Having one of those days where I cant get a win for love nor money. Leaving aside my self-destruction at the $300K guaranteed I am having a day where I keep busting out of SNG tables when my monster hands are being beaten by even bigger monsters.
In 5 games so far, check out the following 4 bust-outs :
(1) Full house beaten : Opponent gets quad kings (pocket kings, hits his quad on the river). I'm out
(2) Trip Aces beaten - Playing A10, the flop comes AA2 - TRIP ACES, yeehaa. The other guy bets small, i reraise small, he reraises all in, i call. He shows AJ, edging out my kicker. I'm out
(3) Flush on the flop beaten by better flush on the flop - I limped in with J10 hearts, and flop a flush, with Ah-Qh on the board. Guy bets all into me, I call in a heartbeat. He shows 2 hearts, king high. Nut flush beats my 2nd nut flush. I'm out
(4) Trip 7's beaten - I limp in with pocket 77. Flop comes A 7 2. Guy bets all in into me. I call. He shows pocket aces for a set of aces. I'm out
I have thought about all of these hands, and cant see how I could have put down any of them, really. Massive hands where I get the action I badly wanted. And lost every one - drawing pretty close to dead on all of them. None were a classic "bad beat" - I was behind on every hand when the money went in.
Days like this are really hard to take, in terms of state of mind. Massive hands falling in my lap that I have to play, but opponents getting dealt even bigger monsters. Individually, any one bust-out can easily fall into the "variance" category (or "shit happens" as it is better known). When you get a run like the above in 4 out of 5 games, it falls into a new category of "I'm cursed" (better known as "this much shit is not meant to happen to one person, surely?").
When I feel cursed like this, I need to take a break. I am now in a state where I am apprehensive to play ANY hand. I mean if these monsters dont hold up, what the hell would I do with a rubbish hand like top two pair, or top-pair top top kicker? Garbage hands like that wouldnt stand up to anything.
Add on top my self inflicted horrors in the $300K Guaranteed, and its a full on "I hate poker" day today.
Time to take a rest from the carnage.
RESULTS
Games Played
4 x $22 SNG (6 seater, standard)
1 x $22 SNG (10 seater, speed)
Wins
None - 5 losses
Bankroll
Down $110 (to $156)
Showing posts with label online poker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label online poker. Show all posts
Sunday, 8 April 2007
Saturday, 7 April 2007
Rebuy Tourney Madness
I'm not planning to play too much today. I am saving my playing time for the $300K Sunday Guaranteed tomorrow. This normally has a $215 buy in, but of course, someone with my tiny bankroll couldnt afford this - and even if I could, it wouldnt be a good investment, given the number of proper players who are likely to be in there.
I qualified through an $11 Rebuy qualifier a few days ago. I don't play rebuy tourneys on principle - it seems to have the loosest play of all the formats. It coin-flipping heaven, with huge bets constantly being made by anyone with mediocre hands upwards. It seems a magnet for people with lots of money and no skill.
I entered this qualifier without realising it was a rebuy - I was seduced by a pop-up message from PP in the chat box while playing a standard game. The only bits that registered were "$300K", "5 minutes", "16 seats guaranteed". The "rebuy" bit didnt register.
I took a look at the tourney lobby, and with only a couple of minutes to go before the tourney started, there were only about 30-odd players registered to play. I signed up in a flash - $11 entry to a $215 buy in, with what I thought would be less than 100 players, and 16 guaranteed seats into tourney. It was a no-brainer in terms of value.
Shows what I know (and that PP know more). From all corners of the Party Poker nether regions, other players ran like lemmings towards the cliff, responding to the same message I had and registering for the tourney. By the time the tourney started, a couple of hundred people were registered, and suddenly it wasnt such a bargain entry.
And then I noticed it was a rebuy. Dammit. I read somewhere that a reasonable strategy for a rebuy is to do an immediate rebuy at the start of a game to double your stack, and to plan to buy the add-on after the first hour. I don't know if this was good advice, but I planned to follow it, so my "cheap" $11 game was likely to cost me almost 3 times that. The value was now even worse.
Anyway I rebuy at the start, and settle down to a tight game. Staying out of the firing line unless I have a premium hand and/or position, watching the coin-flippers indulge in an orgy of attempts to double up. People with 6K stacks going all in with 66, being called by someone with A5. People with any two suited cards chasing flushes like I would chase Jennifer Lopez in a thong. And when they get busted out, an immediate double rebuy and it starts again.
It was the loosest, most clueless table I have ever been at. There were 3-4 players with a seemingly unlimited budget just going at it non stop. All in with any semi-playable pocket hand, and regularly being called by the other coin flippers. They would take turns to double each other up/bust each other out/rebuy. They made between 6-10 rebuys each during that first hour (which means they spent about $60-$100 each!).
I sat back watching the carnage, only picking up 3-4 playable hands that I was willing to expose to this style of play in that first hour. Still, i built my 6K stack up to 10K without ever being at risk, and was happy enough with that. One minute before the freezout, I get involved in a hand with the chief coin flipper.
He had already made 9 rebuys that I counted (yes nine). 6 of the rebuys had been in the 5 minutes leading up to the break / freezout, and was playing like a complete idiot. Literally, all-in with any two cards. He leads out from the small blind with an all-in bet for his 6K stack. I am sitting pretty with pocket kings, and call. He shows 3-5off. I am laughing and congratulating myself that I will be not too far off the lead going into the freezout.
4 spades hit the board, I have none, he has one, and makes a flush. Having played completely solid poker for an hour, I was suddenly short stacked by the worlds biggest idiot making just the most awful play imaginable and getting rewarded for it.
I went on a trash-talking rampage that lasted a solid hour. I don't feel good about it now. I kind of humiliated the guy, who was an utterly clueless fool with seemingly a full blown gambling problem. It pushed him into his shell - he barely played a hand in the second hour, despite being the table big stack at the start.
I doubled up a couple of times to get back to the chip average, and then got a series of good hole cards that hit flops and got action, building a stack up to 56K by the second break. He was down to 8K when we were finally separated, way below the chip average. I protected my stack pretty well for the rest of the tourney, rarely putting chips at risk, and made it to the final 16 without too much drama, qualifying for the "big one" on Sunday.
Bizarrely, so did the coin flipping fool. We ended up back on the same table with 17 players left - with him the short stack of the 17, right on the bubble. I so very very very badly wanted him to get busted on the bubble - I could not believe he was still in after 3 hours and 45 minutes. But his luck knew no bounds - despite being extremely short stacked, he won 4 out of 4 coin flips in a row, despite being behind when the money went in each time - and sometimes way behind. It is quite staggering to behold a run of luck like that. He made it through by knocking out the other short stack, his 10-4 somehow beating his opponents dominating 10-8 by hitting a 4. I could have wept .
But I know, I know, I know, I gotta stop getting riled at these players. They can't help it, they are acting out of ignorance. I too was equally ignorant about 6 months ago - its just I didnt have the money to support that style of play over a prolonged period. Qualifying through a field of a couple of hundred players with that style of play has almost certainly condemned him to huge future losses. He will remember the style of play that worked for him on this occasion, and try to replicate it. He will pour endless cash into rebuys in a bid to repeat the magic of the past, only to be eventualy smacked on the head by a normal distribution curve. I have no doubt this guy will lose many thousands of dollars in a short space if time if he has the means to fund it.
The lesson I have learned? Well, to stay away from games where coin flipping lemmings hang out in numbers. To me, that means staying clear of Rebuy Tourneys, all forms of Speed poker, and SNG tables below the $11 buy in mark.
Still, all's well that ends well. I am in the $300K tourney, and look forward to being the fish in that particular pond.
I qualified through an $11 Rebuy qualifier a few days ago. I don't play rebuy tourneys on principle - it seems to have the loosest play of all the formats. It coin-flipping heaven, with huge bets constantly being made by anyone with mediocre hands upwards. It seems a magnet for people with lots of money and no skill.
I entered this qualifier without realising it was a rebuy - I was seduced by a pop-up message from PP in the chat box while playing a standard game. The only bits that registered were "$300K", "5 minutes", "16 seats guaranteed". The "rebuy" bit didnt register.
I took a look at the tourney lobby, and with only a couple of minutes to go before the tourney started, there were only about 30-odd players registered to play. I signed up in a flash - $11 entry to a $215 buy in, with what I thought would be less than 100 players, and 16 guaranteed seats into tourney. It was a no-brainer in terms of value.
Shows what I know (and that PP know more). From all corners of the Party Poker nether regions, other players ran like lemmings towards the cliff, responding to the same message I had and registering for the tourney. By the time the tourney started, a couple of hundred people were registered, and suddenly it wasnt such a bargain entry.
And then I noticed it was a rebuy. Dammit. I read somewhere that a reasonable strategy for a rebuy is to do an immediate rebuy at the start of a game to double your stack, and to plan to buy the add-on after the first hour. I don't know if this was good advice, but I planned to follow it, so my "cheap" $11 game was likely to cost me almost 3 times that. The value was now even worse.
Anyway I rebuy at the start, and settle down to a tight game. Staying out of the firing line unless I have a premium hand and/or position, watching the coin-flippers indulge in an orgy of attempts to double up. People with 6K stacks going all in with 66, being called by someone with A5. People with any two suited cards chasing flushes like I would chase Jennifer Lopez in a thong. And when they get busted out, an immediate double rebuy and it starts again.
It was the loosest, most clueless table I have ever been at. There were 3-4 players with a seemingly unlimited budget just going at it non stop. All in with any semi-playable pocket hand, and regularly being called by the other coin flippers. They would take turns to double each other up/bust each other out/rebuy. They made between 6-10 rebuys each during that first hour (which means they spent about $60-$100 each!).
I sat back watching the carnage, only picking up 3-4 playable hands that I was willing to expose to this style of play in that first hour. Still, i built my 6K stack up to 10K without ever being at risk, and was happy enough with that. One minute before the freezout, I get involved in a hand with the chief coin flipper.
He had already made 9 rebuys that I counted (yes nine). 6 of the rebuys had been in the 5 minutes leading up to the break / freezout, and was playing like a complete idiot. Literally, all-in with any two cards. He leads out from the small blind with an all-in bet for his 6K stack. I am sitting pretty with pocket kings, and call. He shows 3-5off. I am laughing and congratulating myself that I will be not too far off the lead going into the freezout.
4 spades hit the board, I have none, he has one, and makes a flush. Having played completely solid poker for an hour, I was suddenly short stacked by the worlds biggest idiot making just the most awful play imaginable and getting rewarded for it.
I went on a trash-talking rampage that lasted a solid hour. I don't feel good about it now. I kind of humiliated the guy, who was an utterly clueless fool with seemingly a full blown gambling problem. It pushed him into his shell - he barely played a hand in the second hour, despite being the table big stack at the start.
I doubled up a couple of times to get back to the chip average, and then got a series of good hole cards that hit flops and got action, building a stack up to 56K by the second break. He was down to 8K when we were finally separated, way below the chip average. I protected my stack pretty well for the rest of the tourney, rarely putting chips at risk, and made it to the final 16 without too much drama, qualifying for the "big one" on Sunday.
Bizarrely, so did the coin flipping fool. We ended up back on the same table with 17 players left - with him the short stack of the 17, right on the bubble. I so very very very badly wanted him to get busted on the bubble - I could not believe he was still in after 3 hours and 45 minutes. But his luck knew no bounds - despite being extremely short stacked, he won 4 out of 4 coin flips in a row, despite being behind when the money went in each time - and sometimes way behind. It is quite staggering to behold a run of luck like that. He made it through by knocking out the other short stack, his 10-4 somehow beating his opponents dominating 10-8 by hitting a 4. I could have wept .
But I know, I know, I know, I gotta stop getting riled at these players. They can't help it, they are acting out of ignorance. I too was equally ignorant about 6 months ago - its just I didnt have the money to support that style of play over a prolonged period. Qualifying through a field of a couple of hundred players with that style of play has almost certainly condemned him to huge future losses. He will remember the style of play that worked for him on this occasion, and try to replicate it. He will pour endless cash into rebuys in a bid to repeat the magic of the past, only to be eventualy smacked on the head by a normal distribution curve. I have no doubt this guy will lose many thousands of dollars in a short space if time if he has the means to fund it.
The lesson I have learned? Well, to stay away from games where coin flipping lemmings hang out in numbers. To me, that means staying clear of Rebuy Tourneys, all forms of Speed poker, and SNG tables below the $11 buy in mark.
Still, all's well that ends well. I am in the $300K tourney, and look forward to being the fish in that particular pond.
6-Seaters v 10-Seaters
I have had a gut feeling for a while that I am winning more money at 6-seater tables than at 10-seater tables. As a reminder of the payout structure :
At 6-seaters, only the top 2 pay (a 60/40 split of the winnings)
At 10-Seaters. The top 3 pay (a 50/30/20 split of the winnings)
My pub mathematics tell me that in the long run, if all players had equal ability, then I would expect over the long run to win money 30% of the time in the 10 Seater room, compared to 33% in the 6 Seaters. i.e not an awful lot in it in terms of the frequency of winning some money, and no really blatantly obvious reason why I should perform much better in the 6 seaters than the 10 seaters.
This isnt borne out by my (somewhat sketchy) statistics that I have kept of my play of the past 2 months. There are a couple of trends that kinda jump out of my stats which cover about 200 games over the past 2 months.
Firstly, I am a break even player in 6 seater games. My losses are mostly accounted for by my 10-Seater games. Within the 10 seater games, I lose more heavily in speed games than I do in the standard games. Note that I am not completely rubbish at the 10 seaters, I win a reasonable amount of them... but clearly short of my "fair share" that would let me break even.
Secondly, within the 10-seaters, I lose more at Speed Poker than I do at standard speed. At standard, I have a steady downward trend. In Speed poker, the losses are far more pronounced.
Thirdly, within the 6-seaters, I make the money positions more often when the buy-in is higher (typically $22) than at the lower $11 / $6 buy ins. Fascinating stuff. To me anyway. If you have similar trends in your play, I would love to hear them.
Time to theorise why. My basic assumption at the moment is that I am not particularly skilled at playing games where there at a lot of gamblers/coin flippers. You know the sort. Pre-flop, they will bet big with any pocket pair, most aces (however raggy), and any two reasonable suited cards. Then whether the flop hits them or not, they will often bet big. All-ins are a staple bet. I suppose they are the fishiest of the fish in the fish kingdom - and to me, damned hard to play against in numbers.
My limited experience tells me that the coin flippers are far more likely to play 10-seaters, and even more so to speed games. I would say that its more normal for there to be only 1-2 of these sorts of players on a 6 seater table, and I seem able to adjust my play and suckout chips from them - whereas on the 10 seater games I am more likely to hand over my chips to them as I get sucked into their "gunfight at the OK Corral" showdowns.
The more volatile the game, with lots of players making bad decisions, then I do worse. Show me a $3 speed game with 10 players and I would generally lose money in the long run.. but in a $22 6-seater game at standard speed, I can hold my own quite consistently over a prolonged period.
Interesting stuff. I'm off to think about what strengths & weaknesses this indicates in my play. This could take a couple of days.
At 6-seaters, only the top 2 pay (a 60/40 split of the winnings)
At 10-Seaters. The top 3 pay (a 50/30/20 split of the winnings)
My pub mathematics tell me that in the long run, if all players had equal ability, then I would expect over the long run to win money 30% of the time in the 10 Seater room, compared to 33% in the 6 Seaters. i.e not an awful lot in it in terms of the frequency of winning some money, and no really blatantly obvious reason why I should perform much better in the 6 seaters than the 10 seaters.
This isnt borne out by my (somewhat sketchy) statistics that I have kept of my play of the past 2 months. There are a couple of trends that kinda jump out of my stats which cover about 200 games over the past 2 months.
Firstly, I am a break even player in 6 seater games. My losses are mostly accounted for by my 10-Seater games. Within the 10 seater games, I lose more heavily in speed games than I do in the standard games. Note that I am not completely rubbish at the 10 seaters, I win a reasonable amount of them... but clearly short of my "fair share" that would let me break even.
Secondly, within the 10-seaters, I lose more at Speed Poker than I do at standard speed. At standard, I have a steady downward trend. In Speed poker, the losses are far more pronounced.
Thirdly, within the 6-seaters, I make the money positions more often when the buy-in is higher (typically $22) than at the lower $11 / $6 buy ins. Fascinating stuff. To me anyway. If you have similar trends in your play, I would love to hear them.
Time to theorise why. My basic assumption at the moment is that I am not particularly skilled at playing games where there at a lot of gamblers/coin flippers. You know the sort. Pre-flop, they will bet big with any pocket pair, most aces (however raggy), and any two reasonable suited cards. Then whether the flop hits them or not, they will often bet big. All-ins are a staple bet. I suppose they are the fishiest of the fish in the fish kingdom - and to me, damned hard to play against in numbers.
My limited experience tells me that the coin flippers are far more likely to play 10-seaters, and even more so to speed games. I would say that its more normal for there to be only 1-2 of these sorts of players on a 6 seater table, and I seem able to adjust my play and suckout chips from them - whereas on the 10 seater games I am more likely to hand over my chips to them as I get sucked into their "gunfight at the OK Corral" showdowns.
The more volatile the game, with lots of players making bad decisions, then I do worse. Show me a $3 speed game with 10 players and I would generally lose money in the long run.. but in a $22 6-seater game at standard speed, I can hold my own quite consistently over a prolonged period.
Interesting stuff. I'm off to think about what strengths & weaknesses this indicates in my play. This could take a couple of days.
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