break on trough

I spent a lot of time studying the games of my regular opponents after the games and since then I didn't even have a losing session for two weeks, which is way too out of the ordinary. This is not the best months I've had so far but the most stable one.

I think when you are sitting in a table full of regulars it is not enough to play a solid game. Because all of the regulars have more or less solid games as well. Finding good bluff spots, making thin value bets and making hero calls against thin value betters are essential if you want to be the hunter and not the hunted.

Here are some hands to discuss for today:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3756532

this is played with a standard regular at 5-10

Altough I usually check my 2nd pair type of hands from position, I do make a cbet for mixing it up. When I get called here on the flop his range is any K, any T, any flush draw, QJ, 89 and he would raise me hands with better value.
The turn is an A without a flush draw but completing a straight draw. Now I decide to make a turn cbet as my hand is not beating his range anymore with the intension of a semi- bluff with my pair and gutshot. (if he has a T or a flush draw here I assume that he would fold them as well). The turn is a 7 bringing the flush and the perfect oppurtunity to make a 3-barrel bluff against his K. I am almost pretty sure that he hasn't QJ a flush draw (except maybe an A high flush draw that I think he would lead with it as the board is very scary to make a value bet with a worse hand.) The only hand I'm afraid here is a AT that he was afraid of AK or a QJ on turn and decides to check call with it. But I don't think he would play that weak his AT.

So it's a perfect example of turning a hand into a bluff.

here is antoher hand I played with the same player. I'm making somewhat of a hero call on the river.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3756633

I'm putting him on a very wide range of hands when he calls my flop bet. I check the turn with the intension of calling but he checks behind on a double flush draw board which made me eliminate almost every Q except maybe a Q9. When the river brings a T and he bets. I'm afraid of a Q9 but for the most of the time I'm expecting a flush draw or a A high type of hand. Actually 43 surprised me for a guy with a tight image.

Good luck all!

why does it always rain on me?

I played a short session today, I gave away lots of small pots to hands like q7, K3, 47 and so on... I only went all-in two times and both in the only nl 1000 euro table I was playing:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3714282

The mole calls 680 euro where the pot is only 150 € with 9 outs.

the following hand is with domcee I just want to see that he is folding in one reraised pot, so I go all in whenever I reraise him but he never folded yet.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3714296

maybe one day he will loose a coinflip as well

after thoughts

I found one tool which helps to better understand the swings in the game. It actually calculates the "risk of ruin" which means the risk of losing all your bankroll for your given winrate, standard deviation and bankroll.

Here is the link:

http://www.poker-tools-online.com/riskofruin.html

You can write your winrate and standard deviation in terms of per 100 hands instead of per hour, make sure the units match, that's all.

Let's have a look at my risk of ruin knowing that my winrate is 9 bb/100 standard deviation 95 bb/100 and bankroll 45000 (as I started playing NL1000 this month, I'm putting down my winrate for 2008 in all levels which may be a little optimistic)

My risk of ruin calculates

0.012653%

which is very close to zero so I can confidently play with this bankroll if I can keep my winrate on this level. The interesting part is that the possilibility of losing 10000 is 13% with these stats. (which will mean I don't have enough bankroll to keep playing on this limit).

A few days ago really ugly situations occured and I ended up losing 6k (the biggest share went into the pockets of imakitrain who I find way too over-aggro and I can exploit in the long run). I didn't go on a huge tilt after losing that amount but I thought that I was the unluckiest guy on earth. Even if we assume that I was able to keep my winrate against imakitrain and other regulars of the day when we look at this calculator we see that the possibility of this event was 30%.

I want to stress out a few points about these calculations, first of all the standard deviation calculated by the poker tracker is accused to be biased because 100 hands in no limit hold'em don't have a normal distribution and it should have been done by 1000 hands. There is a strange dispute going on this stuff at

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/15/poker-theory/depth-analysis-variance-poker-23281/#post378062

I forgot about all this statistical methods I saw in the university but I will look at this more carefully one day I suppose. Untill then I see nothing wrong about using poker tracker's SD.


After the day I lost 6k during 3 days I recovered almost all of it. I will post here 2 hands I played today (I don't want to turn this blog into a whinning area but I can't help posting these 2)

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3711996
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3712006

two "two-outers" in one day is a lot but I'm proud I ended the session +1k.

Wait for me NL 2000 I'm coming!

Good luck my fellow grinders!

PS: let's not be blind against Israel's cruelty. Force your governments to do something about it if you can. All we want is peace.

Bull's Eye !

In my first entry I said that I was to going to use this blog for tacking purposes but I think I found something better to keep track of wins/losses and expenses. A basic money manager where I update my accounts after every session is a great tool. I am going to note there the transfers between accounts and my expenses as well. So 2009 will be a much more organized year for me.

I started to play 5-10 with more than 40 buy-ins now. I am confident of my play and I seriously think I can win more than 2-4 on this level. In my session today I was losing around 4k after losing 3 coinflips, 1 badbeat and some tough beats. There was a guy on my table playing with 88 vpip, suddenly I noticed that the same guy was sitting on 10-20 with 2,5 buy-ins with another donk I know who had 3,5 buy-ins in front of him. So after 6 months I decided to take a shot on 10-20. Unfortunately when I sat on table the second donk was already gone. But I played this 2 lucky hands in 10 minutes and saved the day :)

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3666505
he was playing 88/35 and never folded to a 3bet before.


Here comes the lucky hand
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3666509

Don't blame me guys, I was surprised he had QQ there, I was expecting K4 actually and I was going to fold the turn. But I must say, I felt goooood! :)