2010 poker goals

Well its about time to think about my poker goals for 2010.

I did ok on my 2009 goals. It was a good poker year. I made my debut at $1/$2 NL at the local casino with modest success. I was up a little bit over a few visits there. I should try to get more live play in for 2010. The goal is to continue to chip up at $1/$2 live at the 2009 hourly winrate or better.

I'd like to try some live tournaments too in 2010. There's a $55 early bird tournament. That would be worth a shot. I may also try to satellite into some of the $200 or $500 monthly buyin tournaments at the casino.


Online 2009 was a pretty good year. I took a shot at $25 NL and have done OK over a small sample size so far. Online goals are to stick at $25 NL and be a winner there. Like live I'd like to get in more play; but that seems to be a goal every year.

I'd like to take a shot at pot limit hold'em. That's available at the $25 level on Stars. I haven't tried a new game in some time so that might be fun.

I have it in my mind I'd like to try out heads up no limit hold'em; like at the $2 NL level. But I'm not sure if I'd be able to go back to full ring after all of the action in HU. So might have to think about that one.

For online tournaments I'm not much of a tournament regular. They take more time than I usually have to play. Still tournaments are fun. I would like to play in the big Stars Sunday $11 1/4 million tourney. By the 2% guideline I can take a shot. It's just about finding some time for it, Sundays are usually pretty packed. Also for MTT is to cash in a $5 MTT for the first time.

Collusion on PokerStars story

I was playing at the local casino last week. As sometimes happens some people at the table got to discussing online poker.

The dealer said he wouldn't play online because he likes the interactive aspect of live play. That's fine, I can understand that playing against "avatars" instead of real people might seem unenjoyable for some.

Then some others felt that online was insecure because it was too easy to cheat. The example they gave was that you don't know if the people you are playing against are all just from the same college dorm room.

They discussed IP address checks and how these can be ineffective as it is not hard for people in close proximity to have distinct IPs from different ISP [with NAT the converse is also true where large numbers of people at different computers may appear to be connecting from the same NAT IP address]. Thus they felt it would be too difficult to detect collusion and it could be gotten away with.

I was just listening and probably wisely didn't say anything. Although they seemed to miss that there are more sophisticated ways to detect collusion. Big sites like Stars have proprietary advanced software to detect cheats. Stuff coming right out of graduate schools in math, statistics, economics.

Also of course there are the human detectives. The watchful eyes and ears at the tables. The players who will report suspicious activity to alert security to keep the games clean. On 2+2 its no secret that Stars security relies heavily on watchful players to report suspicious activity. Players will "rat out" cheaters since it is themselves who are being cheated.

So back to the casino. One fellow went on to tell a story about two people he knew who attempted to collude at small stakes on PokerStars. He said it worked for a little while but then they were caught by Stars security. The accounts were closed and their funds confiscated. The amount wasn't large, around $300 he said.

Now it gets interesting. To the table talkers, this seemed to confirm that it is possible to get away with collusion on PokerStars! Uh no, that's not really true. What it actually proves is that would be cheaters [even at the lowest stakes] will be caught and their funds will be taken away.

It seemed strange to me the fact that the cheaters were caught somehow then proves that you can get away with cheating. Oh well if they don't want to play online that's their choice of course. And yes this story confirms there are people attempting to cheat and collude at online poker at all stakes [and in live poker too]. But the big sites realize that security is in a sense their only product and if the players don't feel comfortable, that the game is clean, then they just won't play and the site will go under.

$10 for 10 on UltimateBet

I got an interesting e-mail from UltimateBet last week. They offered me a free $10 for making any deposit. Or I could have 111% deposit bonus.

I took the free $10. I don't clear bonuses very fast an I still have a Stars reload bonus to work on. I just made a minimum $10 deposit and they added the $10 right away, no strings attached. That's pretty good, about the easiest 100% profit you'll ever see. Thanks UB.

I'm not really sure what to do with UB going forward. Maybe still play low buyin tournaments which are fun at times. I noticed they don't advertise on WWE Smackdown any more on Rogers Sportsnet and no WWE freerolls lately so I don't have that bit of brand loyalty any more. My bankroll there is now a bit over $100 for the first time thanks to a recent tournament score and this new $20 injection. Plus I can cash out $10 of rakeback I earned if I want to. Still I'm not sure about a longer term plan for there.

taking a shot at $25 NL

I've decided to move up to $25 NL. After I reloaded recently on PokerStars I have enough bankroll now.

I reached my goal at $10 NL to win 5 buyins. It took just under 5000 hands for a winrate of a little over 5 BB/100. Not bad I would say. The sample size isn't particularly large. Still based on my experience there I'm confident I was beating it.

It was actually a bit better than $5 NL which I beat at 3.7 BB/100. Unlike $2 and $5 NL it was less swingy without the big 6 and 8 buyin downswings and crazy heaters. So that was nice, profit with less variance.

I'll start out playing single table for around 500 hands and see how it goes. I'll give it a 3 buyin shot. Hopefully I'll be able to play well and be able stick there and win some. I've always wanted to be able to say I play $25 NL so now I can. This is exciting and a little bit scary. If I can't stick at $25 NL I don't think I'll be going back to $10 NL. I'd rather look for a new game.

Hopefully there will be some good tables at $25 NL. There are just an ocean of $25 NL tables on Stars. And there are some huge multi tablers there playing 24 tables. Still by the law of large numbers with that many tables there must be at least some soft tables. So hopefully I'll be able to find some beatable games among them.

This was the last interesting hand I played at $10 NL. A good sendoff.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.10 BB (3 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from http://www.flopturnriver.com

SB ($10)
BB ($3.95)
Hero (Button) ($11.70)

Preflop: Hero is Button with As, Ac
Hero bets $0.30, 1 fold, BB raises to $3.95 (All-In), Hero calls $3.65

Flop: ($7.95) 3h, Ah, Kc (2 players, 1 all-in)

Turn: ($7.95) 4h (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: ($7.95) 4s (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: $7.95 | Rake: $0.35

Results:
Hero had As, Ac (full house, Aces over fours).
BB had 9c, 8s (one pair, fours).
Outcome: Hero won $7.60

Implied odds of the bad beat jackpot

At my local poker room there's a bad beat jackpot. A certain amount is taken from the hand [I don't know how much it is] and this funds the jackpot.

In the short time I've been playing the bad beat jackpot (BBJ) is usually around $10,000 - $20,000. One time it got up over $60,000. When it's high the poker room is busier.

The jackpot is awarded when quads or better beats Aces full of tens or better. The rule is also that both players have to use both of their cards to form the winning and losing hand. The payout is losing player gets half the BBJ, winning hand gets 25%. The remaining 25% is shared among other players at the table.

A hand came up one time where a player 3 bet on an early position raise and two callers. The big reraise ended up chasing everyone out and the player made over $20 on the hand. At the time the BBJ was around $60,000.

After the hand a regular in the poker room suggested to the player who 3bet that there may have been some consideration to slow playing, i.e. just overcalling with the premium hand. That would have ensured a multiway pot and possibly got others in. With a premium hand it had a better chance of cracking the BBJ.

So the regular's point was that the BBJ was so large that the implied odds of cracking the BBJ were enough to be possibly more worthwhile than the big 3bet which would most likely just win the hand preflop.

It's an interesting concept because in a way it violates the principle of table stakes; which all of modern poker is built on. Although it violates table stakes in a good way. You still can't lose or be forced to call more than the amount in front of you on any hand. So table stakes still holds on the downside. On the upside though it becomes possible to win money which is not on the table at the beginning of the hand.

Afterward I thought about it some more over the next few weeks. Then I realized that it should be possible to quantify the implied odds of the BBJ.

I wanted to determine the chance of being on the losing side of the BBJ. I quickly realized you would need to be dealt AA to have a measurable chance of being in a BBJ hand. Since you only need Aces full of tens then it's relatively not too unusual to form the losing side of the BBJ.

In this example Hero is holding Aces UTG in a 10 player game. I want to calculate the chance that this will be a BBJ hand.

I believe the most likely scenario is that Hero and another player holding a pocket pair flop a set. Then Hero goes on to make full house 10 or better. The other player hits the 1 outer to make quads. This doesn't account for other scenarios such as quads over quads or losing to a straight flush. However it should be at least an approximation.


Part one, chance to form the losing BBJ hand starting with Aces

In this case Hero flops a set and then makes a full house.

The chance then of being on the losing side of the BBJ is

(1 / 8.5) * (1 - ((40 / 47) * (36 / 46))) * (1 / 3) = 0.0130960802

So dealt Aces there's about a 1.3% chance of ending up with a hand that can be a losing BBJ hand.


Part Two, another player is dealt a pocket pair. Villain flops a set and makes quads

In this example Hero is dealt Aces UTG at a 10 player table. I used my preflop overpair equation that I derived in the past to determine the probability that someone else at the table has a lower pocket pair. The chance of an underpair to AA is the same as the chance of an overpair to 22. So using the overpair equation I determined there is a 39% chance someone has a pocket pair.

The chance then of someone at the table having a pair, flopping a set and making quads is then

0.396140781 * (1 / 8.5) * (1 - ((44 / 45) * (43 / 44))) = 0.00207132435

About 1 in 500.



So multiply part one and part two to determine the chance then that the BBJ will go on this hand. That comes out to.

0.0130960802 * 0.00207132435 = 2.71262298 × 10^-5

Which is 1 in 36,864.



So that's not very good. Even if you account for other ways for the BBJ to form such as straight flush or more than one opponent being dealt a pocket pair then the best you can hope for is probably around a 1 in 20,000 chance of being on the losing end of the BBJ when starting with Aces.


From there then we can determine the implied odds of the BBJ when dealt Aces preflop. Being a bit generous and setting it at 1 in 20,000.

If the BBJ is $60,000 then the implied odds of the BBJ is about $1.50.

If the BBJ is $100,000 then the implied odds of the BBJ is around $2.50.


So we have determined that the BBJ must be extremely large in order to create enough implied odds to alter your preflop strategy to slow play instead of 3 bet. It would have to be around $400,000 - $500,000 + to even come into your thoughts.

Of course people at the table who have already folded or were going to fold anyway would prefer you slow play Aces against a preflop raise. They want to freeroll for a slice of the 25% of the BBJ that goes to the others at the table.

Offered chop in the SB

This is an interesting situation that sometimes comes up playing live. It's folded to you in the small blind. Neither you nor the big blind has looked at your cards yet. The big blind offers to chop the hand.

Now in $1/$2 live it doesn't often fold into the blinds. But it can happen sometimes, especially if some people are sitting out and away from the table. What a chop means is that the SB and BB both just pull their blinds back and the hand is over.

I've been offered a chop three times in the SB. All three times I accepted it. I think it's a good deal for the SB. Both the SB and BB have a random hand (since neither has looked at his cards yet). Given that BB has position on SB throughout the hand then with position the situation is profitable for BB and unprofitable for SB. So I think it's a good result for SB to accept a chop and thus break even on the hand.

Plus there's other considerations live around accepting a chop. The first time I was offered a chop in the SB the others at the table were keen for me to accept it. That makes sense because then the hand is immediately over and the folders can get a new hand right away without having to wait for a blinds battle to play out. So it keeps the game friendly and fast. Keeping the game fast and friendly is valuable so there's a meta game consideration to accepting the chop and quickly moving on to the next hand.

No limit hold'em theory and practice

As part of my transition to playing live I wanted to read a no limit book. I ordered No limit hold'em theory and practice online. I'd heard good things about this title. Coming from Sklansky and Miller I was looking forward to some good material.

And it was good. Like Sklansky's Theory of Poker, it was not an easy read. Some parts were hard to get through. But it was worth the effort. I feel I got a lot out of it. I didn't really fully grasp and appreciate everything but that's OK. Like Theory of Poker I likely will read it again in the future. But like the authors said, after reading the book go play some hands, and then come back and read the book again. So now I'm off to play some hands.

The structure of the book was interesting. They spent a fair amount of time discussing the differences between limit hold'em and no limit. To some that might seem unimportant but it was great for me as I have predominantly played limit up until now. So that was great.

Also I didn't really realize this until I played at the casino, but this book is geared toward live play. That's fine too since I'm now a live player. So all in all this was a very good book and well worth the time and effort to work through it.

I will probably read it again some time in the future. But not too soon. I need to do some light reading next to give my mind a rest. Plus I want to read at least one different poker book first. There's still about four poker books that I want to read at some point.

Stars reload

I recently took advantage of the PokerStars WCOOP 50% reload bonus offer. I chucked in another $100. This is the first time I put money in at Stars since I first started playing for real money around 3 years ago on about a $90 deposit.

A great thing about Canada is that it is so easy to get bankroll onto the sites. I just entered my regular credit card number in and swoosh it went right through no problem. Same as last year when I put in $50 on UltimateBet. Yay Canada.

I've been playing more cash on Stars anyway so I figure I might as well get paid to play by working off a bonus. In fact I was thinking of putting some new money in on Stars anyway to bankroll some new games I want to try. This just does it a bit sooner but this bonus offer is timely. I hope Stars continues to do these from time to time.

At $10 NL it doesn't seem to be clearing very fast but that's OK. I may have a plan in mind to do something about that.

Played live at the casino

I played live poker for the first time last weekend. It was a great experience! It was at the Halifax Casino.

I had wanted to play for a long time and I finally saved up enough bankroll to play $1/$2 no limit hold'em. That's the smallest game available. I didn't know what to expect or really know what to do.

Anyway I sat down and got chips. I decided that I was going to play full. So I bought in for $200. There were a mixture of players, people bought in for $40 (the minumum), $60, $100 and $200 mostly. It was a pretty friendly game. There were a number of regulars there I could tell who knew each other well.

Due to my inexperience I made some mistakes mostly about not posting my blinds quickly or knowing when it was my turn. I was directly to the dealer's left so it was at times hard to tell when the big blind or the action was on me. Also I found the table felt kind of sticky and it was hard to lift my cards to see them at times.

Mostly I didn't have much to work with. So I just folded if I had a bad hand. One guy was sitting to my left and he was bugging me about folding preflop. He seemed to like being in almost every hand. He went to a new table after a short while.

There were some interesting hands along the way. One hand in the first hour I raised in early position to $8. A guy who seemed to be good 3bet me to $28. Everyone folded. I thought for a bit and decided to fold. He showed KK so I made a good fold.

Around a half hour later on I again raised to $8 first to act. Again the same KK guy 3bets me, this time to $25. This time I moved all in for $200. He thought for a little while and then folded. I didn't show. He brought that hand up with me a couple of times in the next two hours. I didn't tell him what I had but I agreed with his reasoning that when a guy shoves $200 preflop it is almost always very strong, like QQ-AA, maybe AKs. He said later on he had 99. We agreed it was a good fold to the shove.

I think that was the second hand I won. For my memory this is the first hand I won live. I called in the SB with 9s 7s and 4 limpers. Six of us saw a T88 flop. It was surprisingly checked through. The turn was a J, giving me a straight but putting two clubs on board. I bet $8 into the $12 pot. One guy called and the others folded.

The river was an offsuit Jack making the board T88JJ. I checked and the other guy checked too. He showed K9 I believe and my straight was good.

There was an interesting hand late in the evening. I raised Ad Jd in early postition to $8. An aggressive player on the button 3bet me to $18. I called $10 and we saw the flop heads up. The flop was AK2 giving me top pair. He bet $25 into the $39 pot and I called. The turn was a 7. The turn went check check and now I'm feeling a bit better about my pair of Aces. The river was another deuce making the board AK272. I didn't think the river helped him much. I led $50 into the $89 pot. He pondered for what seemed like a good while and finally called. He showed K7 and my Aces up were good to win it on the river over his turned two pair.

Thanks to that late AJ hand I was able to book a small profit for the evening. I was enjoying it and stayed until 3 AM. It was an enjoyable experience (probably more enjoyable because I won a bit) and I'll be looking to play some more there when I get the chance.

MTT cash

I cashed in an UltimateBet tournament for the first time recently. I finished 15th out of around 250 in a $2.20 event for around a $6 payout. Since my UltimateBet bonus expired I've reorganized my online play a bit. I play cash on Stars and tournaments on UltimateBet. My cash game lately is mostly $10 NL.

I'm defining MTT a bit more strictly. I have had some multi table tournament success this year. I've won a couple $2.20/90 man tourneys on Stars. But those are strictly speaking SNGs. They have a cap on the number of entrants and they begin as soon as they fill.

There's nothing special or unusual about an MTT cash. When I checked my records though I saw that this was my first MTT cash in 2009. I had gone 13 in a row with no cashes back to last December. That's the nature of MTT though. On a site like official poker rankings you'll notice that for even the biggest winners they have long soul crushing strings of zeros punctuated by the occasional cash and the more occasional big cash. But it's good to be in the money again in 2009.

I find UltimateBet has a pretty good tournament structure. Especially in the early levels there's more opportunity to play tight and wait for good hands. Although in the later stages when the blinds are increasing in larger chunks the 12 minute levels are a bit tougher. The fields are smaller than some of the huge tourneys on Stars but that means there's more regulars who you can recognize over time and get notes on.

November nine

Well the final table for the WSOP main event is now set. This should be the most interesting final table in a few years.

Phil Ivey of course is the big poker name. He's known even outside the poker world. Similar to Doyle Brunson and Phil Hellmuth he's at least somewhat recognized in the mainstream.

In addition Shulman and Aikenhead are known at least among some poker players. I admit I'd never heard of them before the WSOP but I'm not a real follower of the poker scene beyond the biggest names.

Of course there's Darvin Moon. This year's everyman. Running very well and playing it pretty cool. Can he continue to run well and pull out the win. It would probably be best for poker if Moon wins it. It might produce something of a Moneymaker effect and bring lots of new players into the sites. That would be great.

So while most everyone on 2+2 is of course cheering for Ivey we should probably really be hoping for Moon. In any case we're looking forward to an entertaining final table in November this year.

Poker and the Central Limit Theorem

This is something I've been thinking about for a while on my own. People would talk about making X BB/100 with some standard deviation. Or of being Y% confident they are a winning SNG player.

But I couldn't understand how it was possible to apply normal curve type analysis to poker results. Because in raw form poker results are of course not normally distributed. In a cash game a standard TAG player folds preflop most hands. Thus the result is heavily skewed by $0 entries where he just folded preflop and neither made nor lost money.

In a tournament, even a simpler structure such as a 50% 30% 20% SNG. In this case there would be a multi-modal distribution, dominated by $0 bust outs and a distribution of 3-2-1 finishes. So how can you apply normal curve analysis to input data which is not normal? I couldn't figure this out.

Then I got thinking about something simpler. Coin flips. Suppose with a fair coin you assign a score of 1 for flipping heads and 0 for flipping tails. Now over a trial of say 100 flips you'll see a bimodal distribution, a large number of 0 scores and 1 scores. So that's not normally distributed. However if you consider the aggregate score over 100 flips and do a series of trials of 100 flips then some things happen. Of course you'll see a bunching around scores of 50 with a small number outside the 40-60 range and very small numbers outside the 20-80 range.

Hmmm, so by aggregating the coin flips together the sum of the series behaves like a normal curve even though the raw underlying data is not normally distributued. It is bimodal, just a large number of 0s and 1s.

In poker that can be immediately applied to double or nothing sng tournaments. In that event half the players win double the buyin and half get nothing. Well that's the same as a coin flip. In fact a 10 player DoN tournament is the same as 5 heads up sng tournaments. So over time a DoN player could aggregate his results into groups of say 10, 30, whatever works and then pull out a mean and standard deviation and get a confidence level if he is really beating (or losing) in the event or possibly just running well/not so well.

Although you can also aggregate the DoN concept to larger tournaments. For example a 10 player 50/30/20 sng could be expressed as a series of HU sng's among the players. The same could be done with say a $4.40/180. So if individual DoN "coin flips" can be made normal then it would probably be valid to aggregate the coin flips into a tournament payout and then that could be treated in a DoN way.


But the part I wasn't sure about was if it was proper to "synthesize" a normal distribution out of non-normal underlying data by aggregating them together and examining the groups of aggregates. As raw poker results, both cash game and tournament are certainly non-normal. Is this valid or is it some kind of charlatanism, trying to create normalized data out of "thin air".

I wasn't sure. But then I made the link to the Central Limit Theorem. [video]. The Central Limit theorem shows that it is proper to group together the individual results of cash game hands played, or tournament results. Remarkably what emerges from the groupings is normally distributed data which has a mean and standard deviation. Awesome!

So for cash games you need to determine the grouping size at which the summary data starts to behave as a normal curve. We hear X BB/100 a lot so I guess the analysis has settled on groupings of 100 hands. So if your minimum grouping is 100 hands (and that may be optimistically small) then that would explain a lot of the conventional wisdom around determining if you are beating or losing at a given level. For example even if the data is normally distributed then you really need at least 30 data points as a bare minimum to do any type of analysis. For the cash game that means you would need to play 3,000 hands to get 30 100 hand samples. Even that is pretty small and hard to reliably make any conclusions from. At 10,000 hands at least you would have 100 sample points. Not great but you'd have a lot more data to work with and the graph should look much smoother.

But if someone is running well, or poorly over a 1,000 hand sample then really you can't say anything about it. It's just too small to comment on. It makes you understand why some say you need to play 25,000 - 100,000 hands at a level to really have any idea if you're doing well or not. That can be a discouraging thing to deal with for a player (unless you're a huge multi tabler), not really knowing if you're winning.

Now with tournaments for 50/30/20 SNG I'm not sure how many you need to aggregate together to get a normal distribution. Although I've read that you need to play around 500 SNG at a level to get a feel if you're winning. For larger tournament, say $4.40/180 it may take a very large aggregate size (90-200?) for things to start behaving normally. For really large MTT (1000+ runners) then the minimum aggregate size I think would be huge. I'd guess upwards of 1000 events for a 1000 player MTT. I've read that for large MTT you can't play enough of them to establish a normal distribution of results. I would believe it.

Maybe everyone else knew all this stuff all along. Still I was somewhat pleased with this result that I was able to figure out about "synthesizing" a normal type distribution out of raw poker results using the Central Limit Theorem. Before I figured it out myself I was thinking of contacting a former Math professor to ask him about the idea of synthesizing. I'm glad I figured it out on my own.

UltimateBet bonus is gone

I logged into UltimateBet yesterday to begin another month of grinding FPP points. I usually work around 50 FPPs a month to maintain Player status and ongoing clearing my initial sign in bonus. I was looking forward a bit to this month because I was pretty close to clearing the next $5 increment and so with just regular play I would be able to clear $5 both this month and next.

I was surprised when I logged in though and checked my account. The remaining bonus was showing as $0. That's weird for it to seemingly just disappear. I contacted support to ask what was up, figuring it was a mistake [like when I wasn't getting rakeback for a couple of months]. Unfortunately it was no mistake. Support informed me that the bonus clearing time is only good for 90 days. My uncleared $70 is now lost. That's disappointing because I was about one session away from clearing the next $5.

This 90 day thing must be a new rule related to the Cereus merger. I joined UB last August and was slowly clearing bonus the whole time. So it was well over 90 days. It's disappointing because the UB bonus is well suited to people like me who don't have the long hours to put in and heavy multi tabling ability to clear a bonus in a limited time frame.

I guess I can't complain about the free money. This is the final tally on UB. I played around 4400 hands of limit hold'em. $0.25/$0.50 and $0.50/$1.00. I made only $7.52 at the tables playing. I cleared $30 of bonus. I also have about $10 of rakeback that I can cash because of new rules at thisisthenuts.

So on a $50 initial deposit I made about $40 on bonus and rakeback in 10 months. 80%, not bad really. I wish I had started out in LHE instead of 2100 hands in $10 NL because I would have been able to clear much more bonus.

In a way it's good. I don't have to do this UB chore any more of grinding another 50+ FPP each month to keep clearing bonus. Now I'm freed up to look into other things that may be more interesting.

I enjoyed playing $0.50/$1.00 LHE on UltimateBet and the tables are very good. However the bad beat jackpot tax is pretty prohibitive. Without getting paid to play from clearing a bonus then with just rakeback that would be tough to beat long term for very much.

I could just cash out my $86 I suppose. Or better yet do a swap with someone on 2+2 and convert it to PokerStars bankroll. But I enjoy playing on UB and still want to play there.

I'm going to check out the tournament scene on UB. I think this will complement tournaments on Stars as well. UB has a reputation for a good tournament structure that may suit my style. And I still get 30% rakeback on the tourney reg fees. They have $5.50 MTT, $2r, $1r, $3.30. Considering with my Stars bankroll together I can play in these events.

another win Stars $2.20/90

I took down another $2.20/90 tournament. Remarkably, this is the second time in 3 events I've won. Talk about running well!

This win took a lot of luck though. I had to get lucky several times to chip up early and stay alive late and I was short stacked through the entire last two tables. Including heads up, but the HU villain was clueless and I was catching some cards so I was fortunately able to take it down.

And with that my bankroll is now enough to be playing in the $4.40/180 tournament. I'm looking forward to taking a shot at that level. Hopefully the competition will be beatable and I can run well and be able to stick there.

tournament win Stars $2.20/90

My recent hot streak continues. I managed to take down another 90 man tournament recently. This time it was the Stars $2.20/90 event.

The 90 man MTTs have a great structure. It seems to work well for me. That said I was pretty lucky and running well especially on a couple of key hands to take this event down. But the competition is weak in this event and I felt I played pretty well. I managed to get a rush late going from 30th with 30 people left to 4th entering the final table to 1st by the time 8 were left. From there I hung around close to the top and eventually took it down.

So now I've now won a $2.20/90 MTT to go with my earlier $0.25/90 event. The win was worth a cool $50 for my bankroll. This is my biggest tournament score ever. It took a tick over 4 hours to get there. And it brings my bankroll back to a new all time high. So that's all good. Nothing like running well at this game.

The next logical step is to take a shot at the next level, the infamous $4.40/180. However I'm still just a bit light on bankroll to start playing there. So it looks like I'll work the $2.20 a bit more to try to grind up some more bankroll.

$20 pot

I was involved in a $20 pot recently. Most of my cash game play has been $0.25/$0.50 limit hold'em. Still working off a bonus on UltimateBet. So I don't get into pots this size very often. In this case I'd played a couple of $2.20/90 on Stars and busted out. I didn't quite feel like quitting yet so I sat in a $10 NL game. Then this happened.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.10 BB (9 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

saw flop | saw showdown

BB ($12)
UTG ($5.40)
UTG+1 ($6.10)
MP1 ($5.10)
MP2 ($7.45)
Hero (MP3) ($10)
CO ($10.35)
Button ($5.65)
SB ($2.55)

Preflop: Hero is MP3 with A, A
UTG calls $0.10, UTG+1 calls $0.10, 1 fold, MP2 calls $0.10, Hero bets $0.70, CO raises to $2.45, 6 folds, Hero raises to $10 (All-In), CO calls $7.55

Flop: ($20.45) 8, 4, Q (2 players, 1 all-in)

Turn: ($20.45) 3 (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: ($20.45) 10 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: $20.45 | Rake: $1

Results:
Hero had A, A (one pair, Aces).
CO mucked J, J (one pair, Jacks).
Outcome: Hero won $19.45

Yay for me. Nothing like getting it all in preflop with Aces for 100bb.

read theory of poker again

It's been a few months so I thought a refresher in Theory of Poker might be good for me. So I read it for the second time. I'm hoping to try out live poker at the casino some time this year so it seemed a good idea to read ToP again before hitting the felt.

I got quite a bit out of it on the second read. I had forgotten or not really absorbed a lot the first time through. So much of it sunk in a bit better. It is a difficult book and a bit slow reading but worth working through. It definitely helps to understand bluffing and how important understanding bluff is, both using bluff and semi bluff for profit and countering the bluffing of your opponents.

I've got one more poker book to read before I hit the felt. I still need to save up some more bankroll anyway so it fills in the time pretty well. Since the game at the local casino is $1/$2 no limit hold'em I'm going to read an NL cash book.

won a tournament Stars $0.25/90

Last night I did something I'd never done before. I won a multi table tournament for the first time.

It wasn't much of a tournament. PokerStars $0.25/90. So only 10 tables. It took a little over 3 hours to take it down. Mostly I ran well against bad competition and caught some big hands at good times like a huge AA hand at the final table for a $100K pot. I cruised from there. Plus flopping sets and winning big with them is as valuable in tournaments as it is in the NL cash game.

I wasn't even trying to play in that tournament. I meant to register in a $2.20/90 but I wasn't paying attention and ended up in the $0.25 tournament. A good accident as it turns out since it turned out to be my first real MTT win. I've taken down real money 2 table tournaments before but this was a bigger event with all the real tournament stages of early play, the bubble, final table, last 3, and heads up.

Of course the competition is weak in this event, and the $6.20 award for winning isn't impressive, but still I'm glad to know now I can win. I'm done with the $0.25/90 and will be playing $2.20/90 which I'm bankrolled for. Hopefully I can run well there. I've got some unfinished business at the $2.20 as I lost heavily in the $2.20/180 turbos. I think the 10 minute blinds and 2000 starting stack is better suited to my style.

wish me luck - UB WWE WrestleMania freeroll final

That was about the easiest satellite in history. It was round 2 of the UB WrestleMania freeroll this evening. I sat down to play at 8:30 Eastern. Under the rules the top 200 advance to the final on March 16. Round 2 is filled from the daily round 1 satellites where the top 100 from each daily sat advance.

However when play began there were only 98 people registered! 10 minutes later and late registration closed and still only 98 people. 98 people competing for 200 seats in the final of course means that we all advance just for registering. That was pretty easy.

So onto the winner take all final on March 16. The winner is going to WrestleMania in Houston. It looks right now like there will be around 400 people in the final. So of course my chances aren't very good. The competition is mostly play money and very bad. So that helps my chances. I'd estimate my chance at winning is around 1%. But it's great to be there and have a shot.

Freerolls

Spring is the season for freerolls. On UltimateBet I'm playing in a WWE WrestleMania 25 freeroll. I cleared round 1 pretty easily and onto round 2 Sunday. The top 25% from round 2 get to the final round 3 for the big prize. My chances aren't good of course but it is fun trying. I hope I can at least reach the round 3 final.

Also on UB you can qualify for the WSOP main event for only 10 cents. But you have to win like 10 steps tournaments so I'll pass on that. I don't really care for sng anyway.

Last year PokerStars had a WSOP ME freeroll so I hope they do it again this year. Also on Stars the blogger freeroll should be coming up pretty soon. That's a good tournament to enter so I can hopefully play in that.

Freerolls are good fun. Some normally proper players choose to be silly in them. Plus of course the fields are dominated by play money people, people with bankroll in the single digits, and generally bad players. But I do try to play properly.

The competition tends to be weak. If you can catch some cards then usually you can do quite well against the many clueless and the donators. It's nice to experience some success even on that UB WWE round 1. I've been in a downswing for a while so a positive result is nice.

In addition to freeroll I've noticed some near freeroll Stars SNGs. There's a $0.10/360 turbo sng. I played a handful of them to work on some new turbo strategies. I cashed in about my 5th attempt and realized I still really don't enjoy turbos.

While I was scrolling to the bottom of the list I noticed a $0.25/90 and $2.20/90 sngs on Stars with 10 minute levels. That looks more interesting. A low buyin event with reasonable rake that has enough time to play properly and can finish in a good amount of time.

I'll give the $0.25/90 a try until I cash in one. It's a bit easier to cash than the $4.40/180s as 12 of 90 cash instead of 10% in the $4.40s. From there I plan to work the $2.20/90 until I can ever get my bankroll up to being able to play in the $4.40/180s. I'm glad Stars added these tournaments.

Plus as part of trying to break out of this blah downswing/break even spell I might try some more $10 NL on Stars. I had some success there in the past. Over on UB I'm still playing $0.25/$0.50 LHE trying to clear the bonus and bankroll remains precarious. I'm trying to think of some contingency plans for there if things don't start to turn around.

Spent my FPPs at the store

I've changed my mind about what to do with my PokerStars FPPs. Originally I was going to play in FPP satellite tournaments and unregister from the seats to get W$ and then use the W$ to play in other tournaments to get regular bankroll.

I realized quickly that I wasn't enjoying it and it was too convoluted, too much of a grind, too much work, too many steps. I don't play tournaments much anymore so it just didn't catch my interest.

And one day I was up very early to take my son to 6 AM hockey practice. I realized I could use a travel coffee mug. Then I thought about the FPP store and checked if there was anything there. It turns out there is an FPP travel mug.

Ahh, that's what I wanted. Unfortunately I had spent my FPPs a bit below the 1250 FPP price. It seemed to take a while to earn the 10 FPP I needed at $0.25/$0.50 LHE but I did get there after a while and I made the order this week. My FPPs are now down to near zero but that's alright. I hadn't done anything useful with them anyway in all the time I've been on Stars so I'm pleased at this small reward for the time I've played there generating rake and fees.

The FPP store purchasing experience was very smooth and well designed. They sent me a confirmation e-mail for tracking and I'm looking forward to the arrival of the mug in around a month. I don't really have any visible poker gear around. Some people know I play for real money but I don't draw attention to it or really bring it up. So this will be a small departure. That said, I'll probably just be using the mug for those early morning hockey practices so I don't plan to be flashing it around.

I'm still hoping to play some live poker at the local casino this year. I could use a card protector. They had some nice ones I liked at the FPP store for around 800 FPPs so maybe as I rebuild my FPPs I might aim for that.

The Psychology of Poker

I just finished reading The Psychology of Poker. I've wanted to read this title for a long time.

It was a pretty good book. Perhaps I didn't get as much out of it as I thought I would. I wasn't sure what to expect really. There was more self analysis than I thought. But it was worthwhile going through. There was a lot of emphasis on live play and limit hold'em. That was fine.

My personal finances are in much better shape these days than in the last many years. That may pave the way to make some new investments in my poker hobby. I want to give live poker a shot. There's a poker room at the local casino with a $1/$2 NLHE game the last time I checked. Possibly in the next 6 months I'll be able to do it.

I had wanted to read Psychology of Poker before I start playing live. I should also reread Theory of Poker. Based on the live games available I should probably read an NL cash book as well.