I flopped the nuts!

After withdrawing every dollar from Party, Stars, and Empire, I played against the robots of Poker Academy.  Interesting, but it’s no substitute.

So I freed $100 from the confines of my bank account and stuffed it into Stars.  Then Empire offered a bonus.  Then Party did.  Then Stars did.  That $100 had no idea where it was when it landed, but it did bring along about eighty new friends.  Good deal.

That was all about two weeks ago.  I finished off my last Stars bonus and got all itchy: it was time to try a new site.  Since I hadn’t done Paradise, and that’s where my whole family plays, I decided to give it a shot.  I’ve earned $10 of my bonus, but I’m also up about $30 on an initial deposit of $100.  It’s easier to earn a bonus on a cash table than a ton of tournaments, so I’ve been focusing on that.  Full table is a big strength for me, mostly because it’s so easy to be patient at loose tables and just wait for the right cards and a strong flop.

Then this Stars-hates-me tournament drought started.  I can’t wait until that’s over, because I really like not finishing in fourth.  I think my short-handed game kind of sucks, but I’m also referring back to the starting hands matrix (it’s way more complicated than a chart) in Harrington’s Volume 1. 

I still haven’t been to a live game since the Tournament That Shook My Faith in Poker.  (But my work friends keep holding them over thirty miles away: I love this game, but I’m not going to drive that far to get beat by some jackass on a low-end straight draw with… never mind.)

I bought two new books: I’ll post them on the sidebar as soon as I’m done.

Ugh.  Having a bad, bad stretch in tournaments.  Started seeing a bunch of last-place finishes, so I read up on Harrington again (toned down my aggressiveness), and started seeing consistent bubble finishes.  Annoying.

The worst bit about this recent stretch is that I’ve mostly seen bad beats.  Bad beats, I remind myself, are the sign of a good player: stuff your money in with the best hand and the only way you can lose is if bad cards hit.  But the bad cards have been hitting.  Like:

1. I started following Phil Gordon’s advice and playing any pocket pair, as long as there haven’t been two raises.  He’s right: the implied odds are insanely good, and there isn’t an easier hand to play in no-limit.  Either you hit the flop and you’re pushing, or you missed it and you’re cutting fairly cheap.  But when your 66 sees a K64 flop, and you bet about 2/3rds of the pot, and holy crap 53o calls, because there’s a straight draw… what can you do?  Watch the 7 hit, bet, get brought all-in… mistakes.
2. Same idea: miss the flop with 88, but the turn is an 8, and the third diamond.  Again, I am forced to call an all-in bet before I have the chance to make one, but I actually saw that draw, and called with the intent of hitting one of my ten full-house outs.  Oh well.
3. 88 vs KK on a K82 flop: always a favorite
4. QT vs AA on a QT6 flop: of course the final 6 comes on the river
5. BB calls a raise with 65o… enough said
6. These are getting fairly petty, so I’ll stop

It’s just the inventiveness and creativity behind these beats.  (I’m leaving out heads-up beats, too, because anything can basically happen there.)  But aggression is great: they can fold, or they can call with a worse hand, and that’s why we do it.  On the other hand, sometimes they call with a better hand (it happens) and sometimes they call with a worse one, and win anyway.

So here’s the story: Skipper is kind of chatting up the table, and asks if KAR’s nickname means that K and R are going to be together forever.  The guy, who’s doing that college-kid-Poker-Stars thing of using the nearest picture of himself and his girlfriend as his avatar (click the photo to zoom), clams up about it.   

dnord520 said, "KAR must be the blonde"
Skytech said, "awww how sweet lol"
BigFatso said, "i thought that was the bad guy in knight rider"
KAR4-ever said, "how about yall shut the **** up"

I’m impressed by his "yall"ing, and check to see if he’s actually Southern.  Plano, TX!

dnord520 said, "don’t mess with TX…. even Plano"
Skytech said, "yeah dude,, dont pop a pipmple on that neck"
KAR4-ever said, "yea u can just see so many with that pic"
KAR4-ever said, "yall must have no friends"
dnord520 said, "friiiiiday niiiight"
BigFatso said, "lol"

We didn’t tease him anymore until JOHN (in the sweaters, also finding only a Christmas picture of himself when he created his PS account) knocked me out.  Ah well.

BigFatso said, "gg"
dnord520 said, "I’m gonna go see what KAR is doing"
BigFatso said, "lol"
Skytech said, "lol"

KAR4-ever said, "funny?"
BigFatso said, "one shot for the road"

KAR4-ever said, "not even"
Skytech said, "just a little"
KAR4-ever said, "no"
BigFatso said, "hold on loosely bro"

KAR didn’t hit the money.  BigFatso beat Skytech heads-up for first.  Funniest parting shot ever, though.

I was bored the other day and saw that ESPN has their own card room.  Don’t bother: it’s not a wonderful experience.  It’s all free, and they offer some prizes, but playing against a million people with their free million chips and trying to grab one of six or seven prizes is insane. 

One of their prizes, though, is a copy of Poker Academy software, which I wasn’t familiar with.  I’d heard people talk online about Turbo Hold Em, which has the same kind of model: simulate any number of hands, any number of ways, with any variety of software opponents.

In a word, it’s gorgeous.  There are a few things that are slightly less perfect than the Poker Stars experience (which I consider to be the finest software user experience in online poker), but compared to Turbo Hold Em… wow.  It’s a Java app, so it can get kind of pokey on older PCs, but the performance in a showdown simulation (dealing millions of boards to get exact percentages for specified hands) is ahead of native utilities built just for that.

Right out of the box, I thought of it more as a learning tool than a "game", but it offers surprisingly little in the way of constructive criticism.  If you play long enough, you’ll eventually min-bet on the river (usually just to test the waters), and the software says not to do that, but I’m not sure how terrible a habit that is.  I’ve been told many times that my raise is essentially committing me to the pot, which I suppose I’ll be more aware of in the future.  Once or twice it’s told me that I’m folding a strong hand (like if I miss a flush draw, but didn’t see I’d made a straight), but much more often, I’ll be told that I have a strong hand ("are you sure you want to fold?") when I’ve made the decision that my aces or kings are no longer good (like a board with a pair and 3 to a flush, let’s say… just too many ways to lose).  So it’s a lot of false positives, but I appreciate the reminders.

As a game, it’s awesome.  If you have ever wanted to simulate a tournament with deep stacks, you can do just that.  If you want to play a single table SnG in about ten minutes, you can: the computer opponent takes almost no time to make up its mind about what action to take.  And once you’re out of the hand, you can zip through at light speed to your next decision.  (Your table reading skills will not really improve with this tool.)  A 1000-player MTT can be simmed in no time at all.  And all the defaults for Party, Poker Stars, etc. (like starting chips, blinds, even timers) are all included, so the simulation is pretty solid.

The stats aren’t as comprehensive as what Poker Tracker provides, but the presentation is much nicer.  Pretty charts and graphs show your tendencies, but there’s nothing screaming out where your holes are.  And if you’re charting your tournaments now (moving the line up 10 when you win $10, down $1 when you lose $1), you’ll be impressed by the way Poker Academy draws a line of your chip count between the start of the tournament and the end.  If they had something like this for real money play, I’d be all over it.

Other ways you could train: start a cash game, and leave the button immediately to your left if you think your late-position play is weak.  Replay every hand until you understand exactly why everyone in every chair made every decision they made.  Or start a limit tournament, and check the pot odds (with your opponents’ actual holdings and relative strengths) in every tough decision. 

There is, of course, the question of "how good are the bot opponents, really?"  I’d say they aren’t great (in particular, they seem unafraid of overcards when playing pocket pairs), but I’m still having a hard time beating them, so I definitely need to continue learning and refining my game.  One also wonders if they are bad in the same way that low-limit NL and tournament players are, and if hardening my defenses against computer play will still leave a squishy spot for two-bit gimps to poke at. 

Poker Academy is $29, and there’s this idea among poker players that any money spent on any education tool might be worth it, since it might save you one bad bet a month over the course of the rest of your life.  I’ve scaled back my poker playing recently, and not only does this tool scratch the itch to play (and do a reasonable job of simluating people playing for money), but I think I’m learning a lot about full-table dynamics. 

I distinctly remember having lost $200 already into online poker, and reaching for another $100, thinking… "man, if this doesn’t go right, I’m going to have to stop completely."

It was around that time that I started realizing that post-flop bets are made in fractions of the pot, not table minimums or multiples of that.  Betting more when I had the best of it (and realizing that I should get out when I likely didn’t) made my play suddenly, unquestionably profitable.  I went on a tear with tournaments, experimented with cash tables, and built that $100 up to $250.

I was just barely profitable, but when you consider the rake, that’s not bad.  I didn’t look back when there was a chance to redeposit for a bonus, but when I did that, I started an Excel sheet with my deposits, balances, and winnings.  When you play even-money poker, bonuses aren’t sucker bait.  (That is, unless you play differenly when you’re burning off a bonus, which always seemed to happen to me.)  They’re a valuable way to build your bankroll.

I took some money out of Poker Stars and moved it to Party, and played the cash tables there.  With a decent bankroll, the play there is pretty attractive.  (As I’ve mentioned earlier, a $25-max NL table is a dangerous place to learn cash games, but if you can absorb that loss occasionally, the water’s fine.)  With money in two accounts, it became imperative that I track my wins and losses, and soon I could see that, combining real-life with online play, I was profitable.  (Largely thanks to a real-life tourney I won, making up for the $75 or so I was behind in online-only play.)

But in two days, I’d covered that gap, and proceeded to cash out all but $100 of my original investment.  (Better to have $110 in there than $10… you know, risk of ruin.)

I turned that into $120, and went to a friend’s house for a couple of tournaments.  The first was okay, but the second offered rebuys.  I didn’t want to stay out that late.  People argued about the dumbest things imaginable.  Everyone was more drunk than I was.  And I lost money overall, while missing out on an evening with my family and a good night’s sleep. 

It kind of summed up the past six months.  I didn’t want to do it much anymore.  While I’ve felt this way every once in a while during my six-month poker career, I’d just made a nice deposit into my bank account, bought a new iPod, and started working on a new PC in the basement.  I was ahead, but for how long?  I was a consistent winner at the small tables, but I didn’t know how, and I wanted to read some more books.  Anytime I read a book, I start thinking about how much better I am for having read it, and I start testing my knowledge on the tables, applying fresh lessons in inappropriate situations, getting myself in trouble.  I didn’t want that inevitable dip (which always comes back, but still) eating into my tiny lifetime profit.

The Excel sheet started to bug me.  Since I was up $20 online, I was playing with a $20 bankroll, not $120 or $520.  I couldn’t take risks that would expose that "seed" money, and when you stop taking risks, you’re not playing poker at all.  I cashed out the $100, thinking that the $20 that was left would either be wasted, or the seed money for another run to the top.

It turns out that a naked $20 burns pretty fast, especially when I’m reading a new book.  Ha ha.

So I’m positive, lifetime, online and offline, and I’ve got pocket change (literally: Party doesn’t cash cents, only whole dollars) in a couple accounts, but this will be the first weekend I don’t play online (barring a frantic relapse and paying Neteller’s 8.9% on instant deposits) in about forever.

Basically, that $65 smash hit on Party ended up saving my bacon for August.  In tournaments I ended up $13 to the good, and in cash games, I posted the tiniest of profits.  (I lost a buy-in yesterday, when someone was making bets that were too small to chase away my nut flush draw, and a third guy was in there for unknown reasons.  River was my spade, so I pushed all-in, the initial aggressor folded, and the third guy called.  The turn, as it happens, was his fourth five, and I wasn’t afraid of the pair on the board, because who plays with fives?  Someone with two of them, is the answer.)

I’ve dabbled in heads up tournaments (5-5 so far, which means I’d be even if I wasn’t paying a fee), and started to play a little limit.  Limit’s sort of fun, just because you can play more hands, but it’s much more frustrating, because every set or nut straight gets outdrawn by some braying jackass with J5s.  Thing is, he’s getting odds for his calls, too.

I also want to note that the 45-player $1.00+.20 SnG (paying 7) is about 40% ITM for me, with a ROI of over 100%.  If I had all day to scrape by and collect pennies, that’s what I’d be doing.

I don’t spend a lot of time chatting with my opponents, especially when we’ve gotten to be heads up.  Heads up, you pretty much have to always be thinking, and I’m not even comfortable with the customary "gl" before the dealing starts.  (In a MTT, sure, "gl".  Good luck coming in second, I mean, since I’m going to win this, and there’s plenty of prize money for the rest of you.  Heads up, there’s one prize, and we’re both trying to get it, and there’s nothing nice about any of it.)

Anyway, it happened in a hand (as it sometimes does) that my opponent was seemingly making every move right before I would make, and answering every one of my moves with a careful call.  At the showdown, we both had K8o.  I’m getting kind of tired of this joke, but my opponent said "nh".  Like, yeah, we had the same hand!  Did you notice!  I like that hand!  So much that I, too, played it!

I meant to shrug it off with "huh" like, "oh, really?  That happens once in a while."  But when I typed "huh" it must have seemed like I was missing the joke, because he typed "I was joking".  And I knew that, but I just didn’t think it was funny.  I typed "ok" which basically summed up my feelings about the situation, and he answered with "wtf?"  WTF, indeed.

I beat him about ten minutes later, all-in preflop with A5 vs. A7.  I had him barely covered, and a five hit on the flop.  Classic.  That, apparently, made me a "pus sy", and worthy of the insult "u r garbage - really".  Some people.

Sick of the 800 chips Party gives you in a SnG (and the blinds bouncing up every 10 hands), I decided to give one of their $10 MTTs a try.  It was fun.

You know how on PokerStars, when people get close to the money, they tighten up, and it seems like nothing’s going to happen to the standings until you’re blinded out?  Some sites play hand-for-hand to make sure nobody stalls at each level, but since Party doesn’t have that kind of thing in place, I figured there’d be some goofy tight play.

No way!  It seemed like people weren’t changing their play at all as we got close to money time.  Players just continued to file out in a steady stream, both at the money cutoff and as levels went up.  I think it was at 82 people left that someone at my table was facing a deciding all-in.  80th place paid about four dollars more than 81st, so you might even use your time bank to see if 81 would die off… it’s sneaky, but legal.  This player stalled, and 81 left.  And then 80.  And then that player disconnected: s/he wasn’t even playing tactically!  Hilarious.

I finished somewhere in the top 50 of 2000.  That paid something like $65: great, until you consider that I was up at midnight on Sunday, playing for almost four hours. 

That’s only one experience, but if you hate Party or are wondering where the crazy money’s at, it would seem that you could do worse than the evening MTTs.  Just not the SnGs: those are basically coinflips.

I focused my game in July, playing nothing but $5 SnGs for a long time.  It worked.  I hit the money in an obscene percentage in the first half of the month, and cooled off a little bit, but still showed a $100 profit after 50+ tournaments.  A few MTTs for large prizes didn’t pay off, but that’s no big deal.

I also started playing .05/.10 NL on PokerStars… that wasn’t quite as sensational, but the profit was still there.  I am always reloading when take a hit, so it’s hour after hour of super-tight play… gets a little boring after a while, but you can’t do much else.  I don’t know enough to get away from ace-junk when I end up playing it, so I am better off waiting for premium hands.

Having proven that I could crush the $5 SnGs, I was really eager to try the $10, but a friend advised me to wait until I’d built up at least $300 in my bankroll.  That was wise: you’ll read in my August recap what happened as soon as I "graduated". 

That’s more or less what I want to see happen in August: hit the $10 tournaments, see about the same success rate (or a little less), and keep building.  Maybe cash a bonus or two.