CardRunners

Anyone who has followed this blog will know my bankroll has been, shall we say, up and down a lot this year.

My first blog of 2008 was entitled "It's going to be a long year" and that was right. 

Start 2008 roll around $3k.

January: Playing 100NL and winning some, got roll to $4k on 23rd.
February: Took a stab at 200NL - and dropped 5 buy-ins!  Moved back to 100NL and got roll back to $4k on 24th.
March: Roll to $5k on 5th.  Loose $800 on 6th.  Win $550 on 7th.  Move up to 200NL and hit a bad run and drop $3k over a couple of weeks.
April: Still losing at 100NL. Refining my game back at 50NL following some coaching sessions.
May: Playing 50NL and winning, and HU and losing.
June: Start off with a 4 buy-in losing session, roll down to $950.
July: Win $440 playing 50NL-HU.
August: Win $2300 playing live in Vegas - and get an upgrade to Virgin upper class on the way home!
September: Start a 10k hand sample to do a "leak finder" type analysis on. It was pretty much break-even as a sample but got some very useful info from the analysis.
October: Laptop crashes losing all my PT data.  Life tilt follows ;-)  At the low point roll is $400 and I've got it all on a $5/$10 PLO HU table!  Get down to $125, then double up 2 hands in a row and quit thinking "I really should take this a bit more seriously". 
November: Win a CR hoodie!  Turing point of my poker career for sure.  Buy a new PC, monitor and desk and (finally!) get a proper set up at home.  Roll at $477.48 so decide to grind 50NL (pah - 10 buy-ins is plenty!) until I prove to myself I can beat it consistently.  Play 15k hands and win 7.12bb/100.
December: Continue the grind, and experiment with 16 tabling Full Ring.  Play 12k hands of 6-max @ 2.1bb/100, and 17k hands of FR @ 6.6bb/100.

Since Nov. 12th won $1,229.85 and got $342.12 in rakeback (and free CR for a month!).

End 2008 with roll just over $2k.



Anyone care to guess where it will be this time next year!?!

I'm really liking this mass multi-tabling lark.  Obv. getting good results helps ;-)  That said, I think there are a lot of other positives for me/my style of play.

Firstly here are today's stats for about an hour of play:



I started out with 16 tables but one of them timed out and I didn't notice.  I think what I need to do is occasionally tile the tables (my set up just had them cascaded) so I can quickly see if I have timed out anywhere and recycle the table.

Given I was playing full ring I'm definitely playing looser than many - 21/18 is pretty LAG for 16 tables!

The biggest plus for me though is the fact that you can't dwell on results,  Here's my graph:



I had a great start (got quads twice!) and was soon up, but after 850 hands or so I was down for the session.  Normally if I'm 6-tabling I check my results quite often (sorry Steve!).  However, with 16 tables there isn't time so I just carried on playing and hit a nice run at the end.

So, the positives:

• I can play pretty ABC poker - aggressive in position, taking stabs at pots, but no need for complex multi-street bluffs etc.
• There's no time to dwell on a bad beat.  In fact, most of the time you don't see the result of a hand so you don't know you've taken one!
• Obv. you get in a lot of hands quickly.

• I haven't been using a HUD - probably need to set it up.  When the tables are cascaded it's ok but tiled it's a no-hoper!
• Can't really use reads on people.  You sort of notice if someone is 3-betting you a lot after a while, but it's easy to lose track of who's playing like what.

Just in case my last entry made it look like live poker was more rigged than online I just saw this lovely example of deep-stacked play.

Really, with hands like these going on how can anyone doubt the viability of online poker as a money making opportunity?!?

Seat 1: Chareon ($40.30) -
Seat 2: nsdclan ($52.30) -
Seat 3: bwstone ($114.90)
Seat 4: S1rSc00pAL0t ($191)
Seat 5: the bobo bush ($100)
Seat 6: Tall_Mat ($51.65) -

PRE-FLOP:

Chareon posts small blind $0.25
nsdclan posts BIG blind $0.50
Dealt To: Tall_Mat


RAISE bwstone ($2.50)
FOLD S1rSc00pAL0t
RAISE the bobo bush ($8.25)
FOLD Tall_Mat
FOLD Chareon
FOLD nsdclan
CALL bwstone ($5.75)

bwstone is the one to watch.  Think about his range for opening UTG then flatting a 3-bet.

FLOP:

Pot: $17.25
   

CHECK bwstone
BET the bobo bush ($9.50)
RAISE bwstone ($28.50)
RAISE the bobo bush ($52.50)
RAISE bwstone ($106.65)
CALL the bobo bush ($39.25)
UNCALLED bwstone ($14.90)

Go on, put him on a hand.
















No really, don't read any further before you've given him a range.









Make it as wide as you like.











Bit wider.








Even wider.









Ok?  Read on.





TURN:

Pot: $200.75
     

RIVER:

Pot: $200.75
      

SHOWDOWN:
bwstone:

the bobo bush:


bwstone collected $197.75 from main pot with a flush, Queen high

SUMMARY:
Total pot: $200 Rake: $3

Final Board:
     

Seat 1: Chareon small blind folded before the Flop - Net Gain/Loss: ($-0.25)
Seat 2: nsdclan big blind folded before the Flop - Net Gain/Loss: ($-0.5)
Seat 3: bwstone showed [Kc 4s] and won 197.75 with a flush, Queen high - Net Gain/Loss: ($97.75)
  
Seat 4: S1rSc00pAL0t didnt bet folded - Net Gain/Loss: ($0)
Seat 5: the bobo bush showed [Qh Ac] and lost with a pair of Queens - Net Gain/Loss: ($-100)
  
Seat 6: Tall_Mat button didnt bet folded - Net Gain/Loss: ($0)


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There was an event going on at the International Club on Wednesday so I took the opportunity to get some live play in, with somewhat mixed results.

First there was a tag-team tournament, with 2 players per team switching out every 15 minutes.  One problem with this was due to the slow nature of live play you normally only got an orbit or so in every sitting which made the event a bit disjointed.  We lasted until the middle stages when Howard (my partner) got it in good with TT 3-way on a 347 board.  The villains flipped over 55 and 66 so we were looking good until the turn brought a 6 and we were drawing dead (ok, 2 outs for a chop but that's pretty close to dead).

I then played some 1/2 pot-limit hold 'em, and got it in on the turn with AQ on a Qxxx 2-diamond board vs a flush draw, which proceeded to hit on the river.

Next I tried my luck at the 1/2 PLO table.  One aspect of live play is there are often straddles in play.  When I sat at the table I was immediately UTG so I posted a straddle to give off that "live one" image!  UTG+1 raises, UTG+2 calls as does the button and the big-blind.  The straddle is live so I peer at my cards to find AAKT single suited!  Now that's a nice hand to have in this situation, so I raise the pot and get 2 callers.  I have 70% of my stack in already so I'm betting any flop, and get on called on a J94ss board.  He flips over AQT8 with a flush draw and I'm in pretty poor shape.  The flush duly hits and I'm now two buy-ins down in around 30 minutes!  I manage to get back a buy-in before getting moved to the main PLO game, which by now is fairly rocky.  Howard however is having a great run and makes a combination of some great hands and great laydowns to build a very nice stack.

During the evening I saw people hitting one outers for large pots 3 times.  Firstly someone rivered quads to turn his underboat into the nuts.   Howard then had a nice hand where he called a turn bet and then raised on the river with the board showing Th9h3hAcJh.  The original raiser agonised for ages.  He clearly had the ace-high flush, but was worried about what Howard could be raising with other than the straight-flush.  Eventually he convinced himself he had to call and Howard duly flipped over KhQh.  The call was somewhat closer given the fact that the original raiser had Ah8h, which removed a lot of straight flush possibilities.  It turned out not to be his night as a few hands later he got it in vs. a short-ish stack with the nut flush draw, only for it to hit giving his opponent a straight-flush.

I was mostly being nitty but played one hand fairly badly.  The board was A35 with a flush draw and I had 467K.  I bet 3 streets despite bricking off and was shown 24xx.  Oops.

Towards the end I heard that the pot-limit hold 'em game had got very good with one particularly rich fish playing. The downside was there was also a very good hold 'em player at the table (who was taking lots of money from the fish) but I managed to get a seat two to his left which was ok.  Sure he'd steal my big blind a lot but I'd have position on him most of the time so could avoid too much trouble.  The game was £2/£5 and most people had stacks over £1,000. I sat with £400 and ran it up to £700 in around 45 minutes.  This put me pretty much level for the night so when the fish left the game I decided to call it a night.

On a side note I had my CR hoodie on which attracted many comments.  It seems a lot of people hold the site in high regard, which is good to hear.  There were a few comments about how it has ruined Full Tilt since "everyone there is a CR member so there's no value" - the victim of it's own success?

Here's an odd hand. 

It's folded to the small blind who just completes.  He has been playing pretty loose (54/15) so I bump it up with QJs and flop top two.  OK, maybe I should make it $2 pre-flop but let's move on.  He leads the flop, and I make a fairly hefty raise which he just calls.

On the turn I can't put him on a hand I beat that fits with the flop action, but I can't really see how he gets to being ahead given the pre-flop action, unless he has AT or 22, which is an extremely narrow range!  Normally when something doesn't make sense I just bet at it (!) since it often turns out to be a poorly thought out bluff by the villain (i.e. the betting doesn't tell a convincing story) but this time it just felt like he had a KJ type hand.  That's the problem with folding, you may save money but you end up wondering...

Seat 2: Facerom ($36.75) - ( 54% / 15% / 4.5/ 1)
Seat 3: Tall_Mat ($50.75) - (22% / 16% / 2.3/ 1)
Seat 4: NASH-NON ($57.80) ( 0.00% / 0.00% / 0.00/ 1)
Seat 5: Mentos13 ($69.35) ( 0.00% / 0.00% / 0.00/ 1)
Seat 6: digitalfun ($56.70) - ( 0.00% / 0.00% / 0.00/ 1)

PRE-FLOP:

Facerom posts small blind $0.25
Tall_Mat posts BIG blind $0.50
Dealt To: Tall_Mat


FOLD NASH-NON
FOLD Mentos13
FOLD digitalfun
CALL Facerom ($0.25)
RAISE Tall_Mat ($1.50)
CALL Facerom ($1)

FLOP:

Pot: $3
   

BET Facerom ($2)
RAISE Tall_Mat ($8)
CALL Facerom ($6)

TURN:

Pot: $19
     

BET Facerom ($13)
FOLD Tall_Mat
UNCALLED Facerom ($13)

Facerom collected $18.05 from main pot

SUMMARY:
Total pot: $19 Rake: $0.95

Final Board:
    

Seat 2: Facerom small blind collected 18.05, mucked - Net Gain/Loss: ($8.55)
Seat 3: Tall_Mat big blind folded on the Turn - Net Gain/Loss: ($-9.5)
Seat 4: NASH-NON didnt bet folded - Net Gain/Loss: ($0)
Seat 5: Mentos13 didnt bet folded - Net Gain/Loss: ($0)
Seat 6: digitalfun button didnt bet folded - Net Gain/Loss: ($0)


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