Saturday was one of the worst poker days I've ever had. I was one outed twice, the first of which being of the perfect perfect (2 out turn, 1 out river to quads) variety where bottom pair was the nuts against a set. To make matters worse, I spent the last 6 hours of Sunday night playing with a megawhale at 3/6 who blew off >$10k. I was up a small amount on him for a bit. But needless to say AK vs KT on AAJx is no good for $1.2k on Q river. 55 on 8865 isn't close to good for $1.4k vs 83s - this one wasn't even versus the whale, but a Spanish aggrotard drooler reg who has been worse than BE for years but lately has been on something of a heater of late. Thus I ended up stuck a fair bit, though I'm sure the thousands in Sklansky bucks will pay for a nice... oh wait.

The net result is a month that was shaping up to be modestly solid is going to be garbage a lot like February, though hopefully not quite as poor. I just wish I could be like the vast majority of other regs who live in their happy worlds where running 10 buyins below EV is a bad run, or losing a minimum of 5+ consecutive all-ins with 85%+ equity between the occasional hold is unheard of.

Monster Jam! He's On Fire!

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Since I post a bunch when I don't run well it's only fair I post when poker is pleasant. Today was one of those days. A lot of my big hands actually held up. I didn't quite get the volume I wanted in as the game quality deteriorated late in the day and when I'm up big I find it a lot more difficult to stay motivated to grind. 9600 hands is nothing to scoff at mind you, but another thousand or two would have been nice.

Friday graph:


Nothing terribly interesting from a hand history standpoint, though I did have one fish cbet/3bet overshove the flop with Q6 high into a set 110bbs deep which was neat. After glancing at big pots from today in my HEM, it appears that I only lost 100bbs or more once, while I profited 100bbs or more 11 times. Run good at its finest.

Season Over

The Flames' playoff chances (barring some sort of utter miracle - they are not mathematically eliminated) were destroyed this evening by a regulation loss in San Jose. Given their terrible start, I'm appreciative that they managed to make the last half of the season interesting, but it's always a huge disappointment to not be heading to the post season. I really hope we can find some team to take Bouwmeester's contract off our hands this off season.

The past couple days I've played more poker than I typically do on midweek days, and also recorded video for my next CR video. I'm about half way through the audio as I write this, and put in some more work shortly.

On weekdays, I have found that multi-siting between Stars and FTP is quite useful for game selection, especially during North American "prime time" when the games on FTP appear to be peaked. I also finally managed to get my FTP first deposit bonus active, so that's a nice break. That being said, FTP support is by and large the worst customer service I can remember dealing with - EVER. The response time and utter inability of their staff to think critically is just embarrasing. Compare that quality of service to that of Pokerstars where the support staff is world class, and FTP looks even worse by comparison if that's even possible.

One of the things that has struck me as interesting regarding the regulars at 100NL on FTP is that many of them have completely atrocious 4bet sizing. The hand below is just one example of what I'm talking about, but in only a few thousand hands I saw a number of what I'm certain were regulars 4bet and indicate that they are just mindlessly mashing the pot button. This reminded me a lot of the state of the games two+ years ago on Stars, though back then it wasn't as big a deal because you didn't necessarily need a 4b/fold range. With the preflop aggression at 100NL on either site these days, not having consistent and reasonble 4bet sizing against other regulars is a painfully an obvious leak.

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold'em, $1.00 BB (7 handed)
MP2 ($102.35)
CO ($104.70)
Button ($100)
Hero (SB) ($108.50)
BB ($54)
UTG ($101)
MP1 ($103.20)

Preflop: Hero is SB with K♠, K♥
3 folds, CO bets $3, 1 fold, Hero raises to $12, 1 fold, CO raises to $36, Hero raises to $108.50 (All-In), CO calls $68.70 (All-In)

Flop: ($210.40) A♠, 5♠, 8♦ (2 players, 2 all-in)

Turn: ($210.40) J♥ (2 players, 2 all-in)

River: ($210.40) 7♥ (2 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: $210.40 | Rake: $3

Results:
Hero had K♠, K♥ (one pair, Kings).
CO had Q♦, Q♣ (one pair, Queens).
Outcome: Hero won $207.40

Probably Not A Good Idea

During my session today I was involved in a couple hands where regulars did absolutely ridiculous things. Unsurprisingly, said regulars were of the "break even at best" variety which is no surprise, but more on that later.

I ran just terribly during my Friday session, and despite still being well below expectation over my hands on Saturday had a fairly nice day at the tables winning a little over a grand. More encouragingly, I managed 12.5k hands on Saturday - one day does not make consistent heavy volume, but it's good to know I can still get my grind on. It of course helped that the Flames didn't play tonight, as that frees up ~3 hours of grind time that would otherwise be spent watching hockey.

Anyway, as I mentioned before the most heinous "wtf are you doing?" moment with a regular today is below. Why risk a $35 overbet repping the nuts when you could instead risk $86.80 effective? Not that having an overbetting range on that river is a good idea in the first place.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $1.00 BB (8 handed)
SB ($147.10)
BB ($100)
UTG ($151.15)
UTG+1 ($106.70)
MP1 ($313.60)
MP2 ($265.70)
CO ($102.20)
Hero (Button) ($100)

Preflop: Hero is Button with Q♠, Q♥
4 folds, CO bets $2.50, Hero calls $2.50, 2 folds

Flop: ($8.10) 3♥, 3♣, 2♦ (2 players)
CO bets $3.50, Hero calls $3.50

Turn: ($15.10) Q♣ (2 players)
CO bets $7, Hero calls $7

River: ($29.10) 6♣ (2 players)
CO bets $89 (All-In), Hero calls $86.80 (All-In)

Total pot: $202.70 | Rake: $3

Results:
Hero had Q♠, Q♥ (full house, Queens over threes).
CO had 5♠, A♣ (one pair, threes).
Outcome: Hero won $199.70

Later on, I also had a regular bet/3b the flop to 61bbs of the 100bb effective stacks and fold to my shove. If you're going to rebluff with no equity, smaller might be a better idea - though like above doing so in general is probably retardation.

Fortune Inversion

My last post seemingly activated the doomswitch for the Flames, as they've now lost two in a row in regulation and are at best a coin flip to make the playoffs. Fortunately they have a relatively easy schedule to close out the season and a lot of their competitors play each other many, many times which can be a good thing providing there aren't too many 3 point games decided in overtime/shootouts.

My grind time between Friday and Saturday went well. On Tuesday I spent a little time taking a look at my game and identified a few things I haven't been doing as well recently as I used to, likely a result of my play the last year being split between fullstacked and 50bb tables, which is no longer a problem. I definitely think the tweaks will help. The one area I'd really like to improve on however is simply putting in more volume. While the 8.5k hands I managed on Friday wasn't bad, I only put in a little over 6k today and given that I don't play a whole lot outside of the weekends I feel like I need to be sucking it up and working longer hours.

Anyway, between Friday and Saturday I ran as well as I have in recent memory. That isn't saying much, and I'm still an underdog with top set against a fish with a gutshot, but I did manage to hold in some clutch spots like this one:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $1.00 BB (8 handed)
MP2 ($180.80)
CO ($50)
Button ($120.90)
SB ($260.95)
BB ($84.20)
UTG ($102.80)
UTG+1 ($236.30)
Hero (MP1) ($104.40)

Preflop: Hero is MP1 with Q♠, K♠
UTG bets $3, UTG+1 calls $3, Hero calls $3, 4 folds, BB calls $2

Flop: ($12.50) J♠, A♦, 10♣ (4 players)
BB checks, UTG checks, UTG+1 bets $12, Hero raises to $33.50, BB raises to $81.20 (All-In), 1 fold, UTG+1 calls $69.20, Hero raises to $101.40 (All-In), UTG+1 calls $20.20

Turn: ($296.50) 8♦ (3 players, 2 all-in)

River: ($296.50) K♣ (3 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: $296.50 | Rake: $3

Results:
BB had 10♦, 10♥ (three of a kind, tens).
UTG+1 had J♣, J♦ (three of a kind, Jacks).
Hero had Q♠, K♠ (straight, Ace high).
Outcome: Hero won $293.50

Despite UTG+1 being a fish, the cold flop 3b jam from the regular holding TT is pretty suspect in my opinion, as he's overset by me a lot and when he's not drawing to one out he's in bad shape against one of us having KQ and the other AJ a lot of the time, etc. Were the fish a complete maniac it would be a lot more reasonable, but that wasn't the case in this hand.

I also put a pretty brutal beat on a regular today in which a table had broken and the first hand of HU was KK into AA (with me holding the lesser) 150bbs deep. The KKJ flop worked out nicely and diverted a cooler.

Finding A Way

Those Flames just keep finding a way to keep on rolling. Despite some pretty terrible officiating tonight as well as blowing an early 3-0 lead, they managed to pull out a shootout win in a very important game against the Stars. If they can stay hot all the way down the stretch they are going to be an incredibly scary team to match up against in the playoffs, though we won't be able to rely on shootout magic in the post season.

Like much of February, my first weekend of March was downright awful poker wise. On the plus side I put together a couple decent extremely short (~75-90 minute) sessions over the past couple days however so it isn't all bad. The session this evening was profitable mostly because of the hand below. Not terribly interesting, but with so many regulars turning into 3b/squeeze monkeys these days flatting EP opens with the nuts when there are many people left to act can be a very attractive play. The original 3bettor in this case was an aggrodonk who had been extremely active, while the player who overcalls the 3b and then the backraise jam is a regular. I don't hate the call as my line can very easily be AK and there is an absurd amount of dead money in the pot.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $2.00 BB (9 handed)
UTG ($238.25)
UTG+1 ($120)
Hero (MP1) ($200)
MP2 ($191.85)
MP3 ($96.85)
CO ($263.35)
Button ($200)
SB ($203.95)
BB ($200)

Preflop: Hero is MP1 with A♠, A♣
UTG bets $6, 1 fold, Hero calls $6, MP2 raises to $20, 2 folds, Button calls $20, 2 folds, UTG calls $14, Hero raises to $200 (All-In), 1 fold, Button calls $180 (All-In), 1 fold

Flop: ($443) 10♥, 8♣, 7♥ (2 players, 2 all-in)

Turn: ($443) K♦ (2 players, 2 all-in)

River: ($443) 6♥ (2 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: $443 | Rake: $3

Results:
Button mucked Q♠, Q♥ (one pair, Queens).
Hero had A♠, A♣ (one pair, Aces).
Outcome: Hero won $440

Anyway, I finished up the Tactics Ogre remake for the PSP. They definitely improved a lot of things over the original while keeping the important aspects intact which is not always the case with remakes. Another gem to add to the PSP library. Up next on the gaming front is Radiant Historia, which has been decent but not great so far. For no logical reason I had pretty high expectations for this game, so hopefully it gets better.