OMG I lost 600$ in 3000 hands

Yep... awefull bad run and a  bit of tilting and i'm 600$ down. I still have 435$ left and I decided to move back to 25NL till i reach 650$.

Overplaying AK in 3bet/4bet pots

I lost nearly 4 buyins and my bankroll is 850$.  I had a bad run and i played reasonably weak but most of all I think I just had a bad run.

In  a few situations I had to play AK in 3bet/4bet pots in and out of position, sometimes with big effective stacks and I didn't really know what the right move was.  In this post I'll try to look at some of those situations and try to come up with some thoughts to be able to have more confidence in making decisions if those situations come up again.

Some links i've come across while reading about AK in 3bet pots:

http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/forum/ak-3bet-preflop-t49313.html

http://www.deucescracked.com/forums/8-Beginner-Small-Stakes-NLHE/topics/5838-A-K-in-3bet-pot?page=1

http://www.leggopoker.com/forums/small-stakes/200nl-i-stink-3bet-pots-2233.html

Here are some of the hands i played:

Hand 1: AK in pos, vs. a 3bet.

Villain is 16/ 8 / 7.4 3b / 20 af

What is the right move after the 3bet? Villain 3bets smallish OOP so he must probably be strong, villain 3bets 7.4% of the time. Range could be JJ+, AK.

The options are calling, folding or 4betting.

Calling:

You hit AK around 32% of the time. When hit it's quite likely that you're ahead and you can play from there, when not hit it's an easy fold to a cbet.

Folding:

3bet ranges in lowlimit games are quite tight, in this particular case 7.4% of the hands are 3betted though which isn't particularly tight.  When 3bet percentage drops to < 5% i think folding AK could be a good idea. Cause even when you hit your K villain could have hit a set, split with AK or even dominate with AA

4betting:

You really want to take the pot down preflop with AK type of hands. So 4betting against a reasonably light 3better seems like a good play. But 7.4% 3bet isn't extremely light and since he's 3betting smallish OOP his range tightens. I think 4betting would be better when being OOP.

I think in this example i should have called the 3bet and fold the flop or maybe even fold preflop.  After the 4bet shove i should have layed away because a big part of his range dominates or splits with AK and the rest of the range is basically a coinflip.

Hand 2 Another example:

CO opens with 3bb, SB calls, I Squeeze with AKs to 14bb, CO pushes with around 100BB. I only have 6 hands of this guy but his huge overbet seems weird. I don't really know what range to give this guy, I wonder if AK wins very much by calling cause alot of times it will be a coinflip, sometimes i'll dominate AQ or AJ maybe?? and some other times i'm dominated by AA, KK.

 

Hand 4: Example of In position Call and Hit with AKs:

Coutinho is 37/24 / 17.6 3bet / 9af  after 41 hands

I decide to call in pos and hit a K on the flop. Because the board brings a flushdraw i decide to raise his CBet ( i think i better could have called because the flop isn't that draw heavy and i only fold out worse hands with a raise and lose money to hands to dominate me.

Hand 5: This is another example of a reraise on the flop which should have been a call. Almost exact same situation:

 

Hand 6: An example of AK OOP

Here i decide to call vs a 3bet from villain which is 31/21 / 7.1 3b / 38 af after 39 hands.  

In this situation i should have just fold or 4bet.

Hand 7 Silly 3 way pot:

BigMacTM squeezes after i opened from CO and got a button caller.  Villain is 16/ 10 / 6.3 3b% / 35 af after 160 hands.  Here i decide to call which is stupid because i give the button player odds to see a flop. I should have folded or make a 4bet.

 

Hand 8: Just when you thought it couldn't be played stupidier.

Here i 3bet myself and get 4betted by a guy who has position on me and has stats 15 / 12 / 5.1 3b% / 40 after 171 hands and i Call!!! Stacks are deep but considering his 3bet% its a fold or 5bet (shove)?

 

Anyways those were a couple of examples. I'll be more carefull to not overplay AK and to not call AK OOP and to fold more against 3bets when villains aren't loose.

 

Good luck at the tables! NLFish

Pokerfilmpjes

Mooie speech van Mike Matusow

aardig filmpje van negraneau, niet helemaal toepasbaar voor 50NL maar toch leuk

Reached 1k!

Another update!. I Played 609 hands and I had a good session and won 145.75$.

biggest hands:

I called a 3bet OOP with small a small pocket pair because stacks were deep enough.  I check raise / shove the turn which is quite an overbet but most of the times people call, there's a flush draw on the flop which can make villain think i'm on a draw and he calls. Ship it!

I had a bit of a history with this guy who comes in for a raise from the middle position, i flat call and hit a set. I reraise the flop ( i've did this before a few hands ago in a hand vs him and he might have remembered. ) He calls. Because the flop gave a FD i decide to shove the turn ( some players seem to do that when they missed their flush card on the turn ) to make him think im on a draw / get it in here to let him pay if he's on a draw. He calls. Ship it!.

Ahhh pocket 4 again my favourite hand tonight :) I accidently raised to 2 from the button with an early position limper, ( normally i make it 3$ ), The rest is standard as far as my plays that is...

Biggest Losers:

Early position raises, 2 callers, i'm on the sb with pocket jacks, i normally raise about 3bet about 3.5 times the original raise plus some more for the callers, 9$, everyone folds except for the button ( which is an odd play but ok... ). The flop brings a FD and an overcard. I decide to be somewhere between half and 3/4 of the pot, therefore,  I think,  not completely committing myself to the pot and he shoves... I think about it for a minute I think his range is 44, 77, Kx, FD, crap,  with most of the range in the 44,77, Kx range. I decide to fold... i think it's a good fold but I'm not sure. The pot is 72 with 23 to call is 3.1 to 1.

If i put his range in Pokerstove i get this:

    equity     win     tie           pots won     pots tied   
Hand 0:     14.021%      14.02%     00.00%               7773             0.00   { JcJd }
Hand 1:     85.979%      85.98%     00.00%              47667             0.00   { 77, 44, AhKh, AhQh, AhJh, KhQh, KhJh, KhTh, K9s-K6s, Kh5h, K4s-K2s, QhJh, QhTh, JhTh, Jh9h, Th9h, AKo, KJo+ }

15 to 85  is 1 to 5.6    But i din't include crap in this range ( which i think is not correct ) and this is almost a perfect range for him i quess, but still I think a call wouldn't be good.

This hand is a bit unfortunate, I can't comprehend people who end up having J6o in their hand but on the turn i was afraid of the 6 but i can't lay this away, in fact i should've just pushed the turn i guess.

 

Anyways, i'm glad about how things are going this week, i've been pretty lucky on having just 1 small losing day but the rest of the days were all winners. It was a bit dangerous to start playing 50NL with just over 400$ but so far it turned out great. My bankroll is now 1034,35$ and i'm almost playing according to the bankroll schema of Raszi.

 

Just as a reminder to myself. In coming posts i want to talk about:

* Balancing work / Poker and social life  ( Plan )

* Using autohotkey and an xbox controller to play poker

* Cashing out vs. Building a bankroll.  ( Think about a good balance )

* Bankroll plan for Holland Casino tournaments

* Thoughts about table selection / datamining on different sites (PP doesn't allow datamining)  what tools can be used?

* What statistics need work?

 

That's it!,

 

Goodluck at the tables, NLFish

Should i stay or should i go?

Party poker has a rakeback system and loyalty program which allows you to collect so called 'reward point' which you can use to buy money in their store ( normally it's the other way around, but hey... this is pokerworld! ).

Reward points are gathered by playing money tables and are multiplied by a certain loyalty factor to form your total reward points which you can spent on money.

This is how it looks like in a fancy overview.

If I understand everything correctly there are weekly goals which should be met to release your partypoints to your partypoints total and to maintain your loyalty status.  This all means that you can acquire a certain predefined maximum amount of reward points in one week. This amount is being calculated by looking at your regular amount of play. ( In my case this keeps growing but at some point a stable amount should be reached ).

This week I can acquire 142 point times my current multiplier 3.2 = 4,54$   ( Note that i recently started playing again so this number should be alot higher later on )

Yesterday I generated 76$ of rake according to holdem manager by playing 1134 hand of 50 NL. This earned me 98 partypoints x 3.2 is roughly 3$ which basically means a rakeback of about 4%.

4%!!!!! :S

Ok but i'm only a King Level 2 according to their loyalty program, what about the other loyalty levels, how high will the loyalty factor become?

See the following chart:

So, 7.5 is the highest factor available, this will probably require a ridiculous amount of play but let's say we reach it, how much % rakeback will we get.

Let's take the example from above: 98 partypoints x 7,5 = 7,50$ = roughly 10%

Hmmmm....  

To make up for this there's a few reload bonuses but i believe that's pretty normal for every site.  Right now a 15% extra ( max 100$ ) bonus...

I used to send some money around to take advantage of these bonuses ( which i think is quite silly ) but I guess that's how most sites work.

Maybe it's time to take a look at some other clients and the rakeback/bonusses they're offering.

I should note that i occasionaly play jackpot tables which cost additional rake and i don't know exactly if this rake is included in the rake holdem manager displays.

 

Todays results:

833 hands +54$  21.8 (VP$IP)  / 17.9 (PFR) / 8.7 (3b) 3.95 (AG).

 

B.t.w. some article i found about poker and zen

http://www.howardlederer.com/howard-lederer-poker-article9.html

Biggest winners and biggest losers

played 1134 hands today and won 29$. I played pretty weak i guess. Ok here goes with the biggest winners:

 

errrrr what??? KT??,  think i played this allright...

Just when you thought you're screwed for sure when the river comes off the cards get exposed and theirs.... relief... :)

TPTK is the nuts,  no it's even better then the nuts. Some people prefer it over the royal flush.

Why did i call the 3bet? Why didn't i raise the flop?, why didn't i push the turn? I called the 3-bet cause i got caught up in the flow of the game, i 3-bet in pos alot, call alot of 3-bets in position just to try to outplay people postflop. I'm still trying this stuff out.... i don't know yet if it's making me money or not. I had the feeling i drive people crazy with my pretty loose agressive game sometimes.

I called the flop like a donkey because well... sometimes im playing like a donkey, i like to see a spade on the turn so i call and i'm scared of overpairs I dont know the magnitude of how incorrect this is but lets see....  i have at least 12 outs for 45% odds, i have fold equity, maybe even more outs...   ah.. its a donkey move to call here...

The turn gives me 3 more outs for 33% odds ( or as it turns out 6 more ) There's still fold equity and there's no reason i can think of not to shove it in....    ohwell gotta learn from these mistakes.

Losers:

I can't remember why i didn't shove the flop here... i should have..

I think I need to bet out on the flop, or check raise pot to 18$ or something like that, i'm OOP so i need to pick up the pot here. Or I could call?? nah,  bet and fold to a raise, or check raise to a decent amount and shove the turn i guess.

plain stupid... raise the flop and get it in on the flop or call and fold the turn.

i could've just fold the flop here but I got sucked up in this hand. I could have called his funny looking river bet just to know how i was beat there. He prolly had a JT flush or something, or maybe a Full house.

Lots to improve....    

Besides just playing poker I took a quick look at the articles in holdem manager which look pretty interesting but i have to take a better look at it in the coming days...

 

That's it for today...

 

Good luck at the tables, NLFish

Things are going well

 

One of the biggest hands i played ( and i think it was one of the first in the session ). 

I wonder if this is played correctly because there probably isn't much fold equity left, i probaly have only 8 outs vs their range, so that would be... hmm ...   47/141 = 1 to 3  pot odds  (considering that they both call)  vs about 1 to 3 odds of hitting a straight.  ( correct me if my calculation is off ).

 

Another hand which i think i play correctly. (stats for emma are unknown).

I call a 3bet in pos with QQ.  I like to see a flop with QQ after after a 3bet on  .25/.50$ level because there's not that much 3betting on this level only, people generally 3bet with AK, JJ+, it could be that a 4bet would fold out JJ and worse hands leaving only QQ+, AKs, AKo, a range QQ would do 40/60 against. So i decide to just flat call.

On the low paired fd  flop i decide to call a cbet instead of raising ( this is probably stupid but I'm not sure ), on the blank turn after i get checked to i decide I probably have the best hand and shove ( Why? I'm not even really sure to make villain play for AKs diamonds, JJ or worse hands, but I'm not sure what  a good bet would be here.... in the end it turned out allright...

 

Another hand, Nut flush draw:

I make a standard raise on the button and get called by the BB, the paired low flop gives me a nut flush draw and i cbet ( I could have checked on this flop but I want to build a pot or pick it up right here ) and get raised.

This is the point where i have to make a decision to move allin call or fold. I decide to call because it's an almost minraise and I'd like to see another heart come off on the turn. His range could be 55- something with a 4, 67s, 67o, 23s, overpairs or air.  I don't want to do the math but i think my call on flop is probably incorrect if you consider he will always bet the turn ( and considering his range ).

 

Anyways this was my first try to post some hands, more will follow. I'm glad that things are moving in the right way. It was a bit of a risk to start on 50NL allready with a bankroll of slightly more then 400$ but right now my bankroll is 767$ so it's moving in the right direction.

Besides that the level of play on 50NL is hilarious, especially in the weekends it seems, so it should be easily beatable. I still have to watch out to not make any mistakes i often make like calling 3bets with suited connectors and then shoving with an openended draw and stuff like that.... it doesn't work on this level, I just have to play pretty much ABC poker and make some $$ so i can start playing 100NL.

 

Good luck at the tables.

 

NLFish

Some goals

After reading some blogs and giving things some thought i've decided to start playing 50NL a little sooner then planned. I've made this decision because right now I play 6 tables of 25 NL without giving things much thought, I basically play everything pretty much on autopilot and i think there won't be much improvement in my game that way. Besides that I also want to move up because i know i can beat 50 NL ( because i've beat 50NL before) and because i'm... ,well.... just too impatient :)

Since my bankroll isn't anywhere close to what it should be to start playing 50NL I will make a start by playing 2 tables on 25NL and 2 tables 50NL and move down if i reach 200$, hopefully I won't be too unlucky in the coming period... :)

I'll post my experiences!

A few dollars a day keeps the doctor away

I've played a couple of hands and im slowly increasing my bankroll which is now 428$

Here are some stats:

(click for larger)

I don't play any 50NL games right now as you can see but the games you see there are the ones i played a while ago which didn't turn out very well.

Here's the graph.

I haven't really thought much about what the showdown stuff really means and what numbers should be good. The sample isn't so big yet so i wont draw any conclusions yet.

I'll also try to find some way to make stats like the one that set-o-meter provided for pokertracker databases next time. I at least need to find some way to tell how lucky i've been over some period of time.

And maybe i'll try to find some leaks to discuss in the coming posts.

Good luck at the tables!

A bit up, a bunch down, and up again

I've been playing a little poker over the last couple of months. I used to play almost every day with an average of a couple of hours a day, now i play twice or 3 times a week for a couple of hours. I bought holdem manager two months ago and my database contains 16343 hands so far. Most of the hands i played are on the 25NL level but when things went well i decided to play on 50NL again unfortunately with not much succes. I dropped more then 7 buyins and i moved down to 25NL again in which i slowly regained my hard earned bucks :)

This is what it looks like in a holdemmanager graph:

(Click to enlarge)

If i filter out the 50NL games:

And these are just the 50NL games:

 

The sample isn't large enough to draw any conclusions but at least i can say that i'm slowly moving up again. I will wait a bit longer before i try out 50NL again although i'm probably not going to wait till i reach the 1250$ which Raszi recommends to start playing 50NL. I think i'll wait till my bankroll will be 600 or so. I'll move down when i reach 400$ again. Right now my bankroll is 411.88$.

I still play on Party Poker although i doubt party poker is the site with most rakeback advantages. I just like the site and i'll evaluate other sites later.

Good luck at the tables!