I guess I’m getting lazy. Or something.

Still, I’ve been cruising along , carrying on with the low buy-in tournaments. I’ve also had a bit of fun playing “Speed Poker”. This is the iPoker version of the old Rush Poker that Full Tilt invented. I’ve been playing it on Vernon’s, because they gave me $5 to give it a try.

It’s been a bit up and down though. More down than up, actually. I think I’m playing fine but there’s a lot of variance and the rake bites hard at $0.02-$0.05 blinds. How’s this for a roller-coaster?

I’m not sure where the trend line would go if PokerTracker was able to fit one.

But anyway, here’s the scorecards for the last two months:

Obviously I should avoid playing cash and just stake people: kudos to Habtrix for letting me buy a piece of the action in his live game – the Goliath at Coventry. He played great and could easily have gone on to final table, but as it was his winnings offset my cash table losses nicely.

September has started better, hopefully that will continue. Now that the weather is turning and the outdoor jobs aren’t on I hope to have some more play time…

So a few fun tournaments last month and not a lot else. One day I’ll get stuck in properly …

… and when I do, I’ll be the one at your table who has mastered the limp-fold.

Really, I do believe limping is underrated. Here’s some reasons why:

1) If it’s a nice passive table you can see lots of flops with great implied odds.

2) If you sit down and limp a couple of times early on, everybody writes “Fish” in the notes box. Then they fall over themselves to isolate, often with unsuitable hands.

3) If it’s a nice aggressive table you can limp knowing you are going to be isolated. This is great, because then you can limp-fold.

Okay, I admit that limp-folding isn’t a hugely impressive move. Not of itself, anyway. But look what it sets you up to do later on:

- you can make the hugely profitable limp-3bet bluff, you only need a real hand maybe one time in four;

- you can limp-call in position if you actually have a hand;

- you can limp-call in position as a float to take it away on a later street with air;

- you can occasionally not limp and make a pre-flop raise instead. You can rep all kinds of strong hands if you only raise 4% !

The 2 main things to watch out for are:

1) On a bad day you see a lot of limped flops. Just remember that the blinds have any 2 cards and they have a tendency to flop the big hands that you never do. So one pair is no good in these pots if you get plenty action;

2) If the table is neither passive nor aggressive you may be better off playing a more normal style. Limping is best on either a table full of isolating LAGs or on a table full of passive fish (like Facebook poker).

Good luck and enjoy confounding all the aggrofish!

Partly this is because I’ve been spending time on other things (Angry Birds? Gardening?); but also I know that my game needs work if I’m going to win at the wider game. I’ll enjoy putting the work in when I get started, but the need to stick with it makes me reluctant to get started.

It’s a poser, for sure.

Still, no excuse for not giving you the scores on the doors for April and May:

Now then, moving on…

In last night’s game there was some interesting discussion about “playing bingo instead of poker”, so this morning I thought it would be a good idea to check some of the maths.

There are a lot of situations late in tournaments where it is right to play bingo, i.e. to get all the chips in the middle with any 2 cards. There needs to be one or preferably both of two preconditions:

1. There should be enough dead money in the pot (blinds and antes)
2. There should be enough chance that the opponent(s) will fold and give you the pot.

So with the aid of Pokerstove and Excel I made up a nice little example…

The scenario

Blinds are 500-1000 with an ante of 100. There are 5 players left. You are on the small blind and it has been folded to you. You only had 8 big blinds left (8000 chips) and have put half a one in the pot already as small blind so you have 7500 back.

You estimate that if you go all-in, the big blind will call with any Ace or King, any pair, Q8 or better, J8 or better, T8 or better, 98 or 87 suited but will fold anything else.

What to do

Pretty much everyone knows you should go all-in here without looking at your cards, but let’s check the numbers.

• The big blind’s calling range here is 45% of their possible hands, so they will fold to your shove over 55% of the time. In this instance you win the dead money, 2000 chips.  55% x 2000 = +1100
• If the big blind calls, you might still win. Your any 2 cards will win a solid 40% of the time they call, in which case you win a nice 9500 chips (the 2000 dead money plus another 7500). 45% x 40% x 9500 = +1710
• If the big blind calls and you lose, it has cost you 5500 chips and you’re out of the game. This happens 60% of the time they call. 45% * 60% x 5500 = -1485

So your total chip expectation from going all in with any 2 cards is 1100 + 1710 – 1485 = +1325. This is such a profitable scenario that there’s no excuse for not shoving blind.

Interestingly, the BB can’t do much about this. If they decide to counter your play by calling with any 2 cards, your expectation goes up to +2000. If instead they tighten up, to say any pair and any 2 broadway cards, your expectation goes up to +1622.

I am told that all “serious players” have memorised the optimum push-fold ranges. This feels like hard work to me but it is one of the things I will spend some time getting the feel of one day. There is a useful set of charts here, for example.

There’s a time and a place for bingo poker!

This was my biggest pot of the month in terms of tournament chips. Nice turn card, too:

888 Poker – $0+$0|4000/8000 NL – Holdem – 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 3

CO: 168,036.00
BTN: 223,745.00
SB: 177,876.00
BB: 246,780.00
Hero (UTG): 127,326.00
MP: 754,237.00

CO posts ante 800.00, BB posts ante 800.00, Hero posts ante 800.00, MP posts ante 800.00, BTN posts ante 800.00, SB posts ante 800.00, SB posts SB 4,000.00, BB posts BB 8,000.00

Pre Flop: (16800.00) Hero has 6♦6♥
Hero raises to 16,000.00, MP calls 16,000.00, fold, fold, fold, fold

Flop: (48800.00, 2 players) 5♣7♥6♣
Hero bets 24,400.00, MP calls 24,400.00

Turn: (97600.00, 2 players) 6♠
Hero checks, MP bets 24,000.00, Hero calls 24,000.00

River: (145600.00, 2 players) 7♠
Hero bets 62,126.00, MP calls 62,126.00

Hero shows 6♦6♥ (Four of a Kind, Sixes) (Pre 66%, Flop 94%, Turn 100%)
MP shows 5♥A♥ (Two Pair, Sevens and Sixes) (Pre 34%, Flop 6%, Turn 0%)
Hero wins 269,852.00

I wouldn’t mind a few like that in Vegas next month. Roll on the holidays!

I submitted that post as my entry and they gave me ten tickets to use on WBCOOP freerolls.

I used them all and had a pretty good return: 7 SCOOP (Spring Championship Of Online Poker) tickets plus a small cash in the “main event” at the end of the series.

In total:

• Two $22 SCOOP tickets
• Four $11 SCOOP tickets
• One $5.50 SCOOP ticket
• $23 dollars in cash

Not at all a bad haul, thanks Pokerstars. Now I have to see if I can convert one of those SCOOP tickets into a decent cash. I think the series starts in May, after I’m back from Vegas (thinly veiled brag).

Away from WBCOOP, in February I recovered January’s losses; thanks mainly to a prize for placing in the UK Sharks 2011 Player of the Year final. Thanks Stu, you’re a gentleman! Who knows, maybe I’ll have a profitable first quarter of 2012 after all. Here’s the scorecard for February:
 

Onwards and upwards in March, hopefully!

Here we are again, time for another World Blogger Poker Championship on Pokerstars. The last two were great fun even though I didn’t win, so third time lucky!

The Pokerstars guys are keen to know what we would do with our winnings – top prize $5K would be fantastic.

In my case it is easy. I have a three part plan.

Part 1…
In a couple of months I’ll be on my third trip to Las Vegas. At the moment I’m planning to play a little $1-$2 cash and mix in a few cheap tournaments. But with the $5k my plans change completely: I’ll be rolled to make a daily pilgrimage to the Venetian to play the deepstack and take a shot at a decent cash during the fortnight.

Last time I was in Vegas I gave the Venetian a miss, spending time in the new Aria cardroom instead. I did go there during the ’09 WSOP, but was too cheapskate to play the proper deepstack and just had a bash at a $120 Second Chance instead. A little crapshooty but not a bad tournament, except that I was card and luck dead. With my skillz I need both cards and luck so that was that.

Anyway, I digress. The deepstacks proper sound excellent, being 2-day events with a decent stack and a decent clock. With enough money to not play scared I reckon I’ve got decent chances of luckboxing a decent score.

Part 2…
The next part of the plan is to put the Vegas proceeds (or with whatever is left, depending) back into Stars. From there I will perform a determined spin-up on the cash tables. I reckon from what I’ve seen of $200 NL it could be a good giggle. I’ll need to reduce that ft3b% stat though or I’ll get steamrollered!

Obviously if I’m down to my last $300 I’m going to have to start lower. But I have plenty of experience losing at $50NL 6-max so I reckon it’s only a matter of time before my luck turns.

This will carry on until the early summer at which point I will have a decent wedge, just in time for…

Part 3…
The Pokerstars spin-up proceeds will go back to Vegas with me in July to pay for some WSOP fun time. Hopefully there will be enough for a main event buy-in; otherwise it’ll be one or more of the smaller WSOP events. If I stick to NLHE the fields will be huge as will the prizes.

The resulting victory will be my passport to a residency at Stars mid-stakes and to the HSNL thread on 2+2. My natural wit, telegenicity and all-round-good-egginess will ensure me invitations to Sky Poker guest commentator, Pokerstars Red Pro and perhaps even the Palace.

I can see it all now. What could possibly go wrong?

…

Anyway, you are probably wondering why I’m prevaricating instead of giving you my January 2012 results. Simple really … I didn’t play much and when I did I didn’t play very well. But then, I always lose in January. I blame SAD. That and fish making resolutions.

But here’s the score on the door:

Oh well. Still, February has already started better, so we’ll see what happens!

I made a profit, which was nice:

I mostly spent my online time in 2011 playing microstakes tournaments, on Pokerstars and 888 with a smattering of other sites. My game is quite a bit better than a year ago with more gears available instead of just being a constant nit. No big cashes in there, but nonetheless a reasonable ROI.

Here’s my 888poker tournament graph for 2011. Pretty, isn’t it:

I had two bouts of cash play. The first was early in the year when I had a bash on Sky Poker, taking my previous year’s shortstacking profit and trying to play “properly” with it. I was rubbish at it so I abandoned the attempt and went back to micro tournaments.

Late in the year I went back to cash on 888. This started off the same way as Sky, so I sought the help of a couple of online mates who got me into a better mindset to help me claw some of the losses back. Cheers and kudos to kgr00 and reg, I owe you both a drink!

There’s still work to do though, the pots I lose are still much bigger on average than the pots I win. So either I need to value bet bigger or I have to stop calling big bets. Maybe even both?

Here’s a breakdown of profit by site. It always amazes me how many different sites I touch during the course of a year:

Ambitions for 2012: Play less, win more. Simple!

As you can see, it was my decision to get back into the cash games that did the damage. I had $100 or so on WSOP.com that wasn’t doing anything much, the players on that site (it’s a skin of 888) are pretty poor, so it seemed like a good idea to dip a toe into the $6 games and see how I got on.

The answer was, badly:

It didn’t feel like I was playing badly, in fact I was reasonably happy with the way I was approaching the games, but I had obviously forgotten how to play cash. It was going the same as it did last time I gave it a whirl 6 months ago. So about half way through that graph – at the bottom of the slide, in fact – I looked for some help.

I watched some videos online, and two very kind people who play lots of cash – Keith on UK Sharks and Reg on EMS – gave me some very useful input. Keith looked through some hand histories and Reg sat in for a sweat session. This was all hugely helpful. Most of it was reassurance and encouragement, but none the less valuable for that. My two biggest takeways were to remember that:

- I have to make sure I think through hands properly instead of sometimes making hurried decisions
- I have to make sure I get full value for my good hands.

The second point follows logically from the fact that the micro tables these days are hugely aggressive. Every table has some players who are relentlessly raising it up with all kinds of hands. Because of this it is easy to fall into a pattern of playing trappy / passive and thereby letting the opponent dictate the pot size. This can mean that when they win they win bigger pots than I do when I win. So the way to beat these people is to play a higher value range of starting hands than they do and to get enough money into the pot when I am strong enough to get to showdown. And to remember that should they start folding to me then I can exploit that – not by widening my range substantially, but by recognising the spots where they have probably missed.

If I remember this stuff it will be fine. Indeed I’m feeling better about my cash game now so let’s see a better graph next time.

One other good piece of advice was from Reg – the rake on $6 games on 888 is horrible, it’s better to play the $10 games where the players are just as bad and the rake is less severe. So that’s what I’m doing.

In the meantime, here’s a hand where I was headed for cooler town but got very lucky:

Pacific Poker – $0.06 NL – Holdem – 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 3

UTG: $6.99
MP: $11.58
CO: $6.00
Hero (BTN): $5.76
SB: $6.00
BB: $6.05

SB posts SB $0.03, BB posts BB $0.06

Pre Flop: ($0.09) Hero has 9♣J♣

UTG calls $0.06, MP calls $0.06, CO raises to $0.33, Hero calls $0.33, SB calls $0.30, fold, fold, MP calls $0.27

Flop: ($1.44, 4 players) Q♣K♥8♣
SB checks, MP checks, CO bets $1.02, Hero raises to $3.37, fold, fold, CO raises to $5.67, Hero calls $2.06

Turn: ($12.30, 2 players) T♣

River: ($12.30, 2 players) 8♠

CO shows K♣A♣ (Flush, Ace High) (Pre 65%, Flop 84%, Turn 0%)
Hero shows 9♣J♣ (Straight Flush, Queen High) (Pre 35%, Flop 16%, Turn 100%)
Hero wins $11.58

When I’ve played, it’s been almost exclusively low-level tournaments: forum games and micro buy-ins on 888.com.

Blogging fail – not a lot to write about poker-wise, so no entertainment for my reader.

Still, I’m here now. Here are the scores for the last two months:

As you see, I’m behind target again for the year, but still I’m in the black numbers just about. Which is fair enough.

One thing I’ve been doing is looking out for tournaments that have these features:
- cheap rebuy games, with
- an add-on that gives a lot more chips than the normal rebuy, and
- a long late registration period.

888.com and skins seem to do a few of these. The idea is to join as late as possible then hold on for the break and take the add-on. This means that although you join as a shortstack you are paying a lot less per chip than the average. So as long as you are adequate with a shortstack you start with a significant advantage in terms of EV. And even a mincash typically gets you like 4x your stake!

The theory is sound, but it would be good to take one or two of these down. Maybe in November.

T.J. Cloutier describes a poker player from back in the day who was easy to run over when sober, a chip-spewer when drunk, but an extremely dangerous opponent during the happily-buzzed phase of intoxication. In fact this general profile is fairly common, particularly amongst recreational players who are regular drinkers but who rarely play live. While such players are unlikely to become formidable opponents at any level of inebriation, a couple of drinks will often allow them to feel more settled at the table. Once they stop worrying about whether they are playing fast enough or handling their chips and cards correctly they can devote more of their attention to playing their best game.

This is me too. I noticed a long time back that at pretty much all games – darts, bridge, pool, golf, bowling, now poker too – I play best after a couple of loosening drinks but fall away as inebriation sets in. Quicker if the game involves standing up, obviously, but noticeably in any game.

So now I always have a glass next to me when playing.

Apologies to my reader for the long gap between posts, but here are the results of the online grind for July and August. Again I didn’t play a lot, but enough to keep my hand in:

Any profit is good profit. I’m sure the time will come again when I can get some volume in, but it might not be until after Christmas!