NL$100 and the Recovery Trail

Monday, October 08, 2007

For the last week I have been playing 4-tables of NL$100 and have had some good success in recovering some of my loses. Obviously at the level below I have twice the work to do to salvage my downswing, but over the last 8500 hands I've hit a win rate of around 6ptbb/100 which, if I could maintain, I would be delighted with. I feel that I've ran ok over those hands with perhaps a little less coolers and bad beats than normal. I'd love a 6ptbb/100 win rate but I think it's unlikely for my current skill level. That said, the subtle tweaks I've made to my game are really making a difference; most notable are:

• I'm considerably less aggressive preflop and a little less aggressive on the flop than I was before. I have noticeably cut back on 3-betting and generally 3-bet as much by image and flow as by the hand I hold. For instance if I've been a little active with my 3-betting and mid-position opens I may not re-raise AQs even though it's ahead of villains opening range. I'll usually call or depending on likely post-flop implied odds may fold. Conversely, if I've been quiet as a mouse for 30 minutes I'll 3-bet 89s or KQo type hands in a heartbeat. This seems to be working well as I'm finding myself in far less tricky situation and far less frequently. I also believe I was haemorrhaging money by having a light 3-bet image thereby forcing people to take stands against me.
  
• I am much, much, much more conscious about value betting and ensuring that I get maximum value for my hand. I'm very self-critical if I show a hand down and feel that I missed value on any street and especially the river.
  
• I have reduced my went to showdown rate significantly and I believe I have done it primarily through my increased value-betting rather than altering which hands I want turned over at a river. For example, in situations where I regard villain as having a missed or a marginal hand of comparable strength to my own marginal hand I would have, in the past, taken a free showdown. Now, if I judge that my hand is more often than not slightly better I'll make a small bet. Sometimes they call and I win and sometimes I lose, but when they have the missed draw or something they won't call a bet with the hand doesn't go to a showdown. That said, I have also generally improved my discipline with regards to calling hands when I suspect I'm beat more often than the lay from the pot. Just for the record my WtoSD rate for NL$100 is 21.7% - compare that to my previous 26.5% and you can see there has been a significant change.
• I have maintained my ratio of 19/16 VP$IP/PFR despite reducing my 3-betting preflop. I have achieved this by increasing my opening range ever so slightly and by calling with a few more speculative hands (usually when multi-way). The key thing is that I'm still playing generally tight and I'm still raising over three-quarters of all hands I'm playing.

I have been tempted to move back up to NL$200 or to start playing 6 tables again but I have resisted that temptation. At the moment I'm playing nice poker, making some money and it's working well. I'd rather try and book another successful week before perhaps trying to get back to 4-tabling NL$200.

In other news I'm just a few days of poker away from having enough points for an 8GB ipod nano - pretty pumped about that as I've missed mines since it was taxed from the S2000 when I left the roof down.

On Saturday just past I played my first live game of poker in over a year at a new Casino in Edinburgh. It was a £30+3 double chance freezeout and I competed with my brother and two mates in a field of 96 entrants. We all used to play the Maybury casino and profit successfully from it, so it was nice to see a lot of the old familiar faces. As comebacks go we did pretty well with my brother and mate finishing first and second. Owing to various percentages we all finished in the profit for the evening and a good time was had by all. Two things particularly struck me as I played:

1. I could not believe how bored I was! Single tabling a live tourney is like watching paint dry and I literally had 5 playable hands all night! First is QQ which I raised and took on a cbet. Second is 77 in a multi-way limp where I hit nothing and folded. Third was when I opened J10s from the CO and was forced to call the BTN's all in as it was a nominal amount more. Fourth was a multi-way limp with J10 and a late position play at the pot with an open-ended draw. I was forced out of the pot on the turn. At this point I was low stacked and won a flip with A9s vs 22 before finally going out with 55 vs A7o. I was actually very angry about the A7 call as it was truly terrible in the circumstances.
   

2. The standard of the live tournament games in Edinburgh haven't changed a bit in the last year or two. Compare that to the internet and it's pretty scary! Two years ago the average internet cash game or tourney was soft as hell compared to today's games but the live scene really hasn't moved on at all. Still the same old faces week in week out playing slightly-losing to break even poker.

Whilst it was nice to socialise a little I don't think I'll make a regular go of the live games again. This is primarily because I like my evenings, and particularly weekends, to be spent with Laura and also because I really don't see the point when you break down the win rates. Don't get me wrong, walking away from the cashier with ££1000+ in your backburner is one of the best feelings, but even with the weak fields and a very considerable skill advantage I still wouldn't muster much more than 200% ROI in the long run. If you were to take that to be £70 a night for the £33+3 and divide that by your average door-to-door attendance time of about 4.5 hours it works out to be around £15 an hour. At $30 that's about the bare minimum I'm trying to achieve at online poker and obviously I hope/plan on greatly exceeding that in the coming months - in short, playing live just doesn't stack up when I could use those hours to play online more. It should be good for an occasional social game though.

Finally, poker this morning managed to deliver another surprise! In my life I'm confident I've played well over 500,000 hands of poker and probably closer to one million. This morning a player did something I just didn't think was possible. It started with this bad-beat:

Full Tilt Poker, $0.50/$1 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players http://www.legopoker.com/hh

BTN: $97.90
SB: $113.40
BB: $63.80
UTG: $124.05
Hero (MP): $141.85
CO: $126

Pre-Flop: Ac Qh dealt to Hero (MP)

UTG folds, Hero raises to $3.50, 3 folds, BB calls $2.50

Flop: ($7.50) Ad 3h Kd (2 Players)

BB checks, Hero bets $6, BB calls $6

Turn: ($19.50) 2c (2 Players)

BB checks, Hero bets $17, BB calls $17

River: ($53.50) 4c (2 Players)

BB bets $37.30 and is All-In, Hero calls $37.30

Results: $128.10 Pot ($3 Rake)

BB showed 5s 5d (a straight, Five high) and WON $125.10 (+$61.30 NET)
Hero mucked Ac Qh Ac Qh (a pair of Aces) and LOST (-$63.80 NET)

As you can imagine I was suitably pissed off and I ranted a little in chat at villain. We argued a bit but he admitted he played the hand garbage and that he'd just had a 'feeling'. We actually had some half decent chat and banter back and forth before he finally left the table to go to bed. Pleasantries were exchanged and off he went. A few moments later that same player deposited $25 into my account, in essence giving back a sizeable chunk of his profit from the bad-beat hand! It's probably the most touching and also most stupid thing I have ever seen a poker player do. I found him later to thank him and whilst he'll never know it, it really was useful at a time where every penny counts for me.

That reminds me, to wrap up: look at what this numbnuts did. You have to admire the turn call; he may as well have transferred me money also if he's going to make calls like this:

Full Tilt Poker, $0.50/$1 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players http://www.legopoker.com/hh

SB: $191.80
BB: $28.45
UTG: $183.50
MP: $101.50
Hero (CO): $165.50
BTN: $102.85

Pre-Flop: Kc Ac dealt to Hero (CO)

2 folds, Hero raises to $3.50, BTN calls $3.50, SB folds

Flop: ($8.50) Kd 5s 5c (2 Players)

Hero bets $6, BTN calls $6

Turn: ($20.50) 3s (2 Players)

Hero bets $15, BTN raises to $35, Hero raises to $125.50, BTN calls $58.35 and is All-In

River: ($207.20) 6s (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

Results: $207.20 Pot ($3 Rake)

Hero showed Kc Ac (two pair, Kings and Fives) and WON $204.20 (+$101.35 NET)
BTN showed 6d 9d (two pair, Sixes and Fives) and LOST (-$102.85 NET)

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