Rhymes with Joker

A Quick Note on Week Twenty-One

In the tradition of losing weeks, I'm not going to say a lot about this week. Here, though, the tradition is strengthened by something else entirely.

I've found some great games. Great games. The loosest $5/$10 games I've ever seen online. They're my secret for the moment, but they truly are great games. So I sat.

Unfortunately, there were two problems with this. First, a loose game is high-variance; I had high odds that I'd go broke. (I didn't even think of this when I sat down; the game was so good that losing money never occurred to me.) The second problem is that I found myself unable to adjust my game back to playing a super-loose table. Particularly, people were playing unpredictably enough that I often didn't know where I stood. Also, I couldn't keep myself from trying to take pots that nobody else seemed to want; in a loose game nobody may want it but people don't particularly want to give it up, either.

One of the bad things about these loose tables is that there often aren't many of them; this means that sometimes you're forced to play a short game. And my short game has gone to pot. Six months ago, I loved my short game, but every short-handed session I played this week was a big loser.

What really hurts about this, is that these are great games, but they've done enough damage to my already unhealthy bankroll that I was forced to leave them and return to the $25NL tables, where the upside is a lot lower.

What hurts more is that my bankroll is again dangerously low (it reached depths even below where I was worried last week), so much so that I am right near total ruin. Things aren't that desperate yet but one bad day, and I'm right to where I'll need to be bankrolled to continue.

To rebuild my bankroll, I am sticking, for now, to the relatively low-variance $25 NL games, and even more, I'm single-tabling. The idea behind single-tabling is that even if its EV is less than multitabling, single-tabling gives me more time to make each decision, and so I'm less likely to make a stupid one. And I can't afford stupid decisions right now; I've already made plenty over the last several weeks.

Tomorrow night is the Lithuanians' game; hopefully I get another chance to pull $50 or so out of that game, because even that $50 would help a lot. And, hey, I haven't checked my $210,000,000 lottery ticket yet; I might already be a gazillionaire. Let's see, either I win, or I don't; that makes the odds 50/50, right?

Notes on the $25 No-Limit Ring Games

I've played enough of the $25 max-buyin no-limit ($25NL) ring games on PartyPoker, now, to make some preliminary conclusions.

By no means do I have a huge sample size. Only 3500 hands are loaded into PokerTracker thus far at this limit; several days of play is all. But those 3500 hands show some encouraging signs.

I also want to say that my plan is not to play the $25NL's forever, although it seems that if I wanted to, or am forced to, I could. My plan is to move up to playing the $100NL or $200NL levels, and fortunately the gradient from $25NL to $200NL seems to be shallower than the gradient from $3/$6 to $15/$30. (The $5/$10 and $10/$20 are widely held to be tougher games than the $15/$30, ruining the gradient. My limited experience with the three levels bears this out.)

In any case, my $25NL play seems to be settling in the range of 19 to 20 big bets per 100 hands (BB/c). In no-limit, PokerTracker considers a big bet to be twice the big blind. Since a big blind at $25NL is 50¢, then 19.99 BB/c (my current mark) corresponds to $19.99 per 100 hands or 19.99¢ per hand. Over the course of those 3500 hands, my earn fluctuated between 19 and 23 ¢/h, so that 19.99¢/h isn't atypical (thus far).

The reason that I point this out is that my earn at $3/$6 is or was almost exactly 10¢/hand, 1.67 BB/c (over a much bigger sample size). That's down from historic levels but even 11 or 12 ¢/h, where it's been, is less than I've been earning (thus far) at the $25NL tables.

I am today on the $50NL's, despite $50NL being unkind to me yesterday (and thus far today), but most of the reason, especially today, has been suckouts. More than 2/3 of the time I've taken big hits today, I had the better hand and got outdrawn. So, I'm not terribly worried about it; my success at the $25NL has pulled my bankroll out of the danger area, at least for these games, and I can wait for my turn to suck out. Before yesterday's action, over a tiny sample size, I was at around 19 BB/c at the $50NL also, 38¢/h, although yesterday's action dropped that down to just over 4 BB/c, 8¢/h, over a still-tiny sample size. My hope is that the $50NL settles down around 15 BB/c, and while that's a reasonable hope I don't know how likely it is. If it settles below 10 BB/c while the $25NL stays at 20 BB/c, the $25NL would actually be more profitable. I can't judge $100NL or $200NL yet; I've never played $200NL and I've played one session of $100NL (a loser).

In any case, no-limit is my home for the next while, at least. I want to be playing the $200NL regularly within two weeks, but the amount of stuff I don't know about NL might slow that down. I also want to take a shot at the no-limit game in Detroit that I've mentioned, but that seems like it's at least three weeks out. The priority in all of this is to protect my bankroll, so this will in some ways resemble those "100 big-bet challenges" that some bloggers have set themselves. I'm not doing anything so formal, though; not least because I've never heard of anyone finishing one of those successfully. No, I'll just be moving up if I'm successful, and down if I'm not; hopefully that provides the results I want.

I said when I started this that the results I needed were about $500/week. Before I started trying new things, I was averaging something like $400 a week. I want to about double that, to rebuild my bankroll and allow me to do some other things. Some back-of-the-envelope numbers show that this should be easy if I'm at all successful at the $200NL. But I have to get there, and I frankly don't know what the roadblocks are that I'll face.

Wish me luck.

Week Twenty Wrapup

I'll mention last week again, because I finally have the distance that I can add up the numbers without feeling totally depressed. It was a bit worse than I'd guessed, being a week that was down over $1300. (I guessed $1200.)

As I said, I don't feel as bad about this as I originally did, even though it put my entire career in jeopardy, even though about ten different people could easily say "I told you so." The worst part of that was that I couldn't get traction at any other limits, either; both $2/$4 and $3/$6 kicked my ass after the big drubbing at $15/$30.

This led to me flailing around a bit looking for other ways to make my nut; I gave the Sit-and-Go single-table tournaments a try, but determined that even though I used to play a whole lot of them, I have forgotten, it seems, how to play them profitably, or at least consistently profitably. I then took someone's advice (actually, several someones), and gave the $25 max-buyin no-limit ring games a try. My first sitting was quite profitable, as were my second and third sittings, so I think I'm going to be on these no-limit rings for a while. I gave the $50 max-buyin and $100 max-buyin tables a try, too, and I'll probably move there shortly, but for the next couple of days it's the $25NL tables as I rebuild my bankroll.

During Week Twenty, I worked my way up to multitabling the no-limit rings; I have no problems with three but I haven't tried four yet. I've decided that the $25NL tables are nice, and they're profitable, but they're not profitable enough to play professionally. So, I'm treating this time multitabling the $25NL as training-wheels for the $50NL, which is in turn training-wheels for the $100NL, which is in turn training-wheels for the $200NL. And as I've said before, once I'm winning consistently at the $100NL and $200NL on PartyPoker, I'll feel a lot more comfortable sitting that no-limit game in Detroit, where, as I've also said, I've seen $20,000 on the table.

And so, even though I made nearly $500 during week 20, and even though that's not enough, and even though I've been on a bad run, I'm optimistic about the future.

That said, my situation might parallel a situation I was in several years ago, where I was usually fairly optimistic despite results. Today, I remember those couple of years as one of the worst times of my life.

I had a respectable, easy, fun, but low-paying job at a typesetting company when I was essentially dumped by a girl I'd been seeing for a few months. As I said in my last entry, I tend to go a long time between relationships, so the dumping gave me reason to evaluate my life. She said that one of the things that attracted her to me originally was all these big plans I spoke of (this was during my political days). And, true to what she said, I wasn't doing a lot to make those plans come to fruition. So, from her point of view, I was stuck in a rut and I seemed to like it.

After I'd been dumped, I came to realize that she was right, and so I tried to determine what I really wanted, in order that I could set myself upon that goal. I decided that my goal was that I wanted to be Governor. One of the things I determined then that I needed were sales skills, and so I set my eyes upon the want ads (things weren't all-internet then) to find an entry-level sales job. I ended up accepting a position with Colorado Prime Foods, which from the salesman's point of view was somewhere between being the Schwan's guy and being the Kirby vacuum guy.

The similarity between then and now is that I wasn't very successful at the job. I could see money being made; I could see how it was possible to be successful, but I wasn't successful. One of the reasons I consider this to have been pretty much the worst periods of my life is that I believed their bullshit, that even if I wasn't successful now, I would be very soon, and all I had to do was to hold on until then. (I was in a pretty poisonous relationship for the latter part of my time there, too, and the poison spread to pretty much every part of my life. But there's no parallel there.)

The parallel may be that I'm having just enough success at poker to keep me playing. I'm having difficulty at these lower stakes in building enough bankroll to play the higher-stakes games profitably, and maybe I'm not even good enough to play those higher stakes anyway. (That bad weekend at $10/$20 in Chicago during week 2, or was it 3, really spooked my about my ability at the mid-limit games. Of course, my play is different now, but it still spooked me, and destroyed for now my ability to play live games with stakes that high.) To continue, I can see the money being made, and I see myself making the money in the long term, but I need to get to the long term. And for the last several weeks, I have written several things about how the long-term is just a couple of weeks away.

Maybe if my fortunes at $15/$30 were different, I would already be at the long term; this is one reason I don't feel too horrid about taking a shot even if it was stupid. And truly, I only lost 30 or 40 big bets at the $15/$30, so I probably fell victim to variance more than anything. My mistake was sitting down without being able to weather the variance. The no-limit rings seem to be working for the present, although the upside is limited at the $25NL tables, and so I need to move up. I planned to do so within the next several days, but I think I'll do so starting even today: As my current $25NL tables break, I'll replace them with $50NL tables. I've never multitabled the $50NL, but I don't expect a serious problem.

My numbers for both Weeks 19 and 20 follow. The NL rings are recorded as "NL $0.5" (e.g.), which means that the big blind was $0.5, fifty cents. (That's the $25NL.) I may change that later, so that the $0.5 reflects a big bet, rather than a big blind, corresponding to the way that PokerTracker figures things like big bets per hour on the no-limit rings, and for the same reason: In case I want to figure things later in terms of big bets per whatever. But for now, "NL $0.5" means that the big blind is 50¢, which is also how PokerTracker records the type of table.

If Shaq were Phil Hellmuth, Jr.

By Perry Friedman, from rec.gambling.poker:

We'd be hearing now about how the Lakers lost beause Detroit played so badly.

Then we'd hear soemthing like:

"I had three oppportunities to dunk, but I was able to see into the soul of the defenders and I knew I was going to get blocked, and I made a brilliant decision to pass the ball... I knew if they kept playing me that way, I'd get my opportunities to score."

And later:

"How could they play zone against me? Don't they know who I am?

Putting in the Hours: A Dark Journey Through the Psyche of Lord Geznikor

In my recent (and continuing) quest to find a way to increase my income, one piece of advice remained constant:

Play more hours.

I said the first time that was suggested that it wasn't feasible, promising a longer explanation eventually. This is that explanation, and indeed it is likely to damage my reputation as a Really Together Guy.

The short answer is that I have ADD, and three hours is the most I can concentrate on four-tabling poker, and three hours might even be too long. (It does, indeed, require about 70% of my concentration.) But because the real reason is more complicated than that, and because at least one acquaintance doesn't believe in ADD, I shall elaborate.

Part of the long answer is that I have difficulty making short-term sacrifice for long-term goals. This is the reason that I never did well in school despite a top-1-percent intellect; it was always easier and more "fun" to watch another episode of whatever stupid crap was on TV, than it was to do homework or "study." (To this day, I really don't know what people mean when they say they have to "study." Do they understand the topic, or don't they?)

In my adult life, I've worked out ways to avoid having to make those sacrifices. I haven't been terribly ambitious at jobs I've held. (Which is good, because I've always exasperated my employers.) I'm not married, although this may be a symptom rather than a result. And I've come not to mind living in a hopelessly cluttered, uhh, living space.

My father has said that making short-term sacrifices for long-term goals is something that grownups do; when his dander is up (which still happens in my thirties) he as much as says, "grow up." Functionally, at least, it seems my father is right; I look at people younger than I am with a house, and wife, and kids, and simply do not understand, except academically, how they did it. If I had a house, it would fall apart because of the repair jobs that went undone. And I tend to go a long time between relationships because, dammit, relationships are a damn lot of work.

What it boils down to, is that I'm a hedonist: I want to do whatever is the most fun thing I can do right now. Playing three hours of poker is fun. Playing eight hours of poker is not fun.

Another part of the problem is that I hate being told what to do. "So do I," you say. No, I mean, I really hate being told what to do. If I was planning to go to McDonald's, and you tell me to go to McDonald's, then dammit, I'm going to Wendy's. If I was planning to wear my black shirt, and you tell me to wear my black shirt, then I'm wearing my blue shirt even if it's in the laundry. It does matter how you say it. I am open to suggestions, really I am, but if I reject the suggestion then that's that.

This is why I feel the way I do on some political issues. Things that are prohibited tick me off, but things that are mandatory really get me going. Particularly, I believe that mandatory taxation is immoral, akin to theft at best and slavery at worst. I therefore believe that local, state, and federal governments should be radically reduced in size and scope so that mandatory taxation is not required to pay for it. (There are other reasons I believe this. And, a small amount of mandatory taxation might be necessary to pay for even the tiny government I envision. But even if it is a necessary evil, it is still evil.)

On the other obvious example of that which is mandatory, a military draft, I'll say that a war is unjust if it requires a draft to wage it. If you don't get enough volunteers to fight the war, then don't fight it.

I think I'm off on a tangent. The point is, that I don't like being told what to do. One of the weird things about this, is that I don't even like it when it's me that is doing the telling. If I tell myself that I'll do X after I've completed Y, it rarely works out that way. Once Y has finished, I re-evaluate whether I wish to do X. If I don't, then I don't do it. My train of thought is often something like, "Why should I do X, just because Y is over? That's stupid. Besides, I don't want to do X."

That's what it boils down to: I don't play for longer than three hours because I don't want to. After three hours, it's not fun (usually). Sometimes there are other, somewhat tilty, reasons to play on, but usually three hours is about what I can stand.

Oddly, in the casino, some of the same tendencies work in the opposite direction. I don't have to focus for three hours; once I've pigeonholed my opponents I only need to focus for a couple of minutes, occasionally. The social banter at the casino gives me something else to do, keeping the game "fun." And the very thing that keeps me from playing online, keeps me at the table live. This is especially true when going home is a drive of a couple of hours; that's like work. And I don't like to do work; that's why they call it that.

One of the conclusions one could draw from these two big character flaws is that I shouldn't be a poker pro. Maybe that's true, but it also makes me unsuited for just about everything else. Maybe I could be something where the pay is completely out of proportion with the work that's performed, which pretty much means the entertainment industry. Grand Rapids doesn't produce a lot of big-time actors; the last one of any note was Gillian Anderson (X-Files). And she's really in demand lately. (Oh yeah, the "American Pie" writer was from here; the movies are set in fictionalized East Grand Rapids.)

But poker does, usually, provide me with a living doing something that doesn't suck. I don't have to get up at 6AM, and I don't have a shithead boss. (Okay, maybe I do have a shithead boss.) For the most part I've followed the advice to find something you like to do, and then find someone who will pay you for it.

What I'm trying to do now, is find a way to make it pay more. More hours would generally be counterproductive. I am, therefore, looking for a way to get more out of my hours.

This next bit started as an aside, but after I typed it, I realized it's important. One of the things that even lets me keep up focus for three hours is that I have the day's blogs to go through. Although I haven't added any to my reading list in a while, keeping up with the blogs, most days, takes about three hours. At least, it does while I'm sitting multiple tables of poker. What can be drawn from this is that if there were something else to occupy my time while I was playing, I might be able to stretch out my playing time. I am not looking for more blogs to read, although Iggy's hiatus might be worth two new blogs. Even now, I get to the point where I've read enough blogs. What I'm looking for is something else to do, perhaps a game I could play to keep myself occupied. It must run windowed, and must be pausable and probably turn-based. "Tetris" wouldn't work, for example, but a game like Snood would. Actually, a Scrabble game would, too, or Monopoly, or something. Well, heck, maybe I just need to take a gander at the bargain bin at my local hacker hut and see what I see. There's got to be something that can keep me playing. (Oddly, Solitaire didn't work. At least the Freecell variety took too much thinking, too much away from the poker.)

This took several hours to write, and it's unedited. I'd go back over it, but it is on a depressing topic, so I won't. So, do your worst; psychoanalyze me to death, tell me how you think so much less of me now. Or you could just send money.

“Trip” Report: The Hanging Chads

I promised a trip report from another new home game, but nothing out of the ordinary happened, so this will be short.

The game was in Allendale, but I can't very well call it the Allendale game, because presumably it's not the only one. Since my host was named "Chad," this game has been named "The Hanging Chads."

Chad spent some money on this game, although all through Ebay. He bought a thousand of the "dice" chips, in those 500-per cases that include cards and dice. He also bought a couple of those folding reversible tabletops for poker or blackjack, and placed them on top of card tables I presume he already had. If he didn't, and he bought cardtables and chairs, he put yet more money into the game. But this wouldn't be out of character for him; his basement includes an air-hockey table and a foosball table, and enough spare computer parts under the air-hockey table to indicate that he's probably been a computer guy almost as long as I have.

His plan was to run two $40-buyin tournaments separately, and this worked, although I probably would have run it to combine the tables and play to the top three. In any case, even though there was only one person on my table who really knew what he was doing, there was nobody who was wholly clueless. So, my fourth-place finish (I think) wasn't in the money, but I'm not disappointed. After a couple of nice hands early my cards went cold, and with bluffing being pointless at the table, I couldn't really do much.

As the original two tables went short-handed, the remaining players tried another $10 tourney. Since this had the same blinds as the $40 tourney, but with fewer chips, it was effectively a turbo tourney. I shoved in with a marginal hand (A6♠), and lost.

At this point we use the other table for a 50cent;/$1 cash game. My cards remain cold, and so I win a couple of small pots but don't get back even until my KK holds up at the end, for a whopping 50¢ loss at the ring game.

And so what was supposed to be an easy game, ended up being a $50⁵⁰ loss.

Chad says he's interested in doing it again, perhaps in August. This seems late to me; if he invested all of this money, his game should be monthly at the least, and maybe even more often. Heck, even the Lithuanians play every two weeks.

It's All Too Beautiful ...

If I Had a Hammer, I'd Hammer at 4:00 in the Morning ...

I hate posting hand histories. But this was just too beautiful. (It ended up being the last hand before the table broke.)

***** Hand History for Game 683734502 *****
0/0 TEXASHTGAMETABLE (NL) - FRI JUN 18 03:53:45 EDT 2004
Table Bet the Pot (Real Money) -- Seat 10 is the button
Total number of players : 7
Seat 1: LordGeznikor ( $67.65)
Seat 2: (sitting out)
Seat 3: (sitting out)
Seat 6: d------ ( $49)
Seat 7: h. ( $190.05)
Seat 9: (sitting out)
Seat 10: S. ( $27.80)
LordGeznikor posts small blind (0.50)
dimon82 posts big blind (1)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to LordGeznikor [ 7c, 2s ] - HAMMER ME, BABY!
house03 folds.
SNAPNP0P folds.
LordGeznikor raises (2.50) to 3 - I can steal with 72o, 'cuz I is a PRO!
d------ raises (5) to 6 - Whoops!
LordGeznikor calls (3) - Sometimes, you've just got to say, "What the fuck."
** Dealing Flop ** : [ 3h, 2h, 2d ] - Holy shit on a shingle, Batman!
LordGeznikor checks. - Ain't I a stinker?
d------ bets (7) - YESSSS! Doin' the Humpty dance ...
LordGeznikor calls (7) - Can I get it all?
** Dealing Turn ** : [ 6c ] - Good, no heart ...
LordGeznikor checks. - Please bet please bet please bet please bet ...
d------ bets (10) - YESSSS!
LordGeznikor raises (54.65) to 54.65 - Feel the wrath of THE HAMMER!
LordGeznikor is all-In.
d------ calls (26) - Indeed, you are powerful, as the Emperor has foreseen.
d------ is all-In.
** Dealing River ** : [ 6h ] - Not the best card for me, but ...
Creating Main Pot with $96 with d------
Creating Side Pot 1 with $18.65 with LordGeznikor
** Summary **
Main Pot: $96 | Side Pot 1: $18.65 | Rake: $2
Board: [ 3h 2h 2d 6c 6h ]
LordGeznikor balance $114.65, bet $67.65, collected $114.65, net +$47 [ 7c 2s ] [ a full house, Twos full of
sixes -- 6c,6h,2s,2h,2d ]
d------ balance $0, lost $49 [ Ah Th ] [ a flush, ace high -- Ah,Th,6h,3h,2h ]
h. balance $190.05, didn't bet (folded)
S. balance $27.80, didn't bet (folded)

Oooooh, that's pretty. I just killed a man with a HAMMER!

The day's best poker news:

• Iggy's Poker Blog

Fellow Michiganders' poker blogs:

• Gambling Blues (BG)
• Gadfly's Buzz
• Dispatches from the Culture Wars
• On Hiatus:          
• Royal Poker
• Ralph Nader's Poker Jam

Other poker blogs:
(People who whined about no link)

• Up for Poker
• The Cards Speak
• Chicago Phil
• Poker Index

Play poker online:

• PartyPoker
• Intertops Poker
• Doyle's Room
• Full Tilt Poker

Or in the casino:

• Kewadin Shores (1)
  in St.Ignace, Mich.
• Little River Casino (2)
  in Manistee, Mich
• Soaring Eagle Casino (3)
  in Mt.Pleasant, Mich.
• Greektown Casino (4)
  in Detroit, Mich.
• Motor City Casino <4>
  in Detroit, Mich.
• Harrah's (5)
  in E.Chicago, Ind.
• Trump Casino (6)
  in Gary, Ind.
• Leelanau Sands Casino (7)
  in Peshawbestown, Mich.
• Point Edward Charity Casino (NP)
  in Sarnia, Ont.
• ----
• Atom Feed