Here Lies the Journal of The Cooker

Last I wrote in, I had about $25. I finally ran good and got that up above $250 then hit a rough patch and fell to around $200. I took a few weeks off to go on a family vacation to visit my parents. I played for the first time today and rust and maybe some rough hands got me to around $150. I will probably play more tomorrow. I still only play for about 2 hours at a time and only about 3 times a week when I do play. Right now poker is more of a hobby since I need to finish my Ph. D. this year.

I did have one mildly interesting hand come up today in a $10+1 NLHE SNG. I think my opponent made a terrible call preflop, but it made me think about the stop and go play. The blinds were 20/40 and we each had about 1200. I am in the BB and the main villain is in the SB. 3 limpers and the SB completes and I have JJ. I decide that with so many people playing I want to make a big enough raise so that I can move in on the flop and not give enough implied odds to lower pairs, A/rag suited, or KJ to call preflop. I make it 400 to go and only the SB calls. Now I know he is terrible, because no hand can sensibly complete after limpers and then call such a huge raise IMHO.

The flop comes K72 with 2 diamonds and he open shoves for about the pot. I was leaning towards folding (which I think is probably the better play given that I am not crippled), but I second guess myself that he might be doing a stop and go with a smaller pair hoping that I have AQ or that he may have A-rag of diamonds. I think at this point I probably can't put him on any sensible hand since his preflop play is almost certainly terrible. He doesn't have AA, KK, QQ and very unlikely that he has AK althought maybe he could. He probably doesn't have 2 pair. Finally, I decide to call and if he hit something to win just know that he almost certainly made too big a mistake preflop to make up for his thin drawout. He had 22 and flopped the set.

I probably should have realized this because many players in these things will never fold any pair and even KQ preflop and don't have the guts to shove in when overcards comes. He was hoping I had AK and would pay it off and I out thought myself since I can make his flop move with a much wider range of hands. I should have realized that he wasn't going to make a play after his silly preflop nonsense.

I played another NLHE SNG tonight and I won again mostly thanks go to this hand:

Get slowplayed make the nuts.

This hand isn't very interesting really. Basically, I make a raise into the chip leaders BB when I am second in chips and we are both pretty much guaranteed making the money as long as we don't clash too much. We are 4 handed and there is a guy with only 12 BB. He flopps a set and min bets and I flat call with my open ended straight draw. I hit a bingo and he bets small again. I shove in for about 4200 more into a pot of 1100. He calls and the board doesn't pair (yippee).

This is the classic terrible slow play. Basically, I am going broke if I have QQ, KK, AA, or a set anyway, so the slowplay isn't that greatt there, and I may get off QQ and KK if an overcard falls and he puts in big bets. His only real hope is if I have KQ, AK, or AQ (all in my range) will call the bet on the flop (I may) and will go bust if I make a pair (I probably won't). Still, he goes bust when I hit my straight and pays off a huge overbet. The upside is marginal, and the downside is huge especially if I have something like a gut shot. It may have made more sense if I am the type to raise with draws, and I will occasionally. However, at this level I find that there are so many look up artists I am usually going to take cheap cards and try to hit and get paid off.

He made a decent run, getting back into 3rd at one point, but he failed to make the money.

I will probably take grandgnu's advice and layoff for about a week. I decided to play a $10 NLHE SnG to sort of get a little bit going or just bust again. I came in third on a fairly rough beat where I have T9o on a T87r flop and get it all in against K7o. He spikes the K on the turn and it holds up.

That gets me back near the green on this particular run, so I give another one a go. I think I played pretty well the whole time and I won. Now I have enough to start short buying the PLO8 games that I prefer. I will say, that I won the last hand when dominated, so I did catch a break to come out ahead. Still, I had him down to 900 with 400/800 blinds and he won every hand that was automatic all in and call to come back to even. I won when my KJ got lucky against his KQ.

I played briefly today and had this gem come up

Typical 3 outer for half.

I flop the nuts with a flush redraw (in NLHE) with KQ of hearts on a JT9 with JT of hearts board. A guy leads out and I put in a fair raise. Of course he has the KTo and calls. Of course a Q hits and I miss my flush draw. Here I am 92.8% equity on the flop and still make nothing. We are going to go ahead and extend the losing 90%+ favorite every session streak.

I came out slightly behind since every time I had AQ someone had AK and didn't reraise and an A always flopped, and everytime I flopped the nuts with a redraw the person hit his miracle 3 outer to chop.

Once again, does anyone run worse than me?

So I get a rakeback payment and I am back in action on Full Tilt. I get around $25 and so I decide to play NLHE and only buy in for $10 so that I have a few shots. This was because I feel like there is less variance involved in NLHE.

So, I play one orbit and guess what?

Bad Beat

The old top set vs. bottom set all in on the flop where he hits a runner runner flush on me. Real sweet. I am a 91% favorite when the money goes in. Of course I lose, because I always lose. I played 3 freerolls for fun while I was busto. Everyone I busted out in third when I lose a big pair vs. small pair all in preflop hand.

Who runs worse than me? I doubt anyone. I am running so bad on Full Tilt, that if it came out tomorrow that the site was rigged I wouldn't be surprised. Still, I know that entertaining those thoughts is probably just meta-tilt from running so bad. When will it ever end? I have had someone hit when being around a 90% dog almost everytime I have played for the last 2 months.

I am now busto online. I had taken off most of my money due to the legal situation, but received a rakeback payment of about $80 which I run up to a little over 2 hundred. Then I decided to take a stab a little higher than normal and this happened. These hands happened consecutively:

Stupid guy calling the maniac as a dog 1.
Stupid guy calling the maniac as a dog 2.
Me getting all in great 1.
Me getting all in great 2.
Me getting all in great 3.

For those that don't want to look at the hands, I am about 60 to 40 equity edge in all three that I play and they were all in preflop. I got scooped all three hands.

For the sadistic, the probability that he scoops me on all three: 0.013195.

Looks like I am done with poker for the forseeble future. Farewell.

This hand came up when I was messing around on the $25 PLO tables at Full Tilt. I was just surprised by the huge equity edge I had on the flop even though I didn't have a pair (neither did he). I guess it is because I out kicker him and share his highest 2 cards. Of course he hit perfect.

I would take my HHs and put them up against anybodies for worst luck over the last 6 months. Today I played 3 SnGs (1 NLHE, 1 PLO8, and 1 HORSE). In each one I flopped top FH vs quads and in the PLO8 I got all in with top set vs. middle set and he drew out to quads. Are you kidding me Full Tilt? Run into quads 4 times with top boat in 3 1 table SnGs? I actually survived the PLO8 double ass rape to come in third out lasting both people that made quads against me. This was because I tripled up early when I flopped nut nut and the second best low and flush decided to come along for the max. Of course, I made the mistake of running into the powerhouse Q367 with 3 hearts against my pitiful A2Q9 ds. I am only a 3 to 2 favorite which is a guaranteed scoop for my opponent. I have to be a 3 to 1 favorite in order to have any chance of winning and even then I still lose 3/4 of the time.

I took all my money off of online since my last post, so I haven't been playing much. I got a $80 rakeback payment on Full Tilt that I have played some SnGs and one session of $25 PLO8 with, but I am trying to focus on my Ph. D. I have run it up to a little over $180, but I can hardly ever win a hand HU.

As I have posted before, my son was born with club feet, and I have to drive to a specialist in Springfleld IL every few months, just to make sure he is OK. His feet are currently pretty straight and walks pretty well. It amounts to 5 hours or so of driving and usually I have to get up at pretty early to make an 8 AM appointment. My son has to sleep in special shoes with a bar connecting his feet until he is probably 4 or so.

Last week I had such an appointment. We get up at 5:30 AM and arrive by 8 AM. The doctor looks at his feet for maybe 2 minutes and says he would like to bend the bar on his sleeping shoes. He goes out for a while to get a special tool and then comes back saying that he cannot find it. He then writes me a prescription to go to the guy we get the shoes from (also in Springfield) to have him bend the bar. Let that sink in, a prescription to bend a bar. I take the shoes and the prescription somewhere else in Springfield with my son (who hates riding in the car and going to the foot doctor and shoe guy so he is starting to get very difficult) to the shoe guy. I give the prescription to the secretary and she tells me the guy will be out shortly. He comes out in about five minutes, takes the shoes and then bends them over his knee right there. Some fancy tool huh. He then says that if the shoes need more bending to just use my knee. I was expecting something somewhat scientific, a protractor anything. A prescription to bend a bar with his knee. I wonder if he bills our insurence for that.

I don't know if I mentioned this here, but I recently got a Mac Pro as my main home computer. Up until now I have used a mix of Linux and Windows. I still keep all 3 platforms available, but I am usually on the Mac. The main reason I went for a Mac, is that I do dabble in programming and they give away a pretty full developement platform which you would have to buy with Windows. Also, it is particularly easy to make apps multithreaded while it is a bit of a hassle in Linux and in Windows I don't know what the hell you would need. This is key if you want to really take advantage of multicore CPUs. I now have a balzing 4 3 Ghz cores at my disposal.

Now on to Apple TV (ATV). When it was first announced I thought," Wow, now I can watch TV shows in my living room for only $300!!! /sarcasm" After letting it rattle around in my head I realized that if iTunes has pretty much all the TV shows I like and they are reasonably priced, that I could perhaps use this as a full cable replacement. Especially if I can buy shows from say HBO and Showtime, since I am not really interested in the movies they show. Right now I spend about $50 a month on TV service with PVR. So if I can get all the shows I want for under $300 then I am actually better off with ATV. Not only that, but you don't have to worry about discovering something late and missing a few epsides. This will also save me the time wasted where I simply veg out in front of the TV watching crapola.

Unfortunately, the cost of shows on iTunes seems prohibitavely high for me to really gain much value from this. For example, a Heroes season pass is $42.99. This is absurd. The way I figure it, I want about 5 hours a week which means 5-8 shows depending on how many are hour long or not. Since seasons are not year round I will probably want considerably more shows than that to watch during the summer months. Plus, lets put in a little extra cushion for my wife's shows and some things my kids may like and we are probably looking at 15+ shows and this is probably conservative. This means the shows must on average be $20 a year in order to break even. As of right now, I haven't found many for less than $30. I guess I will have to make some lists and see if this is feasable, but I think the absurd cost of shows is going to make this a worse deal than typical TV providers. OF course, the shows come commercial free which is an advantage. I will post a comment on how feasible this is after really looking things over.

I actually have been running awful at ring games lately. I think I have been playing well and just had opponents get lucky, but I don't want to dwell or post bad beats. Most of my online BR has been depleted, so I will probably cut back on my play and only be dabbling around the micro limits. I had already taken most of my BR offline before the neteller business, so although it has been a rough run, it was not particularly painful.

Today I played 5 Sngs. 4 NLHE and 1 PLO. Got 2 thirds and a second. Nothing of much interest. The second place was disappointing because I had a pretty good chip lead and just got a little cold decked when I got out kickered twice with a pair of aces. IMHO the blinds were so big that this was unavoidable. It was also frustrating because I had 2 preflop all ins with the same guy 3 handed where I had AJ and he had A7 and he won both of those. So 4 hands where we both have A-high and he wins them all (2 I dominate 2 he dominates). At least I was up for the day.

Sorry for the double post, but I thought I would say a few words about this. First, I don't think I ever played as much as most of the rest of typical PLO8 LJ crew due to the fact that I have both graduate school which usually entails teaching and research as well as a wife and a couple of kids that takes up much of my time. I will say that there have been times when I have played much more than I should, but over the past year the weeks where I play more than 5 hours total have been few and far between.

I would like poker to be a fun "hobby" that is extra fun because instead of paying to play I actually make a little money. Unfortunately, I have trouble keeping it to the level of "hobby" and over a few stretches in the past few years have let it get to the point where it has affected my studies and my relationship with my wife. I am just not sure if I can find a balance where I just decide to enjoy playing, but don't want to spend enough time to really keep my game sharp. I have taken a lot of time off over the past month and when I start playing again, I really feel as though I have lost some of my skill.

I have also been particularly busy at work.

Finally, part of me wants to see how far this legal situation goes. I have taken most of my BR off of the web and I would just like to see how things shake out for the next couple of months.

Since my last post I have only played 1 brief session of O8 (1 limit and 1 PL table) and 1 NLHE SnG. I won the SnG and it was pretty uneventful. I didn't get any coolers and my big hands got payed off. I had a small win at PLO8 although at 1 point I was at twice the buy in and gave most of it back after getting all in preflop with AA2K vs. AAQ4 and getting scooped on a 234TQ board.

I was down a fair bit at LO8 because my strong hands (strong for this opponent) got lots of money in and all got out drawn. There was this guy who raised my BB from the button every time. One hand I reraise with A27K ds to the A and K. the flop comes 779 and I check raise him. the turn is a Q which gives me a nut flush draw and he puts in a cap. He has 69TT with a losing flush draw. Of course he hits a strait with an offsuit 8 and scoops. The next orbit he raises and I reraise again with 23TT (probably too frisky but he was raising every button). The flop comes 459 rainbow. I check raise him again and he 3 bets. Now I am a bit worried I was running into a real hand as outside of this situation this guy wasn't super loose, but this guy was also a maniac in many of the hands he was in, so I decided to call. The turn is J creating a 2 flush and I check call. The river is a 2 completing the FD and I check and fold and he shows A4K7 with the nut flush. The next orbit he raises and I 3 bet with A278. The flop is 69T with 2 diamonds. He goes 3 bets on the flop. Goes for 3 bets on the turn when a 5 peals off and then I check call when the K of diamonds falls on the river. He made a garbage flush with A49K (had the 49 of diamonds). I took down a big pot later when I turned nut-nut and was against a guy with a naked nut low and another who really thought a set might be good with huge action on a 234Q board with 3 hearts (I had A5 of hearts). The board didn't pair the river and both the turn and river got capped. Still not quite enough to overcome the earlier rough patch though.

I have a hand that seemed totally standard to me at the time (and may well be), but now I am not so sure I played it the best way possible. I start with A337 ds with hearts and spades (A-high in hearts) in the cutoff and call a preflop raise. 4 others come along. The flop comes KT2 with 2 hearts and someone leads into the preflop raiser for the whole pot. Everyone folds to me and I decide to peel since I have the nut flush draw + back door low draw. I just call. The turn is an offsuit 5 giving me significantly more friendly rivers, and he bets the pot again. I feel I clearly have odds to call, and so I do. The river is an offsuit 4 giving me the wheel. He checks and I decide to bet the whole pot. He calls and I scoop him. He had 2 pair with KJT4.

Do you do anything differently? Do you raise the flop? Do you fold the flop? Do you raise the turn? The only thing I feel really good about is betting the full pot on the end. I think it looks like a busted flush draw that is bluffing and will get called by many hands. Would you have called on the end with 2 pair if you were him?

I think I should have raised the flop. This seems like a good spot for a semibluff since it usually seems weak to me when someone leads out into a preflop raiser in this game. In holdem, this lead can often be a set hoping a big pair will raise, so he can get in more money, but in O8 it is usually someone that has a modest hand that rates to be the best fairly often and would prefer everyone fold. In some sense, I won a decent pot, but I had to actually draw out, if I raise flop I may win there or on the turn.

I think raising the turn if I call on the flop is a bad idea. I think that would scream," I just picked up a low draw to go along with whatever other draw I called with for high and I hope you will go away!!!" My hand becomes very well defined there and since I doubt I am the money favorite and I will always be called, I think the raise is a mistake. Now if I had raised the flop, then of course I must bet the turn when checked to. However, in this case, my hand is not so well defined and I think my semibluff will once again benefit from fold equity.

I am going on a vacation with my family and will not play or think (may think a little) poker for about the next 2 weeks. I will have my laptop, but I only have linux running on that right now and I haven't gotten wine to run any of the clients yet, so this should be easy to stick to. I am hoping when I get back, I can kind of start over a little as I feel my game has fallen a bit off course.

I had been thinking about my game lately and I feel like I have become a little weak tight. I used to be semi-loose aggressive (something like a 30 VPIP 15 PFR) and I think that I played pretty good. I used to have a sort of deal with myself to be more critical of bad calls than of bets or raises that turned out to be mistakes in the FTOP sense (although maybe not in the technical sense since they could be solid semi-bluffs given ranges of hands and whatnot).

I feel like I developed a good sense of when to call in certain spots and my aggression allowed me to get good action on my big hands. Then I decided to try and cut back on some failed bluff attempts to try and squeeze out a little more BB/100. I now feel that I took this too far, and that perhaps it was a bad idea to begin with. I think that my tighter approach caused me to get less action on my big hands and overall hurt my winrate considerably.

Poker is a funny game to learn this way. It is very hard to tell how a subtle shift in strategy can affect overall performance.

It relates to this hand. You can look at the hand if you like. I am pretty sure I made the right play all along given the opponent, but the turn raise is probably questionable against most players.

Shortly after the above hand, he called me a lucky drawing out fish and I simply said that although I haven't run the numbers I am pretty sure that I was the favorite on every street except maybe the flop which would be really close. In fact, I was tiny favorite on the flop. I should never give away so much information to someone that has so little card sense here, much less to the entire table. I also shouldn't give away the fact that I can estimate the favorites although these types of match-ups are fairly common and I assume well known. By the way, I stupidly argued back and forth with this douche for about 20 mins and he got to see the brutal beating from the previous post and rubbed it in my face. I got the last laugh.

Classic Cooler

Here I river quad aces only to get shown a turned royal flush. This is certainly the best hand I have ever lost with. I have won a straight flush vs straight flush hand in NLHE where I had TcTs on a 9s8s7s6sAh board. My opponent held the 2 black fives.

The best part is that this total donk finished nearly busting while I ended up with a nice overall win despite this hand and later getting my flopped top FH 2 outered by an overpair. As a matter of fact, when I quit, I was the only person at the table or who sat at the table that was actually up. Everyone who quit while I was playing was loser while I was there and everyone who was still playing was behind when I quit.

I am cutting back my playing time in order to make more progress towards my thesis. I am going to restrict myself to maybe 1 or 2 nights a week of playing. I hope I don't lose all my skill, but I will get it back later if I decide to play more seriously down the road. Lately, I have played mostly LO8 (prefering 6 max and SH), PLO, PLO8, and NLHE cash games. Althought I really only played 2 brief NLHE sessions and got a brutal suckout when JJ hit a jack on the river to beat my set of nines after getting all in on the turn.

Overall, I am pretty pleased with my play. I think I have seen a bit more than my fair share of donks saving half and thin quarterings where I already had my opponents quartered on the turn, but sometime you run good and sometimes not so good.

I made a comment the other day at the table that really seemed to get under my opponents skin as well. I was playing PLO at the $200 tables on FT and there was a classic holdem player taking a shot for fun in the game. He constantly raised 2 pair on scary boards and made big bets and calls with TPTK and the like. In back to back hands I called his preflop raise with a 4 connectors flopped the nuts and stacked him. In the first hand, he flopped TPTK with an 8 high flush draw and I had flopped a straight with the K-high flush draw. We got it all in on the flop and he was dead to running FH. He immediately rebuys fairly short. The next hand I once again flop a straight with a flush draw and he calls with his TP no draw hand. On the turn he makes 2 pair and check raises me and calls my all in reraise. He doesn't hit his 4 outer. He then types in the chat that he is done for the night and I reply with "thank you for your kind donation." This set him off bitching about me calling with "trash" like KQT9ds and 9875ss against his "big" hands like AK82 with a suited 8 and KQ83 rainbow. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to get him to stay and play some more as he was a huge donator the entire time I was there.

I have been in a rut for about 2 months where I make significant but not major growth of my BR over a week or 2 and then seem to have 1 rough day wipe out most of the progress. I guess it could have been worse as I am up a small amount, but I think my game has slipped some. I haven't been playing much lately (probably less than 5 hours a week) and I also haven't been thinking about the game much outside of playing. I am going to try to get back on track and moving up levels quicker by spending more time reviewing my sessions and more time playing. I also want to reduce the number of tables I play at any one time and focus on getting better reads/notes on other players. I was doing very well with this and making some very solid read based plays.

Here is a hand that bugged me yesterday, because I think against ranges I was probably in bad shape. I am in the BB with Js Tc 8c 9d and the flop is Jh 8h 7s. So I flop the dangerous nut straight on a 2 low 2 flush board, but I do have the FH draw as potential back up. SB leads for 1/2 pot and I call wanting to see a safe turn. Button min raises and SB calls the min raise and the action was on me. I am not quite sure what is going on here. They both play it kind of weird to have hands I beat since I wouldn't want to reopen the betting with a set or 2 pair or some such, but they are also playing it weird to have hands that really beat me. I would expect someone with monster hands like nut low draw+nut flush draw to spring to life. I start to think that they must both have hands like good low draw plus weak straight draw or naked flush draw. I decide to go ahead and shove in with my straight and let the cards fall where they may. Both call. Button has the bafflingly moronic Th 6h 4h 5c and SB has the rather scary Ah 3h 2h Ks. I was actually about .472 EV in this spot and was in very good shape 3 ways, but I think I was far on the lucky side of the range of hands. Maybe I could read button as an idiot given his weird min raise, and my play looks somewhat better. After playing a while, I quickly learned that while SB had a handle on hand values, he didn't like to put much money in the pot unless he actually held nut-nut. Still, even with this read do I really think he has to have such a big hand? What do you think? A heart fell on the river.

Also, I will remain playing zero LHE for the rest of the year and then add it back at low limits and move up when I feel I have a significant edge over my competition.

I have found myself looking at 2+2 a lot less lately and posting rather infrequently. In fact, I have started numerous replies, but then basically when I was about done just hit the back button and didn't post it. I just felt like I don't want to give this away right before posting. I don't think anything I withheld was that Earth shattering. I haven't been getting a lot of info out of 2+2 lately, so I would prefer to keep anything that is not there to myself.

Probably the best post I stopped was one that basically turned into my EP strategy for deeper stacked NLHE which I usually use early in a tournament. Some guy basically said he never open limped in the MTT forum, and I often open limp from EP early on.

My thoughts are that the blinds aren't worth stealing and I want to see flops and break the worse opponents for the huge implied odds. If I always raise then I will have to fold many of the hands I really want to see the flop with (suited connectors and small pairs) to a reraise or simply not play them at all. If I open limp, I feel comfortable that I can call most sensible raises and see a flop. But there is even another benefit. I often open limp with AA and KK, so when someone raises here, I can then put in a reraise and kill their implied odds against me.

Of course, this all assumes the opponents are quite bad. If this is not the case, I play a more typical style.

And now for a davebreal type rant: every time someone calls a bet it is not a smooth call. I am starting to here this for virtually every call. The phrase smooth call has the implied meaning that you believe your hand is clearly best and you are calling to disguise your strength until later rounds. You don't smooth call an EP raise with 97o. In fact, this should be called a donk call.