Monday, March 24, 2008

online poker in march

so my online play has been kinda minimal this month when compared to last month. i've only played a little over 8k hands this month which is far below the norm. i did however miss a lot of time because of vegas though and was too busy before leaving to put in any real good sessions.

i played some small full ring sessions before going to vegas to get out of the 6-max mindset and it sucked pretty bad. i dropped a few buy-ins over a small sample. i started playing a little heads-up as well at 50nl just because it seemed fun. well it's turned out to be fun and profitable and i've killed it over a very small sample. coming back to 6-max after the vegas trip i've done very well and am up several buy-ins there too. i'll wait to the end of the month before i post exact numbers but this month is looking good over very few hands. i've taken a different approach at the hu tables targetting mostly players that are sitting at tables with less than a full buy-in but more than 40bb's. it's worked out quite well as it's an early indicator of a poor player and often times i get these guys to go off for multiple buy-ins. one guy i sat down with had like a real random amount in front of him equalling roughly 45bb's. i stacked him like 10 hands in and he immediately rebought full. i stacked him three more times for full buy-ins before he quit me. i also had a negative experience though where i was already sitting on 200bb's and a good player sat with me full. now i didn't know he was good at the time but i stack him early on and start to see that he's good and hard to play against. so after i grind a little more off him and give him about 50 hands to get his stack back i sit out and tell him "gg, i'd rather play someone else". he immediately tells me im a hit'n'run artist which bothers me so i sit back in and plan on playing him for a few more minutes. i then stack him again so i feel like i have to stay for even longer now. so about 25 minutes later im sitting on 100bb's, he's got all his money back + my other 100bb's i had initially and sits out saying he'll be back. i left the table and chalked it up to a lesson learned. while i try to be cordial during hu matches and give people ample time to get even or let them know ahead of time when im quitting, i shouldn't put it ahead of my own priorities and that's maximizing my EV.

my all-in equity in hu pots is horrible and i've had some sick suckouts but to balance it i've been winning lots of races in my 6-max games. i had a sick cooler the other day when i raise/called pre w/ QQ and flopped a set on a KQxhh board and got it all-in to see KK. but to get it back i squeezed w/ KK and the initial pfr just called which i immediately thought had to be AA. he was just too tight for it to be anything else. alas the flop came K high and i doubled through.

i also played a bunch of wsop sats on ftp the other night with no avail. i used my saved up rakeback money to replenish my account of the buy-ins so that i can keep building towards the 1/2nl jump. i think when i jump to 1/2 i will also move up to .50/1.00 hu since it looks like there are a bunch of softies that buy-in for 40bb's. ideally i think i'll always keep my hu stakes below that of my 6-max stakes since the extra variance can be a total kick in the nuts.

i've also got the itch to play plo again but im staying with my goals of learning nl cash before i start to dabble in that again. i went back and looked at my pokertracker plo and saw that i dropped 2.6k playing 100plo so obviously its not a very +ev game for me. i think i'll make myself wait till i'm at least winning at 2/4nl before i will venture into 50plo or something like that.

anyways, hopefully i'll get a 3 or 4 more sessions in before the end of the month. i might also play some tournies and wsop sats using rakeback money when the time permits. i might actually have to play 5 or 6 sessions before the end of the month to keep up with the ironman promo requirements. i'll have to double check that.

oh yeah, the ftp bankroll is currently at 6.7k with another 1k in the rakeback account and i think i have about 1k left in cash from my trip. not sure what i'll do with the cash but im up in the air about putting it on another site, putting it back on ftp, keeping it for live play or blowing it on random shit i don't need.

tg