Ramblings Round Two

I've been a little less doomswitched lately which has been a positive, though I wouldn't go as far to say things have turned around entirely. The games seemed like they might get a bit better during the weekdays last week, but come Friday they were as dead as I've ever seen them outside of ZOOM.

• Watched The Dark Knight Rises yesterday. Without spoiling anything plot wise, I enjoyed it and consider it a fitting ending to an exceptional trilogy, though I think it is the weakest of the three films. Though long in length, there just wasn't a whole lot of time spent on Batman, which was unfortunate.
  
  
• In acquiring Rick Nash, the New York Ranges shipped Tim Erixon off to Columbus, arguably the least desirable destination in the NHL. This after a little over a year ago Erixon refused to sign his entry level contract with the Calgary Flames, the team who drafted him, because he wanted to play for the Rangers like his father. Karma is a bitch, son.
  

Higher Than Before

I (once again) have failed to post over the past week and change, this time because I've been running like absolute death and hate poker.

This evening I sat at higher stakes than I ever have before in terms of big blind size, following a whale who had jumped from $600NL (typically my highest stake) to $1k NL CAP to $2k NL CAP, the latter of which breaks my record.

I was down around ~$280 in the 20 hands of $1k CAP and up ~$630 in the 40 hands of $2k CAP. Huge sample size, I know. There weren't any interesting hands, but I'll post the one where I win a short stack to fill some space! For what it's worth, the hand wasn't versus the whale, but a regular.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $20.00 BB (3 handed)
BB ($460)
Button ($476.50)
Hero (SB) ($810)

Preflop: Hero is SB with 10♥, A♥
1 fold, Hero bets $50, BB raises to $400, Hero calls $350

Flop: ($800) 9♠, A♦, 4♥ (2 players)

Turn: ($800) 6♣ (2 players)

River: ($800) J♠ (2 players)

Total pot: $800 | Rake: $1.50

Results:
Hero had 10♥, A♥ (one pair, Aces).
BB had 10♠, Q♠ (high card, Ace).
Outcome: Hero won $798.50


Boring indeed. The one thing I found interesting though is that it seems all CAP regs at these levels never ever 3b/fold - they just jam 20bbs over minraises. I'm by no means an expert, but I feel like is has to be suboptimal to be doing this rather than say having a 5.5bb/call and 5.5bb/fold range, or maybe even 5bb 3b size. Seems like they're just looking for simple rather than optimal, which is pretty shocking given the stakes, or perhaps a reflection on the regs that play CAP. Of course, it could very well be that I'm completely out to lunch on this. To be fair as well, I guess my sample size is only six or seven regs at this point, so perhaps I shouldn't be making sweeping generalizations.

Ramblings

It's been a week and a half since I have blogged, even though on at least three or four occasions I've considered posting. The topics at hand just didn't quite seem like enough to make a blog entry worthwhile on their own, but since I still haven't found anything that I want post, I'll lump them all together as some random thoughts.

• The Flames picked up Jiri Hudler and Dennis Wideman in free agency. They also re-signed Blake Comeau and Lee Stempniak. Wideman was the guy I was hoping we'd (realistically, in fantasy land I'd obviously love Parise/Suter) target in FA, so my wish was granted even though I think his contract is a slight overpayment. The Hudler signing I'm mildly happy with. Not thrilled with Comeau being back, but it's not the end of the world as long as he's being given fourth line minutes and nothing more.
• Two weeks into the season in which the "changing of the guard" at quarterback has taken place for the Stampeders, and the new guy (Drew Tate) has already blown out his shoulder. Maybe we shouldn't have traded Burris, but you can't always be handcuffed by the worst case scenario in sports or business.
• Ray Bitar surrendered to the DOJ, which suggests very heavily that something must be getting down on the FTP front. On the other hand, a semi-reputable source was tweeting recently that the Pokerstars bid to buy FTP and settle with the DOJ was a huge bluff to blow up the potential Tapie deal and simply keep FTP down and out. I guess we'll see in the coming months. I certainly haven't agreed with a lot of stuff Stars has done recently, but I really doubt they'd stoop that low.
• In the past three weeks I've written a ton of code working on the engine for my indie jRPG. I'm really happy with how well its coming. It's a bit strange, after I left my job at the end of 2008, I wrote virtually no code up until this project. That's a three and a half year break!

I've been experiencing some runbad at the tables lately, but nothing too serious. At the worst, the variance has motivated me to put in more volume than I was planning - it's been a while since that happened. I may play the Stampede Classic poker tournament on Monday, it's a $1000+$100 donkament held every year during Stampede. I'm certain the field will be lolsoft, but the structure sucks and every time I play a live donkament I'm reminded how boring live poker is.

June Review - Crushing the Hundred

In June I was fortunate enough to run well for the bulk of the month. The stretch of positive variance wasn't as extreme as that of November of last year, but it was very nice nonetheless. Much of the rungood came at 100NL ZOOM, and I thought for a moment I may have actually won more buyins at the 100-limits than I ever had before, though after a quick fact check it turns out I fell a tiny bit short of February 2010.

Though I'm certain ~4ptBB isn't sustainable at ZOOM, the games are curiously soft compared to what one might expect. I don't expect it to last as my guess is that many of the "fish" are SNG/MTT regulars taking shots at cash due to convenience of ZOOM, and once they figure out that they're losing players they will either stop playing or improve.

Thanks to ZOOM (where I played just over half my volume) and there being five weekends in the month June, I logged more hands this month than I have in a very long time. Not a lot more, but any positive on the volume side of things is nice. Unfortunately, my VPP count fell short of where I wanted it to be despite the volume, and I'm further behind pace to finish the year with the 300k milestone bonus than I hoped I would be this point. It's a bit sickening to think I'm only a few years removed from SNE and it's a strain to put in 300k VPPs.



Edit: Oops, it seems I accidentally cut the winrate column off the table above - as a whole it was 4.13ptBB/100. Hurrah for rungood.

The bottom line:
$13,660.00 table winnings
+$1513.18 FPP value (27,021 VPPs * 3.5FPPs/VPP * 1.6c/FPP)
+$285 coaching
-----------------------------------
$15,458.18 USD total profit

In all, I'm really happy with the way June went. The state of the games is looking pretty grim, but I can hope that it is partially the effect of summer keeping recreational players outside and away from their computers.