Tilt mode

Earlier on today I lost a big pot to trip queens holding KQ on a Qxx (2s) board, the player in question slow played the hand and hit and ran straight after. I dusted myself off mentally, switched tables and promptly made several questionable decisions, quickly losing another stack to a fish. To cap off this fantastic session I lost another buy in to the same fish who stacked me preflop with KJs vs my pocket queens. Once the King spiked on the flop I knew it was time to switch off the computer and do something else, as I was tilting and therefore incapable of making proper strategic decisions any more. It did not take long before I calmed down and reflected upon the KQ spot as bad luck, since I would play it the same way every time.  Apart from one all in 50/50 vs a fish’s range the rest of my plays were not big long term losing plays and heck, these things just happen.  At least it got me action!

 To appease my bruised ego and claw back some cash I decided to play one heads up match since the fields are often pretty weak for these games and If I lost I could not use a donk’s play or bad luck as the scapegoat. It is difficult to win a heads up match by luck alone, so I said my ‘small hand small pot, big hand big pot’ mantra and signed up for a match. I ground down a slightly tricky opponent in tight match where I got all my decent hands towards the end, so luck in a sense granted me a win on this occasion. A passive early-aggressive later strategy paid off as this particular player backed off after I gained the chip lead and folded too many hands later on in the match. I declined a rematch which is a little unsportsmanlike but I like to take a break between HU matches as they require a fair amount of concentration.

I decided to write this brief article on tilt since there is a right and wrong way to deal with the anger we all feel to some degree at some time in poker. I dealt with my tilt in almost the right way by quitting the game, but then undid all my good work by returning to the computer too quickly. Heads up is also the wrong format to play when tilted as a thinking player can tear apart my game, and as it was a weekday there are a greater proportion of winning/thinking players on the site that I use than at the weekend. The worst way you can deal with tilt is to let rip and berate your opponent, which you see a lot of in the chat boxes. Whilst scouting for heads up opponents I opened up a table and watched two donks spill forth the following diatribe. They manage to cover racism, homophobia, ageism and arguably (ac. to Singer) speciesism in a few short misspelled phrases. Idiots like this consistently feed money into the poker economy, so keep up the good work boys, just watch your fucking mouths.

A >>                f uck you

A >>                m0ng

B >>                A… the fag                                          

A >>                say what ********? (A uses racist slang here that I refuse to retype)

B >>                yer

A >>                what a maggot you are hahahaha

B >>                im winning

A >>                to a fish move lmao pathetic

B >>                lol

A >>                ahhh the good old ace raise ahahahaha

B >>                fishy

A >>                donk

A >>                lmao coming from you! ahahahaha fold til you have an ace little boy

B >>                yer

B >>                how old r u?

A >>                20

B >>                ur shiit

A >>                your a f ucking mug

B >>                ty

B >>                lol

B >>                probz playing ur whole bankroll

A >>                lmao says you whos in _ ahahahaha

A >>                stick to cod you little noob

B >>                 dont play cod

A >>                ha what are you ten?

B >>                18

A >>                ooo guess who has an ace ahahahaha

B >>                7 2

A >>                go to bed you mug hahahaha

B >>                no thanks

A >>                haha

A >>                knob jockey!

B >>                YES

B >>                HAHAHAHHA KNOB JOCKEY

And in classic style they get it in preflop with the better hand, player A’s pocket Jacks, losing out to player B’s Q10o. Lol donkamentsJ

Why I am awful at poker

I have won money at poker. The money I have won has not been life changing money, it has barely been weekend changing money.  Occasionally a decent cash in a tournament will resonate throughout the week if I buy a bus pass with a win.  This fact has kept me afloat in the game and blinded me to the reality of my flawed play, which if I do not improve means I can only ever break even at best. I am awful at poker, because I am not making enough money off my good hands, and not losing the minimum on my dominated hands. I say ‘dominated hands’ rather than ‘bad hands’ because I do not play bad hands. If I am in a hand past the flop you can guarantee I am well in the running with, at the very least top pair. When I discovered how to select good  starting hands for my position at a table I felt like I had arrived as a poker player, but when it comes to fundamentals my game stopped improving right there and then.  Every now and again I am felted by a superior hand that I could have got away from, but this is not my biggest leak in terms of profit. The fundamental mistake I am making is one of ‘missed value,’ or not making the maximum profit from my good hands. I shamefully present to you one of the worst two hands I have played in recent cash games:

      Exhibit A: weak 3c/6c, 6 max play from the blinds and missed value on the river:

Preflop: UTG (fish) limps, SB (tight-passive) completes, BB (abc/bad tag) checks KQs

Pot: 18c

Flop: TcKc8s

SB checks, BB bets 15:18, UTG calls, SB folds.

Pot: 48c

Turn: 9d

BB bets 25:48, UTG calls.

Pot: 98c

River: 4s.

BB checks, UTG checks.

BB shows KQs for top pair

UTG shows Q6 for queen high

Mistake 1. Not raising preflop.

This would have built a bigger pot and made more from the hand. In case you are wondering would UTG call Q6 to a raise? The answer is of course he would, he wants to see a flop so bad it aches a little bit and if he folds then that is a good result for my hand because I do not have to play a hand out of position.

Mistake 2.  Flop bet could have been pot size.

Facing a fish on such a coordinated board a pot or overbet is getting called all day long. I could have made more here. I have seen shoves called with weak draws on board like this at 1c/2c.

Opponent could have Axc, JQ , J9, Kx, small pocket pair, 79,and many more suited combinations  besides.

Mistake 3.  Turn bet could have been bigger, much bigger.

This is basic stuff to gain value from weak made hands and the myriad draws out there. Anyone with half a brain could have raised my turn bet and folded a tonne of my range here, luckily UTG is not so blessed and merely called my super weak bet. The nine only slightly strengthens my opponent’s range, giving some draws a pair and does nothing for mine unless I stumble across two pair at this point. If he did spike two pair I would have known about it on the turn.

Mistake 4.

By this point in the hand I was baffled. This was a mistake. I have played enough fish to know that they will chase all kinds of draws all day long and pay off with weak pairs just in case you are bluffing this time. I meekly decide to check the 4s (effectively blank) river for no reason at all.

This is such a big mistake and I miss value from draws that hit the 9. I miss value from pocket pairs. I miss value from A4c that spiked the 4. I miss value from so much of this player’s range that I should have chucked in a small-moderately sized value bet. Yes a tonne of draws miss on the river and he will not call if he missed those but so what?

It is for these reasons I am awful at poker and now you know. I may post another of these travesties, but for now I need to go and beat myself about the head with a blunt object and repeat the nano stakes mantra: value bet/value bet/value shove.

Poker home game report: season two episode three

Players in attendance: Hitmanhead, TheConge, Pokerhontasz, KingTubby, Top_Jimmy

We changed the format of this week’s game to a cash game for a change of pace, which was originally KingTubby’s idea and I pushed it because the sit and go format can be boring if you play them all the time.  Everyone seemed to think a cash game was a good idea for a one off so we set the blinds at a wallet friendly 5p/10p and all sat down with £10 = 100bb. My girlfriend does not play cash poker online and initially baulked at the idea of me sitting down with a ‘massive stack,’ since in a way it forces everyone to buy in for the maximum. As a fan of Doyle Brunson she will eventually come to understand the logic of sitting down with the table maximum in any cash game. Your stack is your leverage to make decent sized bets and raises, and a shorter stack restricts your game to simply waiting for a made hand and then quickly getting it all in.  As a micro and nano stakes donkey I am not strictly bankrolled to play stakes as high as 5p/10p cash.  If I were to lose 3 or 4 buy ins in a row that would sting badly at these stakes and this can happen faster than you can say ‘Damn my aces just got cracked, again.’ That said I sat down with my stop-loss limit at 3 buy ins and got started on the cooking lager. In respect of the increased money on the table this week, I could have chosen not to drink alcohol, but I would rather loosen things up a bit than sit quietly and soberly playing one pot every 5 mins. I also chose to not take notes on key pots and avoid my traditional write up, since I think everyone is getting fed up of me commentating and judging their plays. Since I started this blog to help think about and improve my own game, instead I will judge a couple of my own plays…

I played a small ball game for the most part and got quite lucky, being dealt a few aces and broadway hands on the button which were mostly raise and take it down preflop hands.  Five handed play requires you to adjust your opening ranges so I was a little bit more liberal with my openers, without going into permanent raise mode. I played a tight, uncreative but successful game and I don’t think I even three bet once during the whole game. I faced one tough spot fairly early on with a flush draw/straight draw/overcard to the board combination that I played aggressively, but got reraised on the flop after donking out. I will often play these monster-combination draws aggressively as you have a lot of equity on the flop (I figured I had 15 outs twice if it played down to the end), but I have run into trouble playing this way online since nobody can ever fold a hand. If you are going to semibluff a draw by betting hard, then part of your hand’s strength is your fold equity. Gus Hansen talks about these types of hands for tournament play in ‘Every Hand Revealed’ and tries to plan a series of bets that still has a chance of folding out one or two better hands in an opponent’s range, whilst getting the most chips in when you have lots of equity. He achieves this by check raising an aggressive player or betting with the intention of four bet shoving a player who will likely get married to his one pair type hands. You have to know that your opponent is definitely going to bet with a large portion of his/her missed hands in order for a check raise to work. In this case I should have realised that was my best way to maximize fold equity, but since I accidentally donk bet and got raised I had to reevaluate the situation. As Gus might say ‘Fold-nope; Call-has some merit, allows me to keep the pot small and see if I can hit one of my many outs; Four bet-maximum rock and roll and definitely the most stylish move'.  I reasoned that there were more weak draws and weak made hands than missed overcards hand in my opponent’s range so if I four bet, I allow him to play perfectly by folding draws and weak pairs, and five betting strong hands. Another way of saying this is that in the event he was sitting on two pair or a set, keeping the pot small was probably a good idea.  I was getting 2:1 pot odds to call the flop with a 50% chance (by the river) of making my hand so I decided to call and try and take it away on any blank turn card, or put the pedal to the metal  if I hit one of my outs. The next card was a handy brick and I bet out again to take the hand down. The next time I flop the world I will be check raising a la Gus’ tournament strategy,  and hopefully I can avoid such a sticky spot against a good aggressive opponent!

The game had some interesting swings in dynamic and I found myself sitting on a modest profit for a while and nitting up during a spell of super loose play. Another interesting hand came up three way when I reraised two pair to a flop donk lead, hoping to take it down on a low connected board out the big blind. I was called behind by one player in position and the initial donker folded the sb. The turn card was an ace which reasonably improved some of my opponent’s range and clearly did not affect mine, so I blocker bet folded the turn which was probably a silly move. My donk rationale was that my opponent will call a bet with dominated one pair and other made hands better or worse, but will always bet out a larger bet size with 100% of his range so even though it was a small chance, I thought I could get a cheaper river card by betting than check calling. Cue QI style Klaxon noise!!! This is the effect of cooking lager ladies and gentlemen, the breakdown of sound rationale and a journey into the quagmire of foggy logic. In retrospect I should have folded what was the worst made hand possible on the worst flop since King Kong felt pressured on his wedding night. I was mildly tilted with myself after this hand but quickly recovered as I was still showing a healthy profit and the night was drawing to a close.  Within a few hands the second of our five players was felted and the game broke up.  I feel compelled to express the results in some form so with no rebuys the finishing positions were…

Pokerhontasz-doubled through+

Top_Jimmy-roughly a stack and a half

Hitmanhead-roughly a stack and a third-half

TheConge-felted

KingTubby-felted

Home game write up: season two episode two

Table layout: Me-Btn, TheConge-Sb, Pokerhontasz-Bb, Jennoi-Utg, Hitmanhead-Utg+1.

Early stage

Armed with bowls of space raiders, hula hoops and yorkshire mix plus a slightly larger than usual starting stack, we sat down to what we hoped would be a more aggressive than usual sit and go game.  Our freshly downloaded bwinpoker flashplayer poker timer added an efficient air to proceedings and with a missing 6^th player we adjusted the prize structure to favour first place. Hitman quickly established table captain status with a record number of raises, including a funky minraise out the small blind to turn lead on an AQ22 board. With the power of the increased stack I snuck through a preflop stone 4 bet bluff against TheConge in a battle of the blinds, with TheConge later confessing he also held the classic airball in his hand!  Pokerhontasz was simultaneously lucky enough to flop the joint and unlucky to have such a strong hand that there was little chance of a payoff.  She held AJ on a JJA flop, and called a lead bet by TheConge, checking behind another Ace on the turn. The river brought an 8 and TheConge disgustedly mucked to a bet from Pokerhontasz, claiming she must have drawn out against his made hand.  The Conge managed to get all his chips over the line in a massive overbet situation against Hitman, but my scribbled notes do not make sense for this hand: the board was (9hAsQs) in a minraised pot preflop I think.  After this hand I gave Hitman was an official warning for minraising which would later come back to haunt me when he  began making funny  open raises to 5.1X etc. Funny? Like a clown funny?  TheConge and Hitman were also involved in some creative play on a 5h Kd 3h (4d 7d) board:  Pre flop Dan minraised (again) from the CO and TheConge called in the small blind. On the flop Conge led for a potsize bet and Hitman click raised it back and was called. The turn went check-min bet-call and on the river TheConge led for a sizeable bet and Hitman called, proudly showing As 6h for a rivered straight, beating Conge’s A8h missed and triple barrelled heart draw..

Middle stage

On the hottest October day on record it was not long before the game fully ignited and Hitman quickly 4 bet shoved Conge all in with K9s who turbo-tabled two black aces. The aces held up and Conge was back in the game despite a sweat when hitman turned a flush draw.  Jennoi began to get ‘some cards’ which she had been patiently waiting for and caused another consult the hand rankings chart scene against TheConge. On a board of 5c Kc 2s Ks 9s the actions were: bet-call, check-check, bet-phone a friend! Jennoi eventually tabled the surprising J4s for the winning flush against TheConge’s 1010. Since Jennoi is new to poker this could not be classed as a slow roll, it needs a name all of its own so I’m calling it a newb-roll: When a new player agonizingly or unintentionally slowly turns the winning hand, possibly after Googling a hand rankings chart on an I-phone!  Hitmanhead decimated  most of his remaining stack against Jennoi on a 6c Qd 6h board, reraising Jennoi’s lead bet and getting it all in on a Jc turn card to see his A4o bluff well and truly caught by her  top pair top kicker AQo.  When Hitmanhead put his last remaining few big blinds in under the gun Pokerhontasz called in the small blind, as did Jennoi in the big. When the board ran out Kc3h6hJh Pokerhontasz check raised all in on the turn, tabling AsKd to dominate Hitman’s 77 but sadly for her, not Jennoi’s two pair Ks6d. The river sealed the fate of both Pokerhontasz and Hitmanhead, and a retrospective analysis the hand revealed a yawning gap where Pokerhontasz’ isolation raise should have been preflop.

Late stage

Three handed play did not last long since the escalating blinds forced the action, and Jennoi had most of the chips in play. TheConge leant on Jennoi briefly and snatched a few chips to go into second place, but he quickly ran into trouble on a low connected board with a pair and straight draw, to lose out to Jennoi’s top two pair made on the turn. I did not think it would be long before I went out, but a combination of good cards heads up and a brief folding spell by Jennoi , put our chip stacks almost level. I may have even had the lead at one point but since my total stack was only worth about 16b and I was pretty trashed on cooking lager, I was looking to get it in rather than play through the streets.  I still mindlessly dusted off 6bb with a bluff attempt before shoving over a Jennoi raise with my next hand, AQo. Jennoi tabled KK and the rest as they say is history. I am writing this a few days after the game and I  spoke to Jennoi about her newfound but so far successful poker game and whether she now needs to alter her ABC stategy to avoid being too exploitable. The last raise in out game for example was her first big show of strength preflop all game, and perhaps I should have looked at AQo as ‘slightly behind’ or ‘way behind’ her likely range of 1010+ and folded. The fact of the matter is that even if your opponents know that you only raise good hands and fold or limp the rest, many cannot resist playing too many hands and trying to bluff you. In my case I was both too drunk to notice the significance of the raise and felt I was too short stacked to realistically fold AQ heads up.  It will be interesting to see how Jennoi plays next time and whether her evolution as a poker player results in any tricky plays to confuse and disorientate, and whether those who have lost to her over the last two games adjust.