A Rough Day at the Tables

The King tried multi-tabling to terrible results.  The cards were not coming either, there were very few playable hands and the blinds and shallow entries ate up his buy-in. It was a terrible session one.  He also played a little loose with some suited cards and made some minor mistakes.  Finally after several hours he caught two small/medium sized pots and partially came out of the deep hole he was in,

Session two was the same, in that the losses gradually depleted his buy-ins on each table he hopped around on.  The despair of a losing a  week of winnings is unimaginable.  Finally after a couple hours of carefull play, this time, at a higher table, luck came in the nick of time.  The first hand was the nuts a straight with no flush or full house possible, however the pot was just medium to large because the pot was contested by only two others on the river.  The pot, that sealed it, was a low straight and it did not come easy.  The river put a three of a suit on board so somebody could have had a flush, and the straight was not the nuts.  With half the table at the river, the pot was big.   Not a victory, when there is nothing left - everthing was gone - emotions, nerves, hope.....   and the Cavalry arrived.

Multi-Tabling, Quitting Too Soon, Full Moon Shining, The King of Micro Limit Poker (resigned to another year in mediocrity)

Multi-Tabling, August 28, 2010

The 5-10¢ tables were tight, as usual, so the King stayed at the 2-4¢ tables, but achieving a higher end of the year earnings was also important, so he tried multi-tabling.  The session went well and his efficiency was about 95% that of playing on just one table.  The problem of keeping track of table selection was solved by having both games of the same type, namely, loose and somewhat passive.  Mason Malmuth, in Poker Essays volume one, wrote that medium size pots are the best pots to play in.  These pots are bet and raised once on the preflop and flop and with the smaller pots - they are usually not raised much.  An interesting occurance is that games usually become tigher and aggressive, people get tired of losing so they play tighter.  By being aggressive, the try to knock out the players after them by raising and reraising and if they succeed the pot will be contested by fewer players.  Loose aggressive games are just terrible sometimes because of their wild fluctuations.





QUITTING WHILE AHEAD - A MINOR MISTAKE
Some players play until they get ahead and then they quit when they win a big pot or two. In poker, the odds of winning a pot are low, so the graph of a buy-would be gradually declining and occassionally it would spike up when a pot is won.  The blinds are the least profitable positions and the right time to leave the table is just before the blinds, but some people are so tired from long sessions, trying to get even. that they leave the table after winning a big pot. They don't wait till the blinds reach them.  The King, in a year has not left a table, until the blinds reach him, more than a few times.



FULL MOON SHINING

This photo was taken because there was a familiar avatar at the table.  1) Don Corleone is from Lubin, Poland, 2) JCFB028  from Lima, Peru,  3) Joant - Zaandem, Holland, 4) Seobanker - Kpeme??r, Turkey 5)  Tripanic - Millington, Tennessee, 6) Gonzsay - Corrientes, Argentina, 7) Vasia10 - Mockba (Moscow is spelled Mockba), 8) xSheryjanex - Telford, England, and waiting to come on is Llyashka - Minsk, Russia.  Actually, since working on the starting hands project, game play has been minimal, and since beginning there are not many familar avatars.  The player with the red and black avatar with the Batman type of logo was aggressive.  Many times the avatar reflects the playing style,and the major concern is the avatars that look like the player might be aggressive and bet and bet.

There was a white sheet of paper under the screen and the screen had a lot of reflected light on the bottom part, but with photoediting the white glare was minimized.

THE KING OF MICRO LIMIT POKER

RESIGNED TO ANOTHER YEAR IN MEDIOCRITY

Draw poker, so far, is more appealling as a second game besides limit hold 'em.  There are only two rounds of betting compared to four in hold 'em.  PokerStars has a fair number of five card draw games. Because each player holds five cards instead of two in hold 'em, the amount of players is limited to six or less.  One of poker's strange outcomes is that there is more stability with more players in the game.  Stablity in the buy-in and bankroll are key considerations for the King

End of Fiscal Year Two

It is the end of year two for the King and having reached his earnings goal, he plods on to year three.  For fiscal year three, The King will try more of the higher stakes games like 5-10¢, 10-20¢ and 25-50¢ in limit hold-em and also give draw poker a good shot.  Progress is slow and the King will have to spend another year in mediocrity at the micro stakes tables.

Cowboy Poker

Draw Poker is the game most people are familiar with, and PokerStars has a good number of these games.  No-limit is just so wild, draw seems like a game that the King can devote some time into.  Unfortunately, there is not a lot of books out on this poker variation.  Full Tilt does not have this game and Cake Poker does.  It is an easy to learn but hard to master poker variation.  In the old west, this is the game they played and also on the riverboats .

Another Session of Some Looseness and Some Aggression

Certain times of the day have the good games and this past session was at a non-optimal time and the results were break-even. 

There are three more days to the end of the year and the strategy sheet, with its massive amounts of info, is taking shape but will not be finished in time.  However, two of the five parts are finished and being used.  The late position was 200+ lines and was separated into pairs, suited and unsuited before being compressed.  After shortening this section, it should be a total of about 135 lines. 

The button is the best position and Poker Tracker has proved that it is.      

A Little Loose and a Little Aggressive, Boring

It was not the best time to play, but what the hell.  The games were a little loose and bets were getting raised and even reraised.  If those games were very loose it would have been better. The fishes were trying isolation plays but with crappy hands.  So, jumping into the fracas required waiting for a good hand or two.  So those hands came and after an hour, the session was over and the King had another winning sesssion.  It wasn't great because besides being in aggressive games, the cards were not coming. 

The strategy sheet is coming along, but is longer than desireable.

Beating the tight games is, at this time, all theory, but this is the future.

Finally, the King threw away two pennies in a sit and go tournament and lost on his first hand AQ offsuit.  The 2¢ sit and go is very fast moving and the blinds were chewing up his chips. 

One of Five Strategy Sheets Completed

There is no end to perfection, so 8/24/10 is the deadline for the King to finish his strategy sheets in five parts.  The first part, of early position play, is finished and ready  to use.

On the 24th, fiscal year two ends and the gains have been good but not like month two.  At this stage, working to the strategy sheet is mostly compressing the information that is already there.  The new strategy sheet is modeled after M Hilger's strategy sheet (that is only five pages) but will be much longer - something like 35 pages.

No-limit, No-limit, No-limit

The limit games were not ideal for playing, but the King played anyway for fun and his earnings were minimal.  No-limit games are always there in great numbers and everywhere. With just a little time available, the King played in play money no-limit and made $400 +.  With a little study, making play money is much easier with no-limit.

The King is still trying to finish his strategy sheets little by little and spent just 1/2 hour on them yesterday.

Limit Poker Subsidizing No-Limit

After a short but winning session on the limit hold 'em games, the King played in a 2¢ buy-in sit and go tournament.  The tournament went very fast with its escalating blinds and the four hands that he played were  KK, KJs, QQ and J9 offsuit.  The KK won he pot with another player going all in, KJs was just for a $200 bet, a late player went all-in and the King folded, with the third hand he had QQ and lost to K5 offsuit a garbage hand.  The idiot caught a King and won the big pot.   In the final hand the King was left with $120 and the $400 big blind was next so he went all in with this crappy hand and lost it.  It was a good experience.

In colonial America 2¢ could buy a block of cheese, the King is not smiling

Multi-Tabler from Korea

While playing at a full-ring, limit hold 'em table, the King accidentally put in a search for PokerStar Pros who are online at the very moment.  At that time of day, there were many pros online and the King perchance clicked on a Korean pro since asian countries have their favorite games and poker is not as popular as in Europe, Russia, Latin America and the U.S.

The Korean is Tae Joon Noh and he was playing 14 tables simultaneously with 12 tables of $1-$2 no-limit hold 'em and two tournament tables.  The above picture is from a $300 buy-in tournament, where he had to pay $320 as an entrance fee.  Noh's estimated winrate at the $1-2 tables is, being conservative, about $15/ hour per table.  For 12 tables he makes $180/ hour. 

Noh's Bio from PokerStar's Website

The Korean pro gaming scene has produced some exceptional poker talent over the years, and another Team PokerStars Pro to come from that background is Tae Joon Noh. Before he discovered poker, Tae played Warcraft 3 professionally, as well as studying business management at university. He took his first steps in poker when he played a live freeroll, and incredibly he went on to win the tournament. The thrill of making the final table and winning that event inspired him, and he’s now one of the top Korean players on the circuit.

After that first live success, Tae took his game online and began to build a bankroll. He’s a high volume player, and that experience came in very handy when he sat down to play his first major event - the PokerStars Asia Pacific Poker Tour event in Manila in 2008. Considering he was still pretty much a live poker rookie, his runner-up finish was a massive result and announced him as a big talent on the Asian scene. He narrowly missed out on glory after a grueling six-hour heads-up battle, but the $103,760 he won for 2nd place, as well as the confidence he gained, have meant he’s been able to take his career to the next level. He’s a regular at the Macau Poker Cup, and has numerous cashes in those events to his name, including five final table appearances. With so many deep finishes on his resume, his main focus now is to get that elusive big tournament win under his belt, and it should just be a matter of time.

Tae enjoys the pro poker lifestyle and the rewards it brings. He lists collecting cars and watches as his interests away from the tables, and judging by his tournament results, those collections will continue to grow for some time. In his downtime he still likes to play video games, with Starcraft 2 being his favorite. Tae plays poker online only at PokerStars, and you can find him at the tables with the User ID ‘Tae Joon Noh’.

Bad Omen

Real Money Session (after work)
Einstein with his toungue out is a bad omen when another player uses this as an avatar.  In the past, this omen always resulted in a loss, but last night the King triumphed for the first time and had a winning session. This omen appears when the King is fatigued, not playing optimally and acting mechanically.  The tide has turned and the King, armed with new strategies and with more experience, can play, well enough, even when tired.

Fast forward.  Played in a freeroll tournament and came in 1,400th out of 9,000.  The loose aggressive players were droppng like flies and some of them were winning big pots by going to the river.  Slept a few hours, then played another session and felt somewhat insecure for playing just for the experience of playing.  The King has been playing using a very brief outline and a somewhat detailed outline for a tight game (but playing mostly in loose games).  The Hilger tables have been helpfull but they take up too much space for fast referral, in the heat of battle (fish carnage, slaughter), at the poker table.  The King has been having a great month at the micro-limit tables.

Set up another computer to open excel (student edition) separately. Excel does not open up twice, ie the King is not able to open two spreadsheets and compare them side to side with the dual monitor set-up. 

Every Little Edge

Advancing in poker requires taking on every little edge to make a bit more and to appear more loose. When a very tight player bets, he has a good hand and the other players tend to fold more, and the tight player gets no action to recover from all the blinds he contributed to.

Beginners are advised to avoid playing marginal hands and thus have a smaller range of hands to play.  When a beginner has a good hand, he has to maximize the winnings from that hands. Small Stakes Hold 'em by Miller and Sklansky is not easy reads and in the beginning the King had to just find the essence of the book and applied them to the real money games.  The pots entered were few and far in between, the outcome of these pot battles were heart pounding because the pots were so big.

Pot odds were not important when starting to play poker and starting hands were important.  With high pot odds, more hands can be played as strange it seems.  Another strange situation is that loose games with a lot of players are easier to beat than tight games with fewer players, because when starting poker almost two years ago, the King avoided loose games.  The King played in tight passive games and playing them wrong, lost a little and his bankroll hovered between $19 to $24 continually for the first six months.  The initial deposit was $25 and he was in the red from $1 to $6 always. Progress was slow and the King was learning tools were 1) mimicking the play of Conan from Turbo Software and 2) statistical analysis of card distributions using mostly Turbo software.  Realizing that it would take several lifetimes to learn the game, the King turned to "Hold 'em for Advanced Players" and from that time (March 2009), the gains started happening.

Hold 'em for Advanced Players helped with the tight passive games but no so much with the loose games and the King struggled when switching to loose games.  The first year ended with a small gain and the achievement of a goal to make at least $5 or quit poker.  Believe it or not, playing year round and making $5+ seemed like an impossible goal.

With year two ending, and working on starting hands it as quite a surprise to have memory jolts to gameplay more than a year ago.  The King's play was like drownproofing methods where you take a small movement to get a gulp of air and submerge (survive).  Year one passed with a little luck too, if the King didn't reach his goal, he would have quit poker and returned to sports betting.

A Set at the End at the Nickels and Dimes Tables

A little break is a good thing.  Amazing and instantaneous solutions to problems happen after a rest.  Today, dizzy with eyestrain and mental fatique from doing studies of unsuited high cards, the King took another rest with his head spinning with figures.  After the rest, he immediately adjusted the slider, that enlarges the page, and the studying went at a fast speed and accurate too.  Even earlier, with a new stragtegy sheet format, and departing from the Mathew Hilger table form, his eyes were fatigued from the looking at so many numbers.  Reeling, like a drunk, he took a resltess break, came back to his studies and immediately, without thought, shortened the figures displayed from 99, 88, 77 to 99-77 and applied it to other situations. Looking at the numbers immediately got easier.

Studying for two hours was tiring, much more tiring than playing.  Playing games is not tiring but stressfull on the nerves when loose players, playing junk hands, take their turns and win pot after pot.  Today's second session was after studying and started with a gradual loss of the King's buy-in, not much but he hung on and tried not to go on tilt.  The game offerings at that time of the day were good and the nickels and dimes tables were good enough that he played two hours there.  In the end he won two big pots and came in the positive.  The pot that put him in the positive had him with pocket queens and the flop had a king and a queen.  A set is a powerfull hand that has many outs to turn into a full house.  The king on board was worrisome and the player to his left bet and raised on the flop, turn and river, so he could have had pocket kings and a set also.  He didn't have pocket kings, and the King won a big pot and cashed out.

Micro Stakes Sit and Go Leaders

Today, Attract1ve, Ju_Poker, Squirt777 were three of five players at a sit and go semi-final table and were already in the money.  These three players, from checking Bluff magazine's online player profile, are long term winners in tournaments.  The two other players were not long term winners.  These sit and gos are dominated by winning players.  Attract1ve was the player that initially attracted attention for multi-tabling - 17 all at once.  Ju_Poker is from Tatui, Brazil.

The King had a good limit session altho from fatique he made a couple mistakes.  Mistake one was calling the bets preflop until they got capped with King Jack suited.... but it is questionable whether this is a bad play.  A loose aggressive who was betting, like there was no tomorrow, with a garbage hand kept betting and forced out two of five players.  The King stayed in with KJs.  Another mistake was accidentally calling a raise, from the small blind, with 72 offsuit. 

The play that stands out was a three outer that connected.  The King had 6♥-5♥ and the flop was 3♣, 2♣, A♦.  The pot was giving 10:1 odds and with two clubs on board the 4♣ had to be discounted leaving just three outs.  So with three passive players following the King, the King called, the turn was a 4♦ and the river  was a safe card.  This was a nice pot to win after a tough call and being tired, playing after work.

Strategy Sheet and a Session of No-Limit Play Money Poker

The strategy sheet project was changed in format from a listing based on order and position. The new format will have an additional classification of grouping, and then order and position.  With the grouping there will be a very short summary of the group, a ranking within the group and an overall ranking.  In the heat of of battle at the tables, this should be easier access the information.

Today's practice session on the no-limit tables went well.  In no-limit, as they say, the profits are bigger for the same blind size as limit, but the bankroll requirements are a lot bigger.  Playing 2-4¢ no-limit the total bankroll needed would be about $80 and playing 2-4¢ limit the bankroll needed would be $12.00.  With two years of limit experience, there is a lot of transfer of skills to no-limit.  The rules of the game are the same, but the change in betting structure changes the play of the game drastically.

Looking at the freeroll offerings at PokerStars, it is quite amazing that they have many more variations of poker other than limit and no-limit hold 'em.  They have draw, stud, omaha, badugi, and a few more, and each of these games have their variations. Pot limit Omaha is the 3rd most popular poker game after no-limit and limit.

A Different Layout

Putting the preplanned starting hands play in table form is resulting in large amount of repetitive information and this information will be hard to refer to in the rush of playing a real game.  The plans of action may have to be changed to categorization of hands by pairs, suited and unsuited.  Each of these could then be furthur separated by position and rank.

Exel, Student Edition, problems - only one spreadsheet, can be opened at a time.  With dual monitors, two spreadsheets cannot be put side to side. 

Windows 7 has Microsoft Works and the spreadsheet program load fast and is perfect for simple word processing.  XP did not have Works.  Works is good in that two spreadsheets can be opened and seen, at the same time, on dual monitor.

New Goals and Agonizing Over Preplanned Plays

With fiscal year two winding down, what are the King's goals for fiscal year three?  There will be a monetary goal, like years one and two, and some other goals to consider are:  branching out to no-limit, leading a more balanced life, having fun, moving up to 10-20¢ and 25-50¢ a bit more, ..

Working on preplanned plays are very tiring and the King is presently working on them at the middle position.  If as planned, this project will be done by the end of fiscal year two on 8/24/10.

Split Pots and Full Houses

The next project (split pot rules) is confusing.  Today there was a situation with a full house on the board Q♣-4♦-4♣-Q♠-4♥ and from the play of the two remaining players, until the river, no one seemed a better hand, than the board such as Qx, KK or AA.  Here, knowing the split pot rules would be usefull in choosing the correct play of betting, calling, checking or folding.

The beginning part of this project will be easy because the rules are unchangeable.  The second half, where actions are planned, beforehand, for the different situations, will be a brainteaser. There might be websites that offer advice on the myriad split pot situations.

Rules, Split Pots and Playing Any Ace

Sometimes, the appearance of playing too tightly is because of having a run of catching trash cards.  And when a good hand comes, the other players fold - making the good hand worth just the blinds.

Playing a few more hands to get more action, and to make a marginal return from them, will be the next step for the King.  In playing more aces, and a few more hands, a thorough study of the rules for split pots will be very usefull and is another project that is long overdue.

The next project, after the current Starting Hands Project is completed, will be split pot rules.  The target date to complete the current project is before the start of the next fiscal year in a couple of weeks.

A No-Limit Hold 'Em Session

Getting started in a regular practice session of no-limit hold 'em is a terrible experience but is necessary.  The  King played an hour of no-limit for play money and reading the recipe book by McEvoy and Daugherty has made a difference.  It was the second session and the plan is to play at least once a week in a no-limit ring game and to play at least once a week in a freeroll tournament.

Perusing the no-limit ring games offerings on  PokerStars, it was mind boggling in that there were a vast amount of no-limit games.

The King's interest level is higher with no-limit studying and the first study session today was much longer than the average limit study session.  Hitherto, studying has been limited to reading a recipe book by McEvoy and Daugherty a minute or two daily.

Theater View of Sportsbook.com Poker

Today, PokerStars' games were a bit tough, but Sportsbook.com Poker had just one full ring table and that table was soft. 

Cake Network, of which Sportsbook is a part of, did a total makeover of their table design.  The new design has long, thin avatars that are crisp and slick, but hard to look at because the avatars and wording are much smaller.  Switching to a horizontally stretched view made it a lot easier on the eyes.  Maximizing the screen didn't help much.

A plus side of Cake Poker is that players can change their screen names frequently, making it impossible to be handicapped by hand histories.