Wednesday, March 1st

February Report Card

Total hands: 21,900
Limit: 4.57 BB/100 over 18,900 hands:
NL: 3,000 hands: + $2,370

Glad that I managed 20,000+ hands this month, which has become my de facto goal for number of hands / month. Also ran pretty well happy to say.

Just this quick report post for now, since I'm packing to head to Florida for a little R&R, but more importantly the Party Million limit tournament cruise. One of my big poker goals from last year was to participate in a $10,000 buy-in tournament, so I guess this is it! Sure, I guess I wish it were the WSOP ME, but I probably have much more EV in this one given the quality of my limit game right now. I'll hopefully be posting daily reports while I'm on the cruise.

February chart below:

Saturday, February 25: Die, cheaters

Another major shakeup in the online poker world this past week, with 2 higher-profile players, JJProdigy & Justin Bonomo being caught for playing multiple usernames (sometimes up to 6) in the same multi-table tournament. You can read about their sagas here and here -- JJProdigy offered up an absolutely absurd excuse about his grandma playing the first half of the tournament, and then him finishing up for her...a tall tale to be sure, only to have Justin follow up with what will go down in the annals of gaming history as one of the most absurdly defiant and pathetic explanations / justifications ever proferred for cheating at poker. Read it here if you really want a glimpse into what happens to one's logical reasoning when you eschew college in favor of poker. Stay in school, kids (despite the unfortunately ironic title of this blog.) I've only played in a handful of big-buyin MTTs, but even I feel cheated by these multi-account abusers. I hope Party and Stars cracks the whip in the coming weeks. It's terrible that the only reason they even caught these two guys was because they were reported by other players who had become suspicious. Both of the cheaters also claim that what they did is very widespread among most of the big tourney players; somewhat disconcerting.

In other news, the law firm I summered for last year just announced a pretty sizeable salary-increase for first-years (of which I will not be one, since I summarily rejected their offer): bump from 125K to 145K. After bonus, that means that all of my ex-summer classmates who allowed themselves to be duped into a couple years of mind-numbing servitude will be pocketing in the neighborhood of 175K to 185K (before taxes). And you know what? Not even the tiniest twinge of remorse from my end. For those readers who haven't read my posts from a year ago, or from last summer when I got caught up in the throes of life as a summer associate, you might not understand my animosity toward Big Law, nor why I'm shunning that undeniably lucrative career path despite finishing up my law school degree. I'll have much more to write about that in a post that I've been mulling about for a couple weeks now, but in short, it's just not worth it. Sitting in interviews with lawyers who try and convince you that they really like what they do for a living, when you can see in their eyes that they're dead inside. Sitting in your office from 8:30am until 10pm (on a good night -- ugh, I'm shivering just writing that) 6 days each week spellchecking documents (sorry, future lawyers, that's what you do as a first-year). Dragging your weary ass home every night, so tired that all you're able to do is watch yesterday's episode of the Daily Show that you Tivo'd then go to bed so you can get up and do it all over again the next day. Sorry, just not my idea of enjoying life. I've been fired or disciplined from nearly every single job I've had since I was 14 -- often as a result of a nebulous "attitude problem" that apparently I can't kick. Even last summer, I was on the business end of a couple shit-talks because apparently more senior attorneys don't like to be second-guessed, nor have alternative ideas suggested to them. They just want the work they give you to be done without any questions being asked. I just don't fit the mold, sad to say. But like I said, I've had another post brewing that will address that more thoroughly. Got to run for now.

Oh, just found one post (among the thousands in that stupid ZeeJustin thread) written by Jason Strasser that was pretty illuminating so I thought I'd recopy it here:

This entire JJ Prodigy and ZeeJustin debacle should be shedding light on the overall world of online poker.

I had a realization last year. I had an excellent night at the tables, and stayed up all night in my dorm room. The sun came out, and right as I was thinking about crashing, I went outside my room to get some water. As I walked down the hall, I saw my neighbor heading out of the dorm room. We got in a conversation, and he was waking up to tend the Washington Duke golf courses, where he got paid $9/hour. Then he’d attend class. He is now at NYU Law School, and he’s a very smart kid.

This situation is obviously very generic and frequent, but for some reason this really hit home. I could’ve taken my friend into a room for one day, and taught him how to make way more than his wage. Poker has created unbalance in society. I really should not be able to use my non-exceptional mind to make the money that I am making.

The bottom line is this: making money at poker is far easier than it should be right now. Not to sound arrogant, but the most comforting aspect of poker for me is not the tons of online fish who dump money, but it’s the players who are winning that money. The fact that, in my mind, there are so many players out there raking in huge dollars, who in my opinion, are not very good/talented/smart and who don’t really go through cogent thought processes, is very comforting for me. When I show up at a tournament and see all these ‘pros’ who make over 100K/year and who just don’t impress me, I don’t panic about poker disappearing with the fish.

But off this tangent—poker, as it stands now, is not sustainable. That is blatantly obvious. But the current state of the game has produced many young players who are, for the most part are fairly smart but not exceptional, banking hundreds of thousands of dollars. A lot of these kids did not go to college and severely lack perspective on the world they live in. Majority of their friends are other poker players. They are very isolated from the real world because in the real world, a 16 year old who understands folding equity shouldn’t be able to drag in 6-figures. They obviously have a certain combination of traits which allow them to be successful, but please, if you want to sit here and call ZeeJustin or JJProdigy or myself ‘great minds’ or ‘prodigies’, you are out of your mind.

When I first heard about Justin getting in trouble, I felt terrible. It made me sick to see people on here bashing this young kid. For the most part, these attacks are justified, but I it’s just not my personality to gang up on someone, especially a friend, when he is down. I also, do not come from a totally ‘honest’ background. There are definitely things I have done in online poker that are on the borderline, especially when you start talking about ‘one player to a hand.’ I have never Multi-accounted, though, because that struck me as being fairly obviously immoral.

ZeeJustin’s ‘My Statement’ post was disgusting, but illuminating. If you can’t see the misguided, sheltered, and ignorant way he was writing, that’s unfortunate. I read his post, hoping for an apologetic, ‘I’m sorry and I want to move on,’, and yet got a ‘Party stole XYZ from me and its ridiculous’. He doesn’t get it, but you are ignorant for blaming him for this. I got an aim invitation today to join some sort of ‘Anti-Cheaters Rejoice’ chat. In my opinion, that’s [censored] ridiculous. ZeeJustin is making money for the many of the same reasons I am making money, and for many of the reasons you are making money. And when you have a venue where teenagers get idolized for a simple card game and turn down college and a chance to grasp a hold of fundamental principals by experiencing world experiences, ZeeJustin and JJProdigy are among the things you get.

-Jason Strasser

Saturday, February 18th: Chaos reigns

Wow - some past few days. Major upheaval, as I'm sure most people are aware at Party (my primary stomping grounds, although I've been known to play at Stars and UB when I find a good game.) Also somewhat ironic that it comes right on the heels of my post about how much I value table selection -- well a HUGE detriment to my ability to find good tables quickly came in the form of the Party "up"grade. PAHUD no longer shows data on observed tables, meaning I either have to revert to using my buddy list, or even just looking up all the people at the table in my PT DB, which is incredibly time-consuming. I much preferred the days when I could just open 10 tables, and pick the fishiest ones. I guess I can still do that, except now it takes me about 15 minutes to do that, instead of 30 seconds. And when the game inevitably goes sour, or breaks up, I have to start that process all over again. I might have to actually learn how to play poker. I'll actually be somewhat interested to see what this does to my winrate. Really too bad, because I had really just started to really find my stride playing 6 to 8 20/40 and 30/60 shorthanded tables. I'm going to make a bold statement here that might come back to haunt me George Tenet-style, but I don't know if there are more than a handful of other people who were beating the 20 and 30 games as profitably as was I -- this isn't to say that I don't acknowledge there are plenty of more skilled players out there than me. But simply considering the totality of the situation -- e.g. my penchant for datamining (dead for now, i suppose) and careful table and seat selection -- I don't think there are many other players out there (on a sheer $ / hand basis) pulling in more from the 20 and 30 games than me. But like I said, I may get a rude awakening when the new Party client puts a huge monkey wrench in my table selection strategies.

I'm actully trying my best to reserve judgement about the new Party software. Because I've found the tables to be fishier than usual since the upgrade...perhaps because so many of the sharks are also taking some time to see how this shakes out, so I'm spared from their multi-tabling. Who knows -- perhaps in the long run this will actually end up being good for online poker (and hence for me). I guess it will have the effect of reducing the advantage the good players (who presumably use all the tools at their disposal like I do) have over the fish. If that is indeed the case, then I guess you can see why it makes sense for party. The slower the fish lose their money, the more raked hands are played, and the more revenue for Party. I suppose if the fish stick around longer and have happier stories to tell to their fish buddies that encourage a greater number of them to try their hand online, then things might pan out in the long run. That being said, since I am myself one of the aforementioned takers-of-fish-money, in the short-term this sucks.

Anyway, enough talk about Party for now -- I used this new upgrade as an excuse to take a little break from the games for a few days until this all shakes out. And decided, like any poker degenerate, to simply head over to Atlantic City to fill the void. I met a college friend of mine and reluctantly sat at the blackjack tables with him (surprisingly, i found my old card-counting hobby, even though I was very much out of practice, came back rather quickly). Anyway, I heard some comments at the blackjack table (and also some in the poker room while I was there) that reminded me of something I had always wanted to address. I've often wondered about the most important qualities a person can have that will make him a successful poker player. And one of the 'answers' I've discussed at length with friends is how stunned I am at how many people just don't "get" the mathematical and probabilistic underpinnings of games of chance. Allow me to elaborate. At the blackjack table, a friendly older lady beside me (who came to AC rather regularly) got dealt two 8's against a dealer 9. Exasperated, she simply hit, drew a ten and busted. She then turned to the rest of us and explained that even though she knows "the book says to always split 8's, I don't do it against a dealer 9 or Ten -- I mean, what's the point, odds are I'm just going to draw two tens and then I'll lose twice as much when the dealer also draws a ten." When the dealer in fact turned over her hole card Queen, the lady explained: "see, I told you, I would have lost double." She had been quoting the infamous "book" all night long. Now before you write the above nonsense off to senility or mere simple-mindedness, here's another story: I was heading to AC a couple years ago with a friend from law school who also has an MBA from Wharton, one of the most academically prestigious (especially quantitatively) schools on the planet. Smart guy. Anyway, we were talking blackjack and he was going on and on about how he had memorized "the book", but that his game was "a little more aggressive than the book," and he proceeded to enumerate a list of different scenarios where he liked to deviate from what "the book" advised.

Let me stop and take a deep breath here. DO YOU F*&KING UNDERSTAND WHAT "THE BOOK" IS???? This goes out both to you older blackjack lady, and Wharton MBA. "The book" isn't some haphazard set of recommendations that deviate from author to author (like in poker, I guess). It is, by definition, optimal. OPTIMAL -- DO YOU GET IT?!?? It's the result of hundreds of millions of simulated hands, and represents (unless you're card-counting, which trust me, neither one of these two had the foggiest idea of how to do) the optimal play for every scenario. To say that you deviate from the book in certain circumstances, or that you're "more aggressive" than the book is akin to donning a neon T-shirt that says "I do not understand that when I deviate from 'the book', I am giving up EV -- aka losing money." Anyway, why do I bring up these examples? Because I think it demonstrates perfectly the type of person (and I'm sure you all know a few) who will never, never, become a good poker player. They just don't get "it." What do I mean by "it"? Well, I've had trouble coming up with a good definition, but roughly speaking it's the fundamental nature of long-term probability and randomness. I have several good friends in law school who are some of the smartest people I know, and will make outstanding lawyers, but who will NEVER amount to anything at the poker table, because they seem completely unable to understand probability -- try explaining pot odds to them, and they'll look at you like you've got 2 heads. I was playing in a friendly home game once, and one guy criticized another's play after a hand was over, incredulous that he had folded to a double-pot-sized bet with his gutshot straight. The critic's rationale: "but dude, what if you made your straight??" Yes, folks, that is what we are up against: it's "I don't have the proper odds to call a bet of that size", versus "dude, but what if you made your straight." And the most baffling part about it is (and I know it's hard to believe after that example) these are really smart, Ivy League guys making those comments. It's not a matter of low intelligence or mathematical prowess (most of these guys will proudly boast about their 5 in AP calculus or 780 SAT quant score). It's that they just don't get "it." And frankly, I don't even know if "it" is teachable. Actually, I take that back -- I think it is, but for a certain subset of people it will take an awful lot of work to "unlearn" years of ass-backwards thinking. I know this topic is probably a little more sore for me than most because I was a probability major in college, and get exasperated when people don't really get things that always seemed to come rather naturally to me. On the other end of the spectrum, of course, you have high school dropouts who would get destroyed in a Billy Madison Academic decathlon but, for whatever reason, simply take to the mathematical side of games of chance like fish to water. So there you have it -- while I can't quite put my finger on what "it" really is, it's something that's always struck me as something the people who really excel at the game have, and those who don't do not.

Saturday, February 11th: WTF; I have a "call" button??

Again, apologies for a brief hiatus in postings...busy, busy, busy, busy, busy.

Curses! My law school is objecting to my proposed Sydney study-abroad plan for next semester. I am appealing the decision, but sadly I would only put the probability of me not being relegated to dreary Philly this Fall at around 25%. On the bright side, had my best ever single day yesterday: managed about 325 BB in just 2,700 hands. Came at a time when i had been feeling pretty shitty too. Had just had a big blowup earlier in the day with a girl I was seeing, and was just stewing miserably at home. Which, I might add, is probably the only time when I think my tilt-proof armor is a little vulnerable. I know that when I'm fuming, I get a little too LAGgy, and start seeing value in hands that are clearly -EV. So I just read for a few hours to calm down, then said WTF and started playing for a bit (for the record, this was still probably a bad idea). But as the 1-day chart below shows, I guess things just went my way.



Anyway, I'm really looking forward to playing in the Party Poker Million V Cruise limit hold'em tournament...I guess we'll get to see just how good or bad my limit game is. Even though I think I'm one of the better middle-to-high-stakes online guys, I checked out the placings from previous Party cruise tournaments, and several big-name pro's actually went out among the first few dozen players eliminated...so I guess skill isn't the ultimate determinant. In fact, that's probably my biggest concern about this limit tournament thing: I feel as though results are FAR more dependent on how the cards come out than in a NL tourney. In the latter, you can make things happen, even if you go card-dead for a while, but I'm worried that a limit tourney just won't allow for as much manoeuvering. I think if you sat me down with a bunch of Party online qualifiers and just let us play a standard cash game, I'd stand a solid chance of ending up with a nice pile of chips, but I just don't think limit hold'em lends itself well to a rapidly escalating blind structure, which might account for a bunch of pro's busting out early. I guess we'll find out soon enough. One other "first" for my poker journey: Surprisingly, all 4 Party 50/100 games were pretty good at the same time the other day, so I 4-tabled them...I don't think I'd ever played more than one 50/100 table at once to that point, so I suppose that can be another feather in my LHE cap.

And judging from some decent reaction to last week's "table selection" entry, I've thought that it couldn't hurt to start including a few strategy bits in here, even though it's really not my favorite thing to do, because it seems to rile up people's contrarian juices. I get like 5 emails a week asking about strategy things, and I just don't always have time to answer them in as much detail as I would like. So maybe including a few discussion points here will satiate some of the people who want more info about just how I moved from a mediocre 3/6 player in January of last year to a fairly skilled 30/60 guy at present. I have written previously that I think that good table selection, and learning how to make good folds were two of the most important lessons that allowed me to jump from 1.5BB to 3.5BB / 100, where I've stayed for a few hundred thousand hands. If I were to add a 3rd factor to this holy triumvirate, it would be learning how to be selectively passive. In my LHE poker education, a pure TAG strategy was always espoused to be the holy grail of playing styles -- merely "calling" was practically a term of reproach. But I feel very strongly that while learning a tight-agressive style can probably help turn a break-even player into a solid 1 or 1.2 BB guy, it's not the be all and end all that most authors seem to declare. (Admittedly, though, most commercial poker books are written for the novice to intermediate player, most of whom would benefit greatly from that strategy, so I'm in no way criticizing the authors themselves.) Take my Las Vegas Jh,8h hand from a few posts ago -- one vocal critic mechanically quoted Ed Miller's SSHE (one of the best introductory-to-intermediate poker books out there, for what it's worth) in declaring my preflop call to be awful. While there was no value in debating the point at the time, in a two-thirds blind structure (e.g. SB is $10 in the 15/30) with 4 terrible players coming in for two bets a piece, calling out of the SB is elementary. The critic also took issue with certain calls throughout the hand, suggesting that raising would have been better.

Anyway, I've written before that I saw immediate returns when I 'graduated' from an 18/9 TAG (in full ring games) to a slightly looser and more aggressive 22/11 guy. But I have also come to appreciate that "raising because you have the best hand", while it may give you the best chance to win that hand, simply isn't always the best strategy to maximize your overall winnings at the end of the day -- and that's the name of the game. This is especially true heads-up (and even moreso when you have position on your opponent.) Maybe I can illustrate with an example or two:

Let's say I have AQo in middle position, and open for a raise. It's folded around to a too-loose SB who completes, and the BB folds. Flop comes A,7,3 rainbow. The SB bets out (into me, the preflop raiser). My classic TAG education tells me to raise, right? After all, I'm pretty certain to have the best hand here, unless the SB hit a set or ragged two pair. But I've just in the past few months begun to occasionally call on every street (assuming SB continues betting into me). Why just call when I've got the best hand? Because I don't want to let a weak ace get away from his hand. It's also not at all uncommon to catch a JT, 66, or some other hopeless holding just keep betting, perhaps hoping to push me off of a lower pocket pair, or some other non-ace holding. If I raise the flop, those crushed holdings probably fold in a heartbeat. Raising the turn is even worse, because you risk losing an Ace with a lower kicker (also ask yourself if you have the stomach to call down if you're 3-bet??). Raising the river is also somewhat dangerous, unless you have a good read on your opponent and can comfortably call or fold to a 3-bet. So I happily just call on every street, and more often than not, I add 3.5 to 4 of my opponents' big bets to my stack (when it probably only would have been 2.5 to 3 had I raised somewhere along the way.) I'm hardly saying this is always the best strategy -- to be sure it's maddening when you passively call all the way, only to have your opponent complete his gutshot or spike a set on the river. But those events (while frustrating) are more than compensated for by the extra bets you pick up the vast majority of the time. Nor is it something I do 100% of the time: just another tool I've found to occasionally employ with good results.

Go ahead and disagree with the above if you would like -- that's what the comment section is for. Just trying to help by discussing a few techniques I found have really helped take my game to the next level, after reaching what I felt were the limits of the traditional TAG strategy promulgated in most commercial books today. Table selection, good folds, and selective passivity are the three most valuable tools I have added to my game.

Friday, February 3rd: Table Selection

I think that I've started writing a post on this topic at least 3 or 4 times, but stopped for various reasons: sometimes I've thought that it was too mundane a topic, other times I thought I might just be re-hashing information that was common knowledge to most, and still other times I wasn't quite sure I was ready to delineate, in detail, one of the tools that has helped me achieve pretty phenomenal winrates at the medium-to-high stakes limit games. But I think that it's about time I wrote a little bit about table selection, what I consider to be the most underrated aspect of playing winning poker.

I have managed to run at 3.5BB / 100 over my past 150,000 or so hands at 20/40 and 30/60, a pretty lofty winrate (and one that prompted one 2+2'er to christen me "maybe the best limit poker player around"). While I humbly accept the nomination, that 3.5BB figure has a huge asterisk next to it, one that I'm not quite sure most people fully appreciate: I'm a 3.5BB player when I sit in very juicy games. The importance of that last bit really shouldn't be underestimated -- how good a player would I be if I just sat down at the first table I opened? I have no idea -- 2BB? 1BB? Would I even be a winner at all?? I don't have the answer to any of these questions, but the cool thing about it is that I really don't care. The biggest strategical advantage of online poker over live play is not the speed the hands are dealt, nor the slightly lower rake or lack of tipping -- those are each dwarfed by the incredible advantage of being able to pick and choose from dozens of different subsets of potential opponents.

Poker is a game of relative strengths: it really doesn't matter how technically skilled you are -- the primary determinant of your eventual success is the discrepancy between your abilities, and those of the opponents you sit with. Accordingly, there are two primary avenues to improve your winrate: 1) improve your own play, or 2) do your utmost to ensure a poor ensemble of opponents. There are hundreds of paper and electronic resources dedicated to the former, and while some mention the importance of table selection, I have yet to see any author give the topic the due it deserves.

So let's get down to the nuts and bolts of just how you find yourself a table full of donators. First things first. If you don't have Pokertracker and PokerAce, you're doing yourself a disservice. Spend $75 and get them. It's embarassing just how valuable they are; you won't find a better bargain as long as you live. I would honestly estimate that the seventy-five bucks I dropped on those two applications has earned me upwards of $50,000. Pokertracker (PT) is software that lets you collect information on all the hands you play, and PokerAce (PAHUD for short) is add-on software that will display your opponents' playing styles and statistics right on top of the table as you play. Some poker sites even let you collect data on hands you just observe -- e.g. you don't even have to be playing in a hand to collect data on the players. Party Poker, however, appears to be putting an end to the ability to collect stats on observed hands...it's still possible for now, but most people believe that they will soon release a new version of their software which does not enable datamining observed tables.

So first step is building up a robust PT database full of statistics on your opponents. Even when I'm busy with schoolwork and other responsibilities that don't let me play poker, I make sure that my computer is actively datamining hands from many different sites so that when I finally do get around to playing, my database is as complete as I can make it. So what to do once you've got your PT database chalk full of statistics? Maybe I can best illustrate by giving an example of my typical table selection process. I login to the poker software, and open up as many tables as I can -- let's say I'm feeling like playing some full-ring limit games: I'll open up as many 20/40 and 30/60 tables as I can find. I've got PAHUD configured to show me the table's average VPIP and PFR statistics...(as many exotic stats as PT can tell you about your opponents, I really think that VPIP and PFR account for 98% of what the typical player needs to know to get a good read on the players at his table.) If the table's average VPIP is under 26, I'll close the table without a second thought. If it's over 30, I'll nearly always take a seat or get on the waiting list; that's a pretty damn good table. If it's between 26 and 29, I'll take a closer look at the individual players at the table. Think about the following things: just how many fish are seated? Is the higher-than-normal table VPIP a result of a bunch of rocks and one gigantic fish with a 90VPIP, or rather is it 5 or 6 slightly-loose players with VPIPs of 28 to 35? More importantly, where are the open seats at the table? I typically require at least 3 fish at any table in order to consider it play-worthy, but I'll accept just two (or even one) if I can sit to the immediate left of a super-LAG. How big are the chip stacks of the fish? If they're down pretty low, that may be an indication that they won't be around anymore by the time your name comes up off the waiting list. Are the fish at the table passive or extremely aggressive? A 45/7 fish is a completely different animal than a 50/33. If the 50/33 is one of only 1 or 2 fish at the table, I'll typically only sit if I can get a seat to his left, whereas it's easier to exploit a the weaknesses of a 45/7 regardless of position. Those VPIP numbers will obviously differ at a short-handed table...at a 5 or 6-handed table, I typically look for average table VPIPs of above 38, although as before I'll accept a 35-37 if I can get good position on a LAG.

I'm sure some of the more experienced limit players reading this will find it all old hat, and a waste of their time...in fact, that's one of the concerns that previously stopped me from writing about table selection: I figured everyone knew all about it already. But you know what still stuns me: in searching for good tables to play, I'll frequently open up a 30/60 table, for example, only to see that it has an average VPIP of 18, with rocks all around. But the fascinating part is that I'll see 3 or 4 players sitting down who I happen to think are quite formidable opponents...and really not anyone I'd care to see at my table. I know that they must have played a ton of hands and in fact probably even use PT and PAHUD themselves...why then do they satisfy themselves with sitting at a table of 9 other TAGs?? It just doesn't make any sense?!! Even if they're not using PT/PAHUD, surely they've played enough hands to recognize the screenames of the tough opponents they're facing...so I close down the table and keep clicking around until I find a few juicy ones, which are never all that elusive. I can't help but wonder whether those TAGs are too lazy to look for better tables, or simply don't appreciate the importance of table selection...I find it very hard to believe the latter -- which made me think that maybe discussing this little tidbit isn't as worthless as it may at first have seemed. So take this little entry for what it's worth. Finding yourself a batch of below-average opponents, while it won't substitute for a solid techincal foundation, will do wonders for your winrate. Good luck.