Rush Poker

At the moment I’m hooked on Rush Poker at Full Tilt. Or Crack Poker, which seems to be a popular slang name for it.

Second night of playing, I think I got in 1,300 hands or something, on top of the 700 from the first night. More hands last night because I played two tables, just because one wasn’t fast enough. There is a slight delay after folding while you get seated at a new table, which gives me enough time to go to the other table and make a decision.

I don’t have a lot of bankroll at Tilt so I’ve been playing the $10nl tables, and after 2,000 hands I’m down $1.40 or something. Conclusion so far; there’s a lot of lost value at this level being readless because you can’t pick off the maniacs as easily because you don’t know who they are. Most of the time that there is a possible bluff (I guess 30 – 50% chance of a bluff or overvaluing their hand) it turns out that they weren’t bluffing. Exception being ones like a pot sized bet on the river when I checked going for pot control (ie. seen as “weakness”) with a river card that only made sense if he had the two cards that would fill a straight, and it turned out to be a busted flush draw, or a 60 bb stack that I 3 bet with 99 and he shoves, his KJs that he raised from early. But I lost a stack when I got in in pre with QQ and I probably should have read AA/KK.

There’s thin line between bluff/overvalue bets and standard players at this level which is easy to see if you have some hand history or stats, but is tougher to guess totally readless like this.

And there’s unexpected aggression, at least for $10nl FR. A lot of squeezing and 3 betting, at least more than I expect at this level. When I see that aggression my reaction is to crank up my aggression level, which causes me to spew against more standard players. It’s not the same players each hand so you can’t really make that kind of adjustment. What I should do is to take the stats from the hands that I have and identify general player styles, but I’m not planning to keep playing $10 tables if I do continue to play. What I might do though is to keep working LAG play preflop, get my stats up to the 22/18 level for full ring, which is more my 6 max stats. Or go to $25nl.

It’s also quite possible that there are a number of players from $25 or $50 sitting at these $10 tables for the time being trying this new thing out, which might be a part of the reason for higher aggression than I expect from $10.

If nothing else I’m cranking up the FTP points like never before. Maybe I’ll earn a free month at Stox.

Folding Aces

Today I folded Aces, folded AA, preflop. And I don’t mean that I was sitting out in a tournament saw AA in the hand history, but I was at a cash table and sitting in front of the computer. And I only had 4 tables going at the time, but unfortunately the two bottom tables overlapped the top two by enough that I can’t see the “bet” “fold” buttons. So I apparently moved the bet slider but didn’t click the “bet” button and went to another table. I noticed, before I timed out, but I went back to the table, quickly checked the bet size, then a split second before I could click “bet”, I timed out. Ah well, I don’t think I would have gotten much action. The only player interested was the button, who open limped.

The 4 table layout that I use is nice in terms of size for my monitor but I no longer use the automatic bring table to the front option ’cause it interferes when I’m trying to type notes on players.

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Anyway, yesterday I cracked 2,000 total hands in this project, and was just about where I should expect. I’d made just under one buyin (assuming a 5 bb/100 win rate, 100 bbs / 5 = 20, 20 x 100 hands = 2,000 hands to make on buyin) thanks to the last two sessions being modestly up. My expected EV was showing as up 2 buyins, so still showing the effects of running poorly.

Today (a Saturday) I woke up after only sleeping for four hours but was ready to get up so I did. Played one session against mostly European players, 192 hands, 126.35 bb/100 and made over two buyins. It’s a bit of a relief; I actually show 5 sessions in a row up now, though two of them were tiny, but it’s nice to see some green sessions back-to-back after running so well in the fall and then not being able to continue to do so since the start of this project.

My stats still show a lot of opening up from where I was in the fall; 17/11, 15/9, 22/18, 18/14, 19/11 for the last 5 sessions. This compared with 13.3/8.5 during the fall. That’s the result of impatience, impatience with only playing 4 tables, impatience with wanting to get the project moving, and also some awareness that the stats from the fall are pretty nitty compared with most winning player’s stats for this level of full ring. Largely this is coming from going back to open raising all pairs from all positions, simply because small/medium pairs tend to be pretty easy to play even out of position as long as I’m the preflop raiser. It’s tougher flatting a raise from the blinds.

Dec 15

Not much posting, basically due to a lack of playing.

I’d been dreading, or at least not looking forward to the first two weeks of December because I knew it was going to be busy. Two gigs, two meetings on top of regular family responsibilities and I went into a bit of a depression in the middle of it. I guess it was a good thing that I wasn’t actively grinding during that period.

The other day I realized that two of my other hobbies make money for me as well. Playing music gets me paying gigs, and for the last two years even the NFL football pool has won me money as well. Last year I won two weeks by myself which returned almost 3 x the $150 buyin for the season, and this year I won 1/2 of a week and 1/8 of a week, before winning a week by myself again so I’m almost up 2 seasons worth of buyins again this year.

The nice thing about NFL winnings is that I have a computerized system that I’ve developed that requires a small amount of data entry each week but which by mid-season does a nice job of making good picks with little effort or thought on my part. A few minutes of data entry of stats and I can send off my weekly picks the same day the spreads come out. By the time the games come around I’ve forgotten who I picked so I don’t agonize over the games from a pool perspective.

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The only poker I’ve been playing in the last couple of weeks is some private freerolls, and the $1.50 + 0.20 Super Turbos on Full Tilt.

For some reason these really fit my mindset lately;

• minimal thinking,
• just wait for the right times to mash the “all in” button,
• it’s so cheap that winning or losing doesn’t matter,
• I can watch television, play Lexulous, or read emails while I play,
• the players are pretty inexperienced so I don’t have to agonize over my play here either

Heh, pretty obvious that I’m down with some general lethargy these days.