SPRITPOT

Prefrop madness, leveling, and stacking off light!

2010-09-02T07:09:00.001-07:00

I had a such nice warm welcome back to the world of blogging yesterday I figured it wouldn't hurt to throw another post up there with a much more interesting hand. Let's get right into the action.

B is a complete monkey and I go ahead and make a 3b him from the SB. With K6 high (SOOOOOTED!) I'm obviously trying to get him to fold a bunch, or get the pot HU where he's doing something retarded like set mine IP. Unfortunately, much to my chagrin - I am COLD 4b in the BB by an aggro regular. 3b FAILLLLLLLL!

Before I go further, I want to note that I really like the sizing by the BB here, it is small enough that is not risking that much when he has to fold to a 5b and big enough where I simply can not call oop with a marginal hand. I am put at a decision for my stack right there for a relatively cheap price.

The first thought two thoughts that entered my mind were "FML" and "Fold," ROR! However before doing that I did analyze the situation a bit more. The facts were pretty clear - B is a donk and rarely has a hand here and I know this, thus I 3b him. If the BB has even the slightest clue (which I suspect he does) - his response SHOULD be to cold 4b with many a hand as a bruff. Easy SORUTION!

SHIP IT SHIP IT SHIP IT SHIP IT!!!

Before anyone who reads this jumps on the bandwagon of 5b shoving K6s a cold 4b, let me get into a few criteria I weighted before doing so.

a) BB is a relatively aggro regular and had a HIGH 4b% percentage

b) I was SOOTED - a nice 3% boost to my equity when called

c) Having a K was probably the biggest factor in reshipping here. This makes it less likely he has hands that he would go with pre that would completely screw me. KK and AK.

Full Tilt Poker $400.00 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players - http://www.thehandconverter.com/hands/901069

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

MP2: $1275.10

CO: $407.20

BTN: $780.60

Hero (SB): $400.00

BB: $439.70

UTG: $536.10

UTG+1: $776.80

UTG+2: $521.70

MP1: $1291.20

Pre Flop: ($6.00) Hero is SB with Kd 6d

6 folds, BTN raises to $14, Hero raises to $44, BB raises to $104, 1 fold, Hero raises to $400, BB calls $296

Flop: ($814.00) 3h 2h 7s

Turn: ($814.00) 5h

River: ($814.00) Js

Final Pot: $814.00

Hero shows Kd 6d

BB shows Jh As

BB wins $811.00

(Rake: $3.00)

While I got stacked and definitely give the BB ALOT of credit for calling off with A high here, I'm still fine with my play. BB tanked down FOREVER before calling it off. Anytime you have your stack in the middle with K high and you get a tank from a guy who put a 1/4 of his chips in the middle - CLEARLY he was bluffing. I can tell you with certainty his original plan was not to cold 4b SNAP get it in vs a 5b. Also I think AJ is at near absolute high end of his 4b bluffing range (that he somehow turned into value, ROR). I think he's going to fold AT and lower, all Kx hands, and any other crap he was bruffing with.

I had 39% equity and and lost, oh well - RELOAD!

Remember folks - red cards are the anti-nuts. Always bet on brack!!!

Rush Poker + JJ FAILLLLL

2010-09-01T12:25:00.000-07:00

Well as I'm sure you know by now...I've been on a massive blog hiatus the past few months. I'm sure you ALL missed me. And by all, I mean nobody, ROR!

I've pretty much officially transitioned over to RUSH poker - its ridiculously addicting and while you can't game select and pick and choose seats, the ease at which you can fire up/close games is amazing. The games are by no means easy, but after a few good months at 1/2, I felt confident enough to return to my old stomping grounds at 2/4 when they opened up RUSH at that limit earlier this month.

The caliber of players sitting at these games is a true testament of how popular RUSH has become. You've got guys who are regulars 5/10+ coming down to swim in the RUSH waters! Below is a hand vs David "Raptor" Benefield. I got stacked...but I just think it's hilarious that this guy has played as high as 500/1000, RORRR! And apparently he's a winner there, according to PTR, he's up 333k in 679 hands, ROR!

Full Tilt Poker $2/$4 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (BB): $402.70

UTG: $466.80

UTG+1: $560.60

UTG+2: $866.20

MP1: $400.00

David Benefield: $414.00

CO: $584.00

BTN: $534.70

SB: $403.00

Pre Flop: ($6.00) Hero is BB with Jd Jh

4 folds, David Benefield raises to $10, 3 folds, Hero raises to $34, David Benefield raises to $88, Hero requests TIME, Hero raises to $402.70 all in, David Benefield calls $314.70

Flop: ($807.40) 8d Kh As

Turn: ($807.40) 3h

River: ($807.40) Qs

Final Pot: $807.40

Hero shows Jd Jh (a pair of Jacks)

David Benefield shows Ah Ks (two pair, Aces and Kings)

David Benefield wins $804.40

(Rake: $3.00)

JJ FAILLL!!!

-Brackchips

Go Andrew!!!!!

2010-07-15T13:08:00.000-07:00

For those of you who aren't aware, Andrew Brokos (aka Foucault, author of the outstanding Thinking Poker blog linked on our right sidebar) is making ANOTHER deep run in the Main Event. Congratulations and good luck to him. We'll certainly be rooting for him all day here - if you want to follow along as well, he has been sending updates to his twitter page:

www.twitter.com/thinkingpoker

THIN! (Part 19)

2010-07-01T22:13:00.000-07:00

Perhaps the king of THIN! thus far:

Full Tilt Poker $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players - http://www.thehandconverter.com/hands/784616

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

UTG+1: $63.55

UTG+2: $31.90

MP1: $88.15

MP2: $50.50

CO: $45.80

BTN: $129.40

Hero (SB): $61.80

BB: $51.55

UTG: $85.95

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is SB with Ac Td

5 folds, CO raises to $1.50, BTN calls $1.50, Hero raises to $7, 2 folds, BTN calls $5.50 (Squeeze here is a little thin - I'm not doing it every time, just sometimes. Button is a pretty loose player, so could be calling pretty wide. CO is a standard TAG type, so I think he folds to the 3b quite a bit.)

Flop: ($16.00) 7c 5c Jd (2 players)

Hero bets $11, BTN calls $11 (Not the greatest flop to one-barrel on, but I do have backdoor straight and flush draws, and is it too much to ask that he fold QT or something to me on this frop?)

Turn: ($38.00) 3c (2 players)

Hero bets $22.50, BTN raises to $111.40 all in, Hero calls $21.30 all in (He does call, and I pick up backdoor clubs. I'm not folding this hand. I think he's just floating the flop with a pretty weak hand a bunch of the time. Like I'd estimate a jack or better to be less than 1/4th of his range. I've got 3 options: 1) open shove $44 into $38 2) bet something that might seem to give me room to fold, like $22 3) check, hope he bets smallish himself then shove over it, and lead river if he checks back. Of these, I think 2) is by far the best. 1) seems very draw-ish - I think he'd call me with pretty much any pair, and all the hands he's folding are worse than mine. If I had AcAs, I'd like this line more to get max value from lower pairs. 3) is pretty risky, because he could just shove himself when I check, which puts me in a pretty gross spot, and is really the only situation where I'd end up folding, which would really be a disaster against his range for calling the frop. I like 2) much more, since it looks more like I'm trying to get some value out of one pair myself, without putting all my money in yet, so he might find a fold with 66 or 76 or whatever. Or even better, he might call and then fold when I hail-mary shove the river. Also, he might shove over my bet with a bunch of worse draws. At the time I was thinking something in the T9/98 with one club range. Little did I know I'd be in even better shape than I could have hoped for!)

River: ($125.60) 9s (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $125.60

BTN shows Ks Tc (King Jack high)

Hero shows Ac Td (Ace Jack high)

Hero wins $122.60

(Rake: $3.00)

95.5% equity on the turn there with ace-high!

-BRUECHIPS

I Finally Play a Hand Well (I think...)

2010-06-29T22:15:00.000-07:00

I'll be honest, part of the reason I haven't been posting much recently is that I haven't really felt too on top of my game. In particular, my non-showdown winnings have been hurting a bit over the past couple of months compared to what they have been in the past. That in and of itself isn't necessarily a bad thing - if you're at a table full of total calling stations, then the optimal response is to forget about non-showdown winnings and just try to maximize the pot size when you've got the best hand and crush in showdown winnings. But I think at the Rush games I've been playing, it isn't necessarily that (i.e., that I am forgoing bluffing opportunities), but that I am getting bluffed and re-bluffed myself a fair amount, and also getting called down lighter than before in some spots.

So I have been more on the lookout recently for more spots where I could run a big bluff, induce some bluffs from opponents, as well as make some thinner value bets in spots where I have been getting looked up light. Here's one hand where I think I played pretty well. Or maybe I just got lucky this time, you can decide for yourself:

Full Tilt Poker $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players - http://www.thehandconverter.com/hands/781012

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

UTG+2: $131.70

MP1: $17.95

MP2: $50.25

CO: $54.80

Hero (BTN): $67.40

SB: $69.65

BB: $21.50

UTG: $28.80

UTG+1: $103.10

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is BTN with Qh 9h

5 folds, CO raises to $1.50, Hero raises to $5, 2 folds, CO calls $3.50 (The villain in this hand and I didn't really have a history, but I have him at 27/21 over 129 hands, so he is quite an active player. Given that, Q9s is way too good to fold on the button vs. his cutoff open. The main reason I 3-bet instead of flat is that the small blind is fairly squeeze-happy, and calling would put him in a perfect squeeze spot. I don't really want to face a re-raise from him 140 bbs deep, I'd rather just get the pot down to heads up between myself and the CO, or take it down immediately.)

Flop: ($10.75) 6h 4c Ad (2 players)

CO checks, Hero bets $6.50, CO calls $6.50 (Can hardly ask for a better flop to c-bet. He calls, which means he most likely has something in the AJish range, or perhaps a 76s. It's possible he has AK. I'd usually expect a player like him to just 4b preflop and get it in with AK in these positions, but you never know.)

Turn: ($23.75) Qd (2 players)

CO checks, Hero checks (I wasn't really planning on barreling the turn anyway, but I'm certainly not now that I picked up a pair.)

River: ($23.75) Tc (2 players)

CO bets $15, Hero raises to $55.90 all in, CO folds (OK, here's where it gets interesting. Basically I decided that I have enough very strong hands in my range that I can shove here and get some respect from the medium-strength hand that he almost certainly has. AT is pretty much the best hand he could have. It's possible he has AQ, but I think he 4-bets it preflop a fair amount of the time, plus I have a Q myself. I can have pretty much all of the hands that beat AT. I could certainly check a set or top two on the turn some of the time, AT most of the time, and more importantly, I am checking back TT and KJ there every single time, and 3-betting with them pre-flop pretty much every single time, and he can pretty much never have KJ or TT. Finally, I decided that he was capable of reading hands a little bit, and could fold an AJ, AK, or even possibly an AT here. Or course it's possible he had just a pair of sixes and I was betting for value!)

-BRUECHIPS

Final Pot: $53.75

Hero wins $51.10

(Rake: $2.65)

Brack is Beautiful (Part 22)

2010-06-03T14:04:00.000-07:00

Wow, way too long since our last post. Some random stuff since last post:

1) Went to visit Russia with the gf, was pretty sweet.

2) Been doing a lot of work/research, not that much poker playing...trying to load up for the job market, which starts in the fall, and I hope will not end with me being unemployed.

3) What poker I have been playing has been of the Rush variety.

Anyway, what better way to break a long dry spell than to remind ourselves of the power of SPADES????

Full Tilt Poker $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players - http://www.thehandconverter.com/hands/735772

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (CO): $65.00

BTN: $151.20

SB: $79.90

BB: $14.50

UTG: $150.75

UTG+1: $53.80

UTG+2: $65.40

MP1: $56.05

MP2: $58.05

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is CO with Ks 4s

5 folds, Hero raises to $1.50, 1 fold, SB calls $1.25, 1 fold (Pretty standard open for me unless the button is just a total 3b monkey)

Flop: ($3.50) 7c 3s 9s (2 players)

SB checks, Hero checks (Not my standard play, but I do include it, since 1) I will get check-raised a fair amount on this frop, and I don't want to get it in this deep with 2nfd 2) if I check here and make a frush later, I should get some good value for it, whereas if I bet here, get a call, and make a frush later, I might not get as much 3) I have the best hand at least some of the time, and most of the better hands are not folding to a c-bet, so I'll probably have to barrel the turn too to get him to fold any pair or a decent A-high...which I'm not averse to doing at all 4) protects me in other hands when I want to check down AQ or 44 or something and the board gets gross later, means that he can't blow me off my hands with marginal showdown value quite as profitably)

Turn: ($3.50) 5s (2 players) (I forgot to mention the other reason...spades get there EVERY TIME)

SB checks, Hero bets $2.50, (Great spot for me to bet, because I apparently rep so little after having checked the flop, it looks like I'm just stabbing, which I would do quite a bit with any random spade or six or something. Also it's a board that's supposed to hit a pre-flop caller, so he might think he can raise and try to represent sets/2prs/pair+sd, flush himself since he'd be much more likely to check the frop with a fd than I would)

SB raises to $6.50, Hero raises to $13.50, SB calls $7 (I get the raise out of him, and I decide to go ahead and 3b, and not that big. I could have made it a little more, but again, if I were bluffing, I'd make it pretty small too, both to lay myself a good price at getting him to fold complete air, and also because I wouldn't want to put him in a fold or shove situation with a bare As or 67 of 66 with a spade or something. I'd rather get him to call and then check/fold the river.)

River: ($30.50) 6d (2 players)

SB checks, Hero bets $34.50, SB folds (At this point, he either has a naked As, or something with some pretty decent showdown value, like 2pr+, maybe a straight. Also this card looks scary, like the kind that I might bluff, but not very credibly, if I had 3b the turn with an As. I say not very credibly because the reason it's scary is that it completes a bunch of straights, but I think he might think that I wouldn't overbet a bare 8, or certainly not a bare 4, for value here with the flush and higher straights possible. So I was hoping he'd think I have air or flush, and a flush not very often after I checked frop, and make a call with a worse hand. Brackchips said I should have bet less, but whatever, that's my reasoning. Anyway he folded after some contemplation, so I guess we'll never know.)

Final Pot: $30.50

Hero wins $29.00

(Rake: $1.50)

-BRUECHIPS

THIN! (Part 18)

2010-04-12T06:56:00.000-07:00

Haven't had a THIN post in quite sometime and felt that this hand simply could not be overlooked for a THIN nomination. Been grinding out NLHE quite a bit with decent success, one thing I have noticed along with Bruechips is that NOBODY FOLDS anymore. NOBODY. From one pair to friggin 8th pair...it has become quite difficult to pry people off any of any semblance of a hand. It's friggin nuts. I guess it is just part of the educational evolution part of NLHE as the players get progressively better and the fish pool dwindles. The players that will succeed need to continuously find new ways to exploit their opponents. 3betting/cbetting by even bad players is becoming pretty standard - alot of your edge will come in later streets where players are uncomfortable/unsure as to the best play.

Enter THIN...lol. Provided you can VB your hands better than you opponents - you will be ahead of the game. Being able to VB later streets as your villain's range becomes more polarized will maximize your WR.

Full Tilt Poker $1/$2 No Limit Hold'em - 7 players - http://www.thehandconverter.com/hands/636256

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

UTG: $202.85

UTG+1: $263.25

MP: $200.00

CO: $202.50

Hero (BTN): $490.20

SB: $100.95

BB: $55.55

Pre Flop: ($3.00) Hero is BTN with Ks Jc

2 folds, MP raises to $7, 1 fold, Hero calls $7, 2 folds

(this call is not completely standard - i think a mix of calling, folding and 3b'ing are reasonable. One thing to note is that we are 7 handed. The reason I chose calling here is I felt I might get played back if I 3b here since I had been pretty aggro pre IP, I felt I could outplay him on most flops.)

Flop: ($17.00) 2h Kh 3s (2 players)

MP bets $11, Hero calls $11

(Boom goes the dynamite? Good flop but not necessarily I feel super comfortable raise getting it in with. Raise folding would be retarted for obvious reasons. I call the standard cbet - with the intention to take him into town (value town that is!) if I sense weakness on later street.)

Turn: ($39.00) 7c (2 players)

MP checks, Hero bets $26, MP calls $26

(Pretty much the nut card for me that does not improve my hand...when he x's I'm quite confident that I am best here, I am betting for value but it would be REALLY gross if I got XR here, honestly idk what I would have done. Maybe shit my pants and reshoved, but that is probably influenced by the fact that I know the outcome of the hand.)

River: ($91.00) 9s (2 players)

MP checks, Hero requests TIME, Hero bets $446.20 all in, MP requests TIME, MP calls $156 all in

(After he xc's the turn I can be pretty confident that he does not have a one pair+ hand that beats me. I really think that AK, KQ would have tried to sqz out some more value on the turn when the brick rolls off. It is obvious he is trying to get to SD without putting any more money in the pot. When I am trying to figure out what is the best to bet, I realized that I could very easily make my hand look like a bluff with an overbet shove...and given that NOBODY folds these days I figured it was the best play. I felt that KQ was the ONLY hand that I would be value cutting myself on - but against worse one pair K hands and hands like TT-QQ, I could pwn him hard.)

Final Pot: $403.00

MP mucks Td Kc

(GREAT SUCCESS!!!)

Hero shows Ks Jc (a pair of Kings)

Hero wins $400.00

(Rake: $3.00)

-BRACKCHIPS

A Case of the Mondays (Part 12)

2010-03-29T07:00:00.000-07:00

Tarrantino's take on TopGun...undoubtedly one of the best youtube clips across the entire interweb. Tremendous stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyN8VN4BSzM

-BRACKCHIPS

High Stakes Poker Recap, Season 6, Episode 5

2010-03-15T08:21:00.001-07:00

Whoa....now THAT is what I like to see in an episode of HSP. Four massive pots that I can remember off the top of my head, three of them very interesting and I think well-played on both sides. With all the action from episode 5, I don't think I'll have time to talk about episode 4, whose best action was a massive non-poker side bet between durrrr and Ivey.

The players are getting more and more aggressive as the match progresses with three, four- and five-bet bluffing pre-flop and re-bluffing post-flop. The best players have adjusted by going for thinner and thinner value.

For instance, Daniel Negreanu manages to get value with a cold 4-bet shove preflop with KQ. One player who needs no excuse to play looser is Eli Elezra. We accumulated more evidence in the case of "Eli Elezra vs. folding", as he called off another thirty-something grand with eight-high preflop. I'm not even kidding, you can watch the tape. It's actually not as terrible a call as you might think once Daniel shows the Q. Eli is calling off $35,900 to win $63,800, so he needs at least 36% equity to call. Given that Daniel shows a Q, Eli has only 37.8% equity against a range of QQ and Q9-QA. Even tightening that up significantly to QQ,AQs,AQo,KQs, Eli has 35.4% equity, which is pretty close to a break-even call. If Daniel doesn't show the Q, it's a worse call because there's more of a chance of Daniel having an overpair. For instance against 77+,ATs+,KQs,AJo+ Eli has only 32.3% equity. But if it's close, we know Eli is calling! He does claim in an earlier hand with Dario that he would have folded his jacks to a river shove, but I have serious doubts.

The first really interesting hand involved, of course, Tom Dwan, and Dario Minieri. Durrrr opens in the cutoff with KTo and Dario 3-bets with K3hh. Durrrr calls, of course, and the flop comes Th3s2c. Durrrr checks to Dario, who bets $13,700 into the $26k pot, and that's where the standard play ends. The first thing to realize about this hand is that Dario is a 3-bet MANIAC, especially in position. He also c-bets probably a little bit more liberally than many of the other players at the table. But even without that, his range is just so wide that KTo is pretty much the nuts against this range, even 200 bbs deep in a 3-bet pot. Most players in durrrr's spot would just call this flop bet, because 1) if you raise, he folds all of his air, and don't you want him to keep barreling on later streets? 2) if he 3-bets, you're in a gross spot because you're afraid of an overpair, AT, or God forbid, a set, in which case you're drawing practically dead 3) if you raise and he calls, you have to play two more streets out of position, which will be tough. These were all the things I was thinking as I watched Dario make the flop bet, and I was dead wrong. Raising is absolutely correct, for a few reasons: 1) it is hard to rep a bluff by calling. By calling, you give Dario a pretty good idea that you have one pair, and AT or KT is as good as you could possibly have, because JJ or better probably 4-bets preflop. You can still induce bluffs by checking, but it's likely to be one barrel or MAAAYYYYBE two, and of course you let free cards come off that could make Dario the better hand. So you put yourself in a position where Dario has a very good idea of what you have, you have no idea what Dario has, and he has position. 2) Dario is fairly likely to spazz out to a raise here, and although sometimes you will get it in drawing pretty thin if Dario has a monster, there are actually a lot of hands that he can go nuts with here. It's common knowledge between Dario and durrrr that Dario is 3-betting a huge range pre-flop and c-betting this flop pretty much every time, so we know that durrrr will be giving action often, either by calling or raising, fairly often, so as to prevent Dario from stealing him blind. So if Dario thinks durrrr isn't merging his check-raising range by check-raising with, say, KTo, then the 3-bet shove on the flop is going to show a good profit with all sorts of hands like any ace-wheel card hand that makes either a pair or a gutter on this flop, particularly if it comes with a backdoor flush draw (and since this is a rainbow flop, if Dario has a suited hand, pretty good chance he has a backdoor draw). Against a lot of players this would be a great play since their check-raising range consists of sets, the occasional slowplayed AA/KK, and then a whole bunch of absolute air and gutter balls that they won't call off 100k more with. So Dario shoves it all in and runs into the absolute worst hand for him, a higher pair with the same kicker, which durrrr pretty much instacalls. Raise/calling this flop by durrrr is just a great play. I know it seems like I'm just nut-hugging durrrr all the time, but the guy is just a monster. Get used to it, because you're about to hear more about it later in this post. I don't think Dario played the hand terribly at all, he just got outleveled a bit by Tom Dwan.

A similar hand played out between Jason Mercier and Phil Ivey. A steaming Gus Hansen opens in early position to $4200 with Q6o. Eli "never met a call I didn't like" Elezra wants to see a flop with 9c5c. Ivey calls on the button with a pair of nines, putting the action on Jason Mercier, who makes it $22,100 to go with Ah4h. Given the state of the game right now (and I'm not just talking about this particular HSP episode, I mean even low-stakes online games that I play at), this play is almost standard at this point. At some point over the last couple of years, people started realizing that 3-betting EP raisers can be very profitable, even against tight openers. I mentioned this a little in my post on Rush poker because I think Rush accelerated this trend to some extent. So when Jason gets a suited ace in the blinds and looking at $15kish in the middle, I think he, most players at this table, and even many regulars at $.50/1 Rush tables, are jacking it up all day long. Ivey is aware of this of course, and will be calling quite a bit lighter than the nines he has. They see a flop of 7h3d2s with $55k in the middle. The flop is similar to the one between Dario and durrrr in that it's rainbow, which puts a lot of backdoor flush draws out, and includes two little cards, which puts wheel draw and pair+ace hands out there. Jason bets $28,700. I'm definitely surprised that Ivey raised here. I don't know that much about Jason's game and maybe Ivey does, but I still don't know if I like this raise by Ivey. The two main differences here between this hand and the durrrr/Dario matchup: 1) Ivey, the pre-flop caller has position, whereas durrrr did not. This argues for calling instead of raising for Phil. It's harder for Jason to pot-control, fire barrels, etc., on later streets without position, which makes it easier for Ivey to make thin value bets and pot control himself than it would have been for durrrr. Also, Phil CAN represent a bluff by calling here, precisely for those reasons. 2) Jason's range is tighter than Dario's, both preflop and on the flop. While the pre-flop 3-bet represents a fairly wide range as I discussed earlier, perhaps as wide as TT+,AQ+,KQs-87s, any suited ace and many suited kings (~11% of all hands), I'd estimate Dario's 3-betting range from the button vs. a durrrr open is at least twice that big. I'm not sure if Phil raises for the same reasons durrrr does in the KT hand - i.e., because he thinks his hand is very strong vs. Jason's range and he thinks Jason will 3-bet bluff a lot. If so, he'll need Jason to be doing a LOT of 3-bet bluffing and/or his range to be a lot wider than what I claimed above. Against that range on this flop, Phil has 60% equity. And I don't think Jason is shoving in all of it. Phil's raise, to $78.7k, is pretty large to be one that's intended to just protect his hand by folding out overcards. It works out this time, as Mercier shoves in for $110kish more. I think Ivey eventually decides that he's put in too much money to fold and does call. I like Jason's play though. He's the player with the much stronger range in the hand, in that he will often have strong overpairs, and after Phil's overcall pre-flop, nines are really the best unimproved pocket pair he can have, to go with the rare sets. Given that Jason is going to have the stronger range and therefore often be making big value bets, he has to balance it with some bluffs, and a gutter, over, and backdoor flush draw is as good a hand as any to pick. If Phil is raise/folding the flop with things like 87s or some other gutter-balls plus the occasional air, Jason's shove will show an easy profit. Even as the cards lay, Jason had 32% equity, which isn't a disaster. But Jason bricks out, sending a $425k pot to Ivey, and Jason to the rail.

But all that is just an appetizer for the last hand of the episode. Phil Laak sits down at the table and immediately raises it up with A9o in early position (humble advice to Phil Laak: don't do that at this table). Eli calls with Ac7c (was there even a doubt?), Ivey calls on the button with Ad6d, Negreanu somehow finds a call in the small blind with Jc3c, putting the action on durrrr, who looks down at 9s8s (SPADES!!!). The Unabomber starts talking about how he expects durrrr to raise now, which is an attempt to get durrrr not to raise (the logic goes like this: buddy, I know what you're trying to do, I'm totally prepared for it, so don't mess around...the actual process is: don't raise, I can't call!). Durrrr reads this pretty easily and throws in the chips for a call along with a $25k chip.

Everyone folds (Eli especially reluctantly, announcing that letting go of the Ac7c is the "worst fold of his life", so that he won't look dumb on TV if durrrr has 9-high) but Ivey, and they see a flop of KdQcTd with $70.7k in the middle. Durrrr c-bets $45.8k, which I think is pretty much mandatory. Although it looks like a pretty gross flop, durrrr sets himself a pretty good price at roughly 2/3 pot. This means that if Ivey folds more than 1/3 of the time, durrrr shows immediate profit. The flop nails all of Ivey's broadway hands, but there are enough low pocket pairs and suited connectors in Ivey's pre-flop calling range that this bet will show a profit, as I don't think Ivey is fighting back with those hands on this flop really ever. Ivey is faced with a big decision here. He could raise and probably fold out some hands that do beat him. All underpairs, for instance. Perhaps AQ/AK/JJ. However Phil decides to call because: 1) They are VERY deep. durrrr says he started the hand with about 750k and Ivey has him covered. 2) durrrr could have a monster like a set or a straight, or a lower diamond draw, all of which will pay off big time if a diamond comes, and Ivey doesn't get a good result from either group of hands by raising the flop 3) Ivey has position, so he SHOULD be able to take it away from Dwan if he has air on later streets, since who keeps firing shells with air at Phil fawking Ivey on this board?? 4) I think durrrr would often be checking a flop like this to Ivey with some of the better hands that he'd fold to a raise if he had bet, like AQ, maybe even AK/QJ/JJ.

Phil's call brings the pot to around $160k and the turn brings a total blank, the 3s. Durrrr's decision here is basically check and give up, bet the turn and give up on the river, or fire both the turn and the river. I don't think there's any way he can check the turn and then bet the river if the turn checks through. It's just too difficult to represent a hand on the river after checking the turn on that draw-heavy a board in that big a pot.

So which play is best? First, what does Ivey's range look like to durrrr? So far he has called Laak's open on the button, called durrrr's $25k re-raise preflop, and called the 2/3 pot c-bet on the flop. This is a pure float almost never IMHO. It's possible Ivey has a set of tens. If he flopped a set of tens, I'm pretty sure he'd just call on the flop. If he raises and gets it in, it's almost always going to be against a straight, a higher set, or a monster draw (pay no mind to Gabe Kaplan saying durrrr is never folding AK or AA nearly 1000 bbs deep on this flop, but KQ and J9 are other candidates for inclusion). Against that range, Phil would have only 39% equity with a set of tens. The unlikely part of the set of tens story is the pre-flop action, where Phil just called when Laak raised and Eli called in front of him. It's true that earlier he made a very similar play with 99, but I think at least some of the time he'd be re-raising with TT there. KQ is in roughly the same spot. AJ is another very strong hand Ivey could have. Again, he'd probably 3-bet it pre-flop at least occasionally, but I think he'd call/call preflop with AJ more than TT. I think he raises the flop with it though. There are a lot of bad turn cards for AJ, i.e., a lot of ways the best hand can become the worst one, or at least have its action killed. Any A, any J, any 9, any diamond, and even the board pairing is bad for Ivey. That's a lot of cards to worry about. AJ has 57% equity against the strong range I mentioned earlier. Although TT also has to worry about all these cards, bottom set isn't really strong enough to get it all in with this deep on this board, and also could improve by filling up to beat a flopped straight. By contrast, AJ, being the nuts, is obviously strong enough to raise and get it in with (although in PLO with no redraw this definitely wouldn't be the case), and can only get worse on the turn or river. The same applies, to a somewhat lesser extent to J9s, although I think Jd9d will just call always. This rounds out the really strong part of Ivey's range for calling pre- and on flop. I'd say it's something like 20% of his AJ hands, 50% of his TT hands, 60% of his J9s hands, and 100% of his KQ hands. From durrrr's perspective, with the 9s in his hand, that makes .2*16 + .5*3 + .6*3 + 9 = 15.5 combos. These hands Ivey is certainly not folding on the turn and is probably not folding on almost any river (an Ad and a durrrr barrel gets Ivey off KQ for sure, but I don't think there are enough of these situations that durrrr would want to bet the turn if he knew Ivey had KQ).

What else is in there that durrrr might hope to get a fold from with further betting? First, many diamond draws. Diamond draw hands that will probably call one more bet on the turn and then fold unimproved on the river: AdQd (less likely due to preflop action), Ad9d,Ad8d,Ad7d,Ad6d,Ad5d,Ad4d,Ad3d,Ad2d,QdJd,Qd9d. We'll throw out AdQd for reasons mentioned and call it 10 hands even. Diamond draw hands that fold immediately on the turn (I think): 9d8d,9d7d,8d7d,7d6d,6d5d,5d4d, perhaps others...but let's just call it 6 combos. The second group of hands are other hands with some showdown value and also some chance of improving. These include AQ, JJ (again, both less likely because of preflop action, but still possible), and then the jack+pair hands, KJ, QJ, JT. Tough to say how often Ivey is calling pre-flop with the offsuit varieties of these hands. But given that there are 12 combos of each possible, let's say Ivey calls preflop always with the suited versions, and half the time with offsuit ones. This means 3 + (1/2)*9 = 7.5 combinations of each hand. Let's call it 22 even for the total. You'll notice immediately that we're already getting past the combinations of monsters that Ivey could have mentioned above. If Ivey calls turn and folds river unimproved with the jack+pair hands as well as the diamond hands mentioned above, that's 32 combinations of hands calling turn and folding river, along with the 6 that fold immediately.

With so few hands folding on the turn (only the weak diamond draws, perhaps some other random hands not considered here like the occasional ATo), barreling turn and giving up on river is clearly the worst idea (you probably could have guessed that from the beginning). What about betting $123k on the turn and then $270k on some rivers? Which rivers? Let's assume for the moment the worst for this strategy, that Ivey will slowplay his monster hands and call down on every river durrrr bets. Let's also say that durrrr will fire any river that's not an A, J, or 9, and that Ivey folds his jack+pair hands to these bets unless he improves to trips, and checks back all jack rivers. With his diamond draw hands, he obviously calls or shoves if a diamond hits, and we'll say he folds any other river to a bet, and also checks back a jack on the river.

Calculating the EV of two bets:

Against 15.5 combos of monsters:

EV vs. TT&KQ:

10.8*((33/44)*(-123-270) + (4/44)*(123 + 140) + (7/44)(-123)) = -3136

EV vs. AJ/J9:

4.7*((35/44)*(-123-270) + (9/44)*(-123)) = -1587

Against 10 combos of diamond draws:

(as an approximation, assume all are ace-high draws)

10*((9/44)*(-123-270) + (3/44)*(123+140) + (6/44)*(-123) + (26/44)*(123+140)) = 762

Against 22 combos of jack+pair:

22*((7/44)*(-123)+(2/44)*(-123-270)+(35/44)*(123+140)) = 3779

Add up all these numbers, you get -183. Then divide by 15.5 + 10 + 22 = 37.5, Ivey's total hand combinations, and you get an EV of -4.9k. Using our assumptions, it's a -EV play by a RAZOR thin margin. Change things just a little bit (for instance, if Ivey never has TT or if he plays QT like QJ), then it becomes +EV for durrrr.

Whether through these calculations or some other, durrrr does end up firing the two more shells. The river happens to give Ivey a pair of sixes, and amazingly, he contemplates calling the $270k for QUITE a while. He is surely aware that durrrr probably puts him on something like the range I mentioned above, and could be trying to bluff him. Part of the problem is that durrrr still could be bluffing with a better hand (99,T9,JT, say), which is why Ivey asked how much durrrr had left - he might be better off shoving than calling to avoid this possibility, albeit at the cost of another $300k if durrrr does have a hand to call him with. Finally after much contemplation Ivey does lay down fourth pair to the $270k river bet.

I'll leave off the commentary there before this thing becomes a novel. But needless to say, both of these guys were way above the rim on this hand. It was exciting to watch. Another HSP season, another legendary durrrr bluff. In a show featuring a number of daring massive post-flop bluffs, his was the only one that worked. Hopefully the action only heats up from here.

-BRUECHIPS

PLO - Misc

2010-03-14T20:13:00.000-07:00

Hey folks, thought I'd throw in a PLO hand and mix things up a bit. I have spent several months trying to learn the ropes of the game and despite my poor results, I really have enjoyed the challenge of a new game. The state of NLHE games is pretty rough right now, the game is by no means "solved" - but there are fewer and fewer fishy games. That being said, IMHO there is definitely some money to be made at the PLO tables - provided you can handle the insane variance, ROR!

Let's get into the action...

Full Tilt Poker $2/$4 Pot Limit Omaha Hi - 5 players - http://www.thehandconverter.com/hands/590701

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BB: $174.60

UTG: $204.90

CO: $160.00

BTN: $386.90

Hero (SB): $346.10

Pre Flop: ($6.00) Hero is SB with 3s 4c 6d 2h

1 fold, CO raises to $12, 1 fold, Hero calls $10, 1 fold

Flop: ($28.00) Jh 5d 2s (2 players)

Hero checks, CO bets $14, Hero raises to $52, CO calls $38

Turn: ($132.00) 4h (2 players)

Hero requests TIME, Hero bets $132, CO calls $96 all in

River: ($324.00) Th (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $324.00

CO shows 7h Ac 9h Ah (a flush, Ace high)

Hero shows 3s 4c 6d 2h (a straight, Six high)

CO wins $321.00

(Rake: $3.00)

Prefrop - I'm by no means a PLO expert, but I believe my defense here in a HU pot where I will be closing the action is pretty standard. That being said, if I were in the SB, it might be closer towards a fold especially when you are in a pot with a squeeze happy BB. While I'd obviously prefer a rundown with some higher cards and frush draw potential - this is a hand I feel you can defend as it rarely dominated and has quite a bit of deception when you do make a hand.

Frop - And BOOM goes the dynamite...I flop bottom pair, and a nice wrap. It is a pretty standard spot for a xr here because the board looks harmless - and I expect the villain to cbet most of his range on this board. Much to my surprise the villain cold calls (given the stack sizes, I figured he would fold his air or simply go with his made hands of 1 pair+). When he calls here I thought he might be running some kind of soul read and folding to a straight completing turn card.

Turn - always nice to bink the nuts. I ship it in and get snapped off by dry aces (that picked up a FD on the turn). Unfortunately by some freak accident hearts gets there and I rose the pot...can't win em all!

-BRACKCHIPS

High Stakes Poker Recap, Season 6, Episodes 1-3

2010-03-01T17:14:00.000-08:00

Finally, a HSP recap. As always, everything here is just my opinion. If I say that your favorite player did something I don't agree with, and you think that I'm just an idiot, fine. As a low-stakes player, I'm not claiming I have all the answers concerning the analysis of a high stakes poker game.

Anyway, reasons I haven't recapped until now: 1) been very busy, 2) HSP has been...eh, kind of a dud so far this year. I'm sure it will heat up before the season ends, but there haven't been that many interesting hands, the new show segments of Kara Scott interviewing the players and Daniel Negreanu telling stories from poker history a) aren't entertaining or worthwhile in and of themselves, and worse, b) take away from air time that could be allocated to showing more hands. I understand that some viewers want to "get inside the heads" of the top players and have them explain their reasoning, but often it's difficult to relate all these reasons even to another top player, much less a lay audience and an interviewer asking unspecific questions. And that's even if the player being interviewed wants to convey information, which they have every incentive not to do. I think it's best just to show the hands and let viewers decide for themselves what's going on, perhaps with help from the commentator (although I often find myself disagreeing with Gabe Kaplan, so listen to him for actual poker analysis at your own risk - he is pretty funny though. His shit about Hoivold saving up for some new shirts at the Army/Navy depot in Oslo and Hellmuth not owning any clothes that aren't black was hilarious).

As for the hands shown, Phil Hellmuth is still pretty awful, although he might be slowly realizing it if his decision to not re-buy is any indication. The chatter around the tables recently has gotten a little too overt in terms of calling Phil out, and he might be getting the hint that when they say that he sucks at cash games, they aren't kidding. It does provide for high comedy though...check out this clip starting around the 7:40 minute mark:

http://www.pokertube.com/free-poker-videos?movie=12493&title=Poker_After_Dark_Cash_Game_S05_Ep83_2_4&player=1

Daniel Negreanu has gotten a little better, but not much. Durrrr still pwns, and Ivey runs like a Hellenic deity. He also seems to be quite fond of floating and barreling, sometimes multiple streets, on dry boards in limped pots. Sample hand from first episode:

Hellmuth open limps AQs, as is his wont, Ivey completes in the SB with T6o and Hoivold checks J8o. The flop comes out a bone dry K43r and Ivey bets half-pot into both players. Hoivold folds, Hellmuth calls with his ace high and they see an 8c turn, completing the rainbow. Another Ivey bet forces Hellmuth to fold. You could see similar hands in each episode. Ivey is just extremely comfortable in his ability to outplay some of the other players on later streets. The entire point of his flop bet there is to get heads-up with Hellmuth so he can just crush him on the turn and river all day long.

Another Ivey-pwns-Hellmuth hand from the first episode occured when Hellmuth made an oversized open to $4k with AJo (btw, if you listened to the pokerroad live radio broadcast of the ME FT this year, how funny was it to listen to Hellmuth talk about his genius advice to Shulman that he should make his opens be 5x the bb "so they can't set mine against you"? Yikes....). Ivey pops it up to $15k with QQ. Inexplicably, Hellmuth then raises to $55k. And then folds to a shove. Of course he can't call the shove given stack sizes (I think Hellmuth is something like $190kish deep at that point)...but then why raise to $55k? Really, Hellmuth should probably just be folding to the Ivey 3-bet because he's just going to get crushed by Ivey. But then extending the logic of backwards induction, Hellmuth should just quit the table before the game gets started.

Then he loses a big pot to Esfandiari and starts to straddle. Why not just announce to the whole table that you're steaming? Everybody knows that Phil never wants to straddle, so him deciding to do it unilaterally is just telling everyone that he's off his game, such as it is. Unsurprisingly, he ends up losing his stack to Ivey. Don't worry though, eventually Hellmuth will beat Ivey "for a million...or two."

Episode 2 included an interesting hand between durrrr and Dario Minieri (who can really play IMHO). Daniel Negreanu opens in early position with 54s (a little bit loose, but not way out of line) and gets called by Gus with AKo. I'm not sure what Gus's plan is for this hand, but for most of his plans for the rest of the hand after calling, I think I like re-raising better. The problem is that he'll get squeezed by some player at the table a fair amount of the time if he just calls. If they were all 100 bbs deep, he would probably then be in a profitable spot to just 4-bet shove, but given that all the players are way deeper than that, this option is less attractive. So then he will have to just call and be out of position for the rest of the hand with AKo, or fold, which is pretty weak. If he raises, he probably gets rid of everyone else, and also could easily get some value from Daniel, who as we have seen doesn't mind calling pre-flop re-raises with speculative hands. Nor do I think he has to worry too much about getting 4-bet by Daniel as a bluff.

Sure enough, he durrrr squeezes with K5s (spades!). As we see here and in the next episode, durrrr likes 3-betting UTG raisers. He knows that they know that they're supposed to have a big hand there, and so when they have anything less than a monster (like not AA/KK), it's a pretty tough spot, especially deep. K5s is a pretty good hand to do it with, as it has some card removal value (having a king makes it less likely that the other players have KK or AK), and some monster-cracking power with its suitedness and big-little-ness. The big-littleness is often a disadvantage since it means it's not connected at all, but if you want a non-premium hand that has card-removal value, it has to be disconnected (unless it's ace-little, which has the added value of wheel potential). But you make up for it somewhat by the possibility of making two pair, which has more value for K5, when the opponent can flop top pair with AK, or have AA or a worse two pair (say, on K65 or K54) but think that you are value betting with AK. Two pair is less valuable with a suited connected hand like 89, because most of the boards that have and eight and a nine don't look too great for the opponent.

Perhaps realizing that durrrr likes to squeeze UTG raisers, or just giddy at the prospect of being dealt two tens (a pair!), Dario cold 4-bets to $36.6k, maybe a touch big, but a very nice bet. Definitely better than cold calling (which I think he'd almost never do with a super-premium hand) or folding, given how wide durrrr's range is. Of course, then you have to bother with playing in a big pot post-flop with durrrr, and durrrr is always capable of 5-betting air. But this time durrrr just calls. The flop comes down Q76 with two diamonds, Dario bets half-pot and durrr folds quickly. It's kind of unfortunate that this flop came down, as I'd really be interested to see what would happen if an ace or king flopped, or even something like Q53 with one spade where durrrr might be a little more likely to try a float. All we know is that durrrr had some plans for some flops, and Q76 with two diamonds wasn't one of them. Or maybe durrrr thought that Dario would be giving up on the flop without c-betting a fair amount of the time?

Looks like this post got long kinda fast, so I'll wrap up with just one more hand from Episode 3: Eli limps QTo in early position (BTW, I've mentioned this before, but that guy HATES folding...I'm not saying he's a bad player, but he does probably call than any other player at that table), Ivey raises it up to 5k with T9o, and gets called by Daniel in the cutoff with 9d8d and Gus on the button with As3s. Of course Eli isn't going anywhere and puts in the extra $4200 to close out the action. The flop comes JdJh7d and it checks around. Ivey doesn't c-bet, presumably because he's against 3 players, none of them like to fold, and this is a board where he's probably not folding out any 7 or better, any straight draw, any flush draw, probably gets floated by some ace-highs, and called by some underpairs sometimes too. But Daniel not betting is strange to me. There are so many great reasons to bet in Daniel's shoes. First, you can fold out Gus a lot of the time and buy yourself position on the other two players for the rest of the hand. Second, Ivey has already checked, which means he doesn't have a great hand most of the time, as we've already gone over the fact that he'll get called a ton if he bets here. Third, you avoid some cooler situations because if a better flush draw or a jack raises you, you can fold and you don't risk losing a bigger pot later to a better hand. Daniel's draw looks great on the surface, but it isn't going to be that profitable to him to make a flush or a straight, unless it's a straight flush. Can you think of many ways for him to win a big pot? I can't. I'd much rather use the draws as kind of an insurance policy, and generate most of my profit off fold equity of betting the flop now and potentially the turn as well, rather than trying to just check down and trying to maximize showdown equity. Anyway, Daniel checks and Gus lets a turn card come off, which is the 2h. It again checks to Daniel, who again fails to bet, even less explicably in my view. All the reasons for betting the flop are only amplified on the turn. Check-calling a bet from Gus is just the nut low. Gus could be drawing to hearts, which kills the Th for Daniel some of the time. Also if Gus is drawing to hearts, they're probably higher than Daniel's nine, and so a check/check on the river and Daniel loses. But Daniel does call a healthy-sized bet from Gus. The river rolls off a 7h and it goes check/check, sending a $60k pot to Gus with ace-high at showdown. Which has to make you sick if you're Daniel.

Well, here's hoping for more interesting hands and more frequent recaps in the future....

-BRUECHIPS

I berated bruechips for not including a hand from episode 3, so now it’s on me to put together a little summary of it.

Gussie opens in the 3 hole for $4,200 with the ole’ 46 (not one but TWO spades FTW!) and gets called in two spots. DURRRR with A7cc (the second nut soot) and the K8hh in the BB by the biggest station ever to set foot on HSP. Oh and that is not an opinion btw…its pretty well documented. The guy simply DOES not fold. I wish I could back this up with some empirical evidence but bruechips and myself have had many discussions about his inability to dump a hand. I feel like if he ever played somewhat seriously online, he would be in deep shit because clicking “call” is SIGNFICANTLY easier than actually placing the chips in the middle.

Frop comes down K93r ftw. From Gus’s perspective, this is a great frop to C bet. It is bone dry other than the gutterball. Despite having 6 high he represent AA, Kx, and the occasional set. As soon as I saw this frop I thought to myself, its going to take A LOT to make Eli fold his hand given this board. Eli Checks the frop, Gus bets $9,900, DURRRR folds, and Eli calls. Pretty standard stuff here.

Turn is a brank offsoot 3. Once Eli xc’s the turn, I think that Eli’s range is capped to KQ other than the occasional boat. I think that when Gus bets this turn – he’s going to bomb most all rivers. He has zero showdown value and Eli will sometimes fold hands the likes 9x, JT, QJ, TT to a river bet.

River is the almighty A of spades. Eli again xc’s ftw. As Gus mentioned, the A is a terrible card for him. Gus was attempting to rep a big Kx type hand and now all medium Kx hands will chop vs him. Also, if that is the hand he is representing, there is really not much of a reason to bet when the ace hits, other than to try prevent the pot from being chopped. I wonder if Eli calls a river overbet shove…who knows.

One thing to note is the bet sizing. I think that given the board texture, Gus can definitely get away with betting SIGNIFICANTLY less on the turn and pull off a “triple deke” (phrased coined by OMGCrayaiken which involves triple barrel bluff with a twist of a tiny sized turn bet). The 3 changes essentially nothing and it is unlikely that either of them have one given card removal. I think that Eli’s response to Gus’s turn bet regardless of size will be the same. Gus bet 74% pot bet on the turn, and I’m pretty certain that he could have made a cheaper turn bluff in the neighborhood of 25-35%.

For all of you playing HSP, please burn this into your head. ELI DOES NOT FOLD! C’mon, let’s see some razor thing VB’s vs this guy!

-BRACKCHIPS

When's The Best Time to Play? An Empirical Answer...

2010-02-16T15:56:00.000-08:00

First, a blog note: Just like last season, I will recap High Stakes Poker action, but probably not every episode, but more like a post every other episode or so discussing the biggest hands. The Season 6 premier aired on Sunday, so some time next week I'll try to put up a post on the first couple of eps. Gabe Kaplan did promise that durrrr and Phil Ivey will be playing in every episode, so that's certainly something to look forward to.

On to the main purpose of this post...It seems to be a general assumption that weekends are the best times to play, and during the week, evenings are best. Well, I did some data analysis to test this idea. All data are hands from 15 mid-stakes full ring FTP regulars. I took these hands and ran the following linear regression:

pi_i,t = a_i + b_1*1{weekend} + g_1*h1_t + g_2*h2_t + g_3*h3_t + g4*h4_t + g5*h5_t + error_i,t

To clarify: pi_i,t represents the winnings in a given hand for player i at time t. The right hand side of the equation is made up of data (1{weekend}, h1_t}, etc.) and parameters to be estimated (a_i, b_1, g_1, etc.). a_i represents a fixed effect for player i in predicting pi_i,t. That is, some players win more on average than other players and I don't want to think that, for instance, weekdays are more profitable only because the players within this sample who have higher win rates at all times play more of their hands on the weekdays. I want to hold fixed a player's skills and ask at what times they make the most money.

1{weekend} is an indicator variable that equals one when the hand is played on Saturday or Sunday, and zero when it is played on the other five days of the week. The b_1 parameter estimates what effect a hand being played during the weekend has on that hand's expected winnings.

The hk_t variables are also dummy variables. I put each hand into one of six four-hour blocks: 12:00-3:59am, 4:00-7:59am, etc.. The FTP hand stamp records EST, so those are the times given here. In order to make the regression work, one category must be omitted (if you have no clue why this is the case, it's too much to explain here, but if you remember a little bit of undergraduate econometrics, it's because the sum of the time dummies and the player fixed-effect dummy are then co-linear). For this regression, I omitted the first four hours of the day, so the interpretation of each coefficient is the change in predicted profitability of one hand RELATIVE to the first four hours of the day.

If you don't understand or aren't familiar with regressions, here's another way of thinking about it. Since all the RHS variables are dummies, you can think of it just as taking how much better each player is on weekends than weekdays, and then taking a weighted average of that statistic, where the weights are given by the total number of hands that each player has in the data set. Doing similar calculations for the hour dummies will yield coefficients identical to those obtained from regression estimates.

Here are the results on the coefficients of interest, in bb/100 hands:

b_1(weekend effect): 0.77

g_1 (4-8am): -1.26

g_2 (8am-noon): -0.38

g_3(noon-4pm): -1.26

g_4(4pm-8pm): -2.52

g_5(8pm-midnight): -0.84

A note of caution is that none of these coefficients are statistically significantly different from zero. In other words, it could be due to just random variation that the weekend turned out to be more profitable in this data. Since there's such wide variance in profits across hands, this isn't too surprising. So proceed with caution, but the data seems to indicate that: i) weekends are in fact more profitable ii) 8pm - 4am EST are the best times to play. These results pretty much corroborate what you might think. The main surprise is that the 4-8 pm EST time block seems to be so bad. In fact this is the coefficient that gets closest to statistical significance, with a 95% confidence interval of (-5.55, 0.51).

Note that I did not include interaction terms in the explanatory variables, so I can't pick up things like: i) better players are more better on weekends/during certain hours ii) certain hours are more better than other hours on weekends than weekdays. And, of course, since I put the hours into groups, I can't say anything about how things change within the time blocks I have.

-BRUECHIPS

A Case of the Mondays (Part 11)

2010-02-08T10:11:00.000-08:00

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S3C4AC908w

-BRUECHIPS

Accidental Thinness, and a Derty River X-back

2010-01-31T22:41:00.001-08:00

Been grinding pretty hard at the Rush tables these days, and overall things have gone well. Unfortunately HEM came up with a way to send stats to your notes, so Rush poker is no longer HUD-less. I say unfortunate because I think I had more of an edge when nobody had any HUD stats. Oh well. Anyway here are a couple of hands I played tonight:

Hand 1:

Full Tilt Poker $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players - http://www.thehandconverter.com/hands/510913

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (BTN): $192.15

SB: $42.80

BB: $89.50

UTG: $106.10

UTG+1: $217.85

UTG+2: $201.85

MP1: $113.90

MP2: $68.75

CO: $56.20

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BTN with Td Th

UTG raises to $3, 5 folds, Hero calls $3, 2 folds

Flop: ($7.50) 4c 6d 9c (2 players)

UTG bets $8, Hero calls $8

Turn: ($23.50) 4d (2 players)

UTG bets $8, Hero calls $8

River: ($39.50) 5d (2 players)

UTG bets $12, Hero raises to $37, UTG calls $25

Final Pot: $113.50

Hero shows Td Th (two pair, Tens and Fours)

UTG mucks 8d 8s

Hero wins $110.50

(Rake: $3.00)

I wish I could say I was raising the river for value, but I thought I was doing it as a bluff to get him off a bigger overpair, since the straight gets there, plus I could have been slowplaying a set on earlier streets, especially with the turn pairing. That plan was obviously terrible, but two wrongs ended up making a right for me as he pretty much instacalled me with pocket eights. Which I did NOT expect ROR.

Here's a somewhat similar hand where my plan also didn't work, and this time it cost me:

Full Tilt Poker $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players - http://www.thehandconverter.com/hands/510914

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

UTG: $128.60

UTG+1: $216.50

Hero (UTG+2): $133.45

MP1: $58.30

MP2: $100.00

CO: $86.40

BTN: $89.30

SB: $33.80

BB: $40.00

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is UTG+2 with Th As

2 folds, Hero raises to $3.50, 1 fold, MP2 calls $3.50, 4 folds

Flop: ($8.50) 5d 9c Ah (2 players)

Hero bets $5, MP2 calls $5

Turn: ($18.50) 2s (2 players)

Hero checks, MP2 checks

River: ($18.50) 7s (2 players)

Hero checks, MP2 bets $12, Hero raises to $37, MP2 calls $25

Final Pot: $92.50

Hero shows Th As (a pair of Aces)

MP2 shows Kd Ac (a pair of Aces)

MP2 wins $89.50

(Rake: $3.00)

When he bets the river after calling pre-flop and on the flop and then checking the turn, I pretty much know he has an ace, and any reasonable ace is going to beat me. I don't think he would bet, say, Ad8d on the river. And even if he does, there are so many aces that beat me that I don't think I can call. So I decided to turn my hand into a bluff and try to get him to fold some of the aces that beat me. AK is pretty much the top of his range, so I'm not too upset about getting called by that. If he folds AQ and AJ, then my play is good. I'm risking 37 to win 30ish, so if he's folding 2/3 of the time, then I'm golden. Granted, I'm not repping too much on the river, but I could conceivably have A7, 77, even the occasional 68s or 22. But really I'm just banking on most players at this limit folding to a river check-raise when they have one pair. Unfortunately this time he had the nut one pair. Oh well. I did manage river check which worked out pretty well:

Full Tilt Poker $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players - http://www.thehandconverter.com/hands/510918

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (UTG+2): $160.65

MP1: $91.05

MP2: $85.90

CO: $100.00

BTN: $68.40

SB: $247.95

BB: $160.85

UTG: $151.65

UTG+1: $96.05

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is UTG+2 with Qc Qd

1 fold, UTG+1 raises to $4.05, Hero calls $4.05, 6 folds

Flop: ($9.60) 7d Qs 6c (2 players)

UTG+1 bets $8, Hero calls $8

Turn: ($25.60) 5s (2 players)

UTG+1 checks, Hero bets $14, UTG+1 calls $14

River: ($53.60) As (2 players)

UTG+1 checks, Hero checks

Final Pot: $53.60

Hero shows Qc Qd (three of a kind, Queens)

UTG+1 shows Ac Ah (three of a kind, Aces)

UTG+1 wins $50.95

(Rake: $2.65)

Usually I am pretty obsessed with getting river value and loathe checking back big hands like this one, but here, there's just not that much value in a bet. When he check/calls the turn, he usually has an overpair, and occasionally has AQ or spades. The oversized early position raise pre-flop had me thinking big pocket pair from the start, so I was mostly discounting spades (esp with the river spade being the ace) and AQ. Even if all AQ combos are possible AND he's calling with all of them, AND he never has spades (or a straight, etc.), then I'm just breaking even on a river bet, with there being 3 combos of AQ and the same number of AA combos possible. KK he's never calling. A lower set, I think he bets turn. So I ended up checking back, ready to vomit all over myself if he had shown top two, but the decision saved me probably $35 or so.

-BRUECHIPS

Rush Strategy

2010-01-25T14:45:00.000-08:00

I have been pwning Rush for pretty much all of my sessions recently...it's just so nice not too have to worry about table-selecting to avoid shorties and bad tables (although the recent move to raise the min buy-in makes this easier). And just not having to worry about tables breaking all the time, not having to keep track of 14 tables open at once...I've been able to 4-table Rush without too much of a problem, which puts me well over 1,000 hands/hour. Sick. Verneer had a pretty nice Rush poker video up on CardRunners if you're a CR member, I found it quite useful.

The change in the game is that you're essentially trying to play against a population-average player all the time, and other players are trying to do this too. You can't use a HUD and the game goes too fast to take notes if you're 4-tabling (more on this later). So unless you recognize somebody as a regular by their screenname, you just have to assume that they're some random donkey and play like the average player. They have to do the same thing for you (if you recognize somebody as a reg, chances are they recognize too, so usually you're either both unknown to each other or you both realize that you're regs).

In any case, I don't want to give away too many secrets...and Verneer covers them pretty well in his video, but here's a list of some things that average players at .5/1 don't do that often, that are wildly profitable to do vs. players who assume that their opponents don't do them very often:

1) 3-betting

2) In particular, 3-betting and squeezing early position raisers. Ranges are tighter for early position raisers than LP raisers and everyone realizes that. But most people don't realize that EP raising ranges aren't so tight that 3-betting isn't really profitable when you get folds from everything but QQ+, whereas when you 3-bet a button raiser you're getting a fold out of KQo and JTs pretty rarely these days.

3) Raising c-bets. Raising c-bets in position, deep, with two overs and a backdoor draw, for instance, is pure gold.

These are all strategies that should be employed in normal games too, but to a lesser extent, because opponents can adjust and start giving your raises less respect. But in Rush, they won't adjust unless 1) you do it so much that people start making notes on you, 2) you post on your blog that you'll be doing it, or 3) the entire pool of players starts doing these things, in which case you have to figure out how to adjust yourself and exploit players who are best responding to this new norm.

-BRUECHIPS

Rush Poker

2010-01-20T23:20:00.001-08:00

Whoa dagg....loooooooooooong time no post. I really apologize. At first traveling for nearly a month around Christmas was keeping me away from posting, and then I ran bad in life for a while, which has limited my productivity in many spheres. Both professionally and personally, the last month or so has been probably the toughest of my life. But I'm working through it, and hope to come out of it a much better person, no matter how things turn out. That vague enough for you guys?

Anyway, a mitigating factor that really has me looking on the bright side of life is Rush Poker, the new gimmick at Full Tilt. I tried it out for the first time tonight and God is it awesome. The deal is, you're basically place at a new table with a random group of players every hand. Whereas when multi-tabling, if you click the auto-fold button, you have to wait for the hand to finish to get dealt a new hand, in Rush Poker, you can 'Quick Fold' and just get insta-dealt a new hand at a new table. The pros:

1) You can still multi-table it. It looks like 4 is about the most Rush tables anyone is playing right now, which I think might get you over 1,000 hands an hour. I was playing two tables just to get the hang of it and managed to get in 413 hands in 41 minutes. You'd have to be playing really sick numbers of non-Rush tables to get this many hands/hour.

2) Another factor that adds to your hands/hour is that you don't have to wait for a seat to open up at a table, and you don't have to worry about tables breaking. Also you don't wait to get to your big blind at the end of a session, when you might be down to playing just 2-3 tables at the tail end of a session. With Rush tables you're up to your peak hands/hour rate right when you sit down, and you never slow down until you decide to end the session. By the same token, it's much easier to take a bathroom or snack break.

3) Much easier on the eyes. Four-tabling Rush tables gets you sick hands/hour without having to try and read the small numbers and fonts and whatnot if you're instead trying to 12- or 16-table traditional tables.

A few cons:

1) You can't use a HUD, because the tables are changing every hand. This does matter, but if you know your game well, then you know who the solid regulars are and you can pretty much assume everybody else is likely to be a weaker player, although you don't know if they're just weak/tight or loose/passive or a monkey or what. But hey, that's what notes are for!

2) You can't table select. Everybody gets the same chance of getting a whack at the donks in the player pool, which is good if you would otherwise be sitting on an 8-person waitlist hoping to get the Jesus seat on a 89/12 fish, but bad if you would otherwise already have that seat and four others like it because you are a derty table selector. If a lot of your profitability comes from game selection and you can't beat the slightly-better-than-average player at your stakes, Rush might be worse for you.

3) You are taken to a new table as soon as you fold, so you can't get reads on players by watching hands where they show down against players other than you. Full Tilt still downloads the entire hand history so you can look at it later in HEM or whatever program you use, but then you'll have to look at it there and somehow go back and find any player you want to make notes on, which is annoying.

4) By the same token, you can't build up a particular dynamic with a specific player or the entire table where you steal a few times and then tighten up and hope to get a big hand to get paid off with. This can be good or bad...if you use this strategy successfully a lot, then obviously Rush takes it away from you. But if you're bad at this type of leveling war, no worries, Rush to the rescue.

5) Availability. Right now they have only up to $.5/1, but I'd imagine that will change soon.

Hope to be posting more in the future. Good luck at the tables!

-BRUECHIPS

Poker after Dark

2010-01-14T23:45:00.000-08:00

LOLLL - be sure to check out this weeks episodes...so so lineup but it is definitely worth its weight in GOLD as far as entertainment. Catch episodes from earlier this week on pokertube.com.

Watching helmuth donk around with these guys is just epic stuff. He moans, whines, complains NON STOP with his UB cap, shorts, and WSOP bracelet...how GHEY is that?

Here's a question...if this guy played HU with an ANTE vs any competent HU player - how long would it take for him to be completely bankrupt? ROR.

PLO Brag

2010-01-09T22:52:00.000-08:00

I played a PRO hand that I felt was rather brag worthy. In PLO, given the fact that equities run SO effing tight...the nature of the game provides "gamblers" an artificial edge given the fact that they are willing to stick their money in light. Its pretty rare to ever be a HUGE dog pre or postfrop as it is in NLHE...yer often going to be in a bunch of 60/40s...on one side of the other, and provided you can run well...you'll prolly have the illusion that you are gods given to PRO.

AnyWHO...provided you can get yourself on the CORRECT side of those 60/40s...you will be printing money, provided you don't get raped by the RNG. Now I don't craim to be an expert/winner at PLO by any means...but I'm going to review a HH below and provide some analysis on a hand which I thought was particularly interesting. Given that equities run so tight...it's pretty very difficurt to play a hand optimally.

*************************************************************

Full Tilt Poker $2/$4 Pot Limit Omaha Hi - 6 players - http://www.thehandconverter.com/hands/466160

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

CO: $715.00 BTN: $400.00 SB: $275.00 Hero (BB): $599.20 UTG: $551.40 MP: $80.00

Pre Flop: ($6.00) Hero is BB with Qd 9h Kh Kc

1 fold, MP calls $4, CO calls $4, BTN raises to $22, 1 fold, Hero requests TIME, Hero raises to $76, 2 folds, BTN calls $54

Flop: ($162.00) 6c 7d 3d (2 players)

Hero checks, BTN bets $88, Hero requests TIME, Hero calls $88
Turn: ($338.00) Js (2 players)

Hero bets $338, BTN calls $236 all in

River: ($810.00) 7s (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $810.00

BTN shows 8s Kd 9d Th (a pair of Sevens) Hero shows Qd 9h Kh Kc (two pair, Kings and Sevens) Hero wins $807.00

(Rake: $3.00)

*************************************************************

Pre - virrain is SUPER tag...as in nitty unlike Tiffany's mom's vag. Rike 19/15 in PLO...I honestly can NOT believe that styre can be profitabre in PLO...given that IMO its far too tight for a 6M NLHE game. W/E. I 3b the SB for value and get fratted - the key thing to take way from this frat is that his range now does NOT included AAxx. Also, I don't think his 3b calling range will include many pairs...unless they are of the well connected double paired variety. I expect him to pitch junk like AK99 (which he may actually open fold anyway). Frop - There is one three letter phrase that comes to my mind when this comes down. FML. Times 100x. I instantly considered xf'ing given how GROSS this board is and that I have zero draws/backdoor draws...and that I'm almost NEVER going to get it in on this frop as a favorite. It also is BURRIED in his 3b calling range that is weighted towards sooted connectors. While debating the xf option...I just go ahead and check and evaluate. Sorta ghey, but I'm out of position with a naked overpair (full stax vs a competent player) and literally want to jump off a bridge. Virrain goes ahead and bets a rather ghey amount...VERY enticing for a xrai, but I opt for a variation of the patented Bruechips Fade and Go. My plan is xc, shove ANY non diamond that does not complete 89 on the turn. Granted its a HUGE chunk of the deck...but I felt that given his range, it was a better play than to bet fold, bet call, or xf. Turn -BINKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK. J of spades...an excellent card for me. Ipot donk it into him and booya, he calls it off as he should with a big timey wrap with a FD which I'm able to fade on the river. Villain was prolly thinking (HOW THE F DO I NOT BINK FTW?!?!?!) instead of realizing that he got ooooooowwwwwnnnnddddd! For all you math geeks out there - here are the equities street by street.

PREF - 69/31 FROP - 34/66 TURN - 58/43

Ship it.

-BRACKCHIPS

Brackchips 1, Bruechips 0

2010-01-03T21:08:00.000-08:00

That's the blog tally as we start the new decade...WORD!!! (My guess is this may be the only point during the year when I will have more blog posts so I need to make a point to rub it in.)

I've been completely off the blog radar the past few months lately...just haven't felt much like blogging. Poker has been pretty brutal lately - I made the random decision at the end of October to switch over to PLO after playing in a home game...and I've caught the bug for sure. However, it has decimated my roll, ROR! I really enjoy the game much more than NLHE - it really makes you think significantly more compared to NLHE...but the variance/swings can bebrutal for sure.

The consensus from what I have heard is the variance is something like 2x NLHE. I'd be curious to figure out an actual way to measure the differences in variance. What other ways can you compare the relative variance other than your all in frequencies? My guess right now is that it is probably more than that assuming you are playing a relatively aggressive game at tables that are not completely infested with passive fish.

Contributing to my downswing has been the nonstop crap I've encountered with my computers/hem/windows. Pretty much everything in the world has gone wrong and I really haven't been playing on my main setup sans problems for well over a month. I've seriously spent at least 50+ hours tweaking/fixing/troubleshooting my machine. I've finally went ahead and upgraded both my machines to SSD hard drives, both running Win 7, and it looks like HEM is FINALLY cooperating. So I'm looking forward to getting back on my desktop with my timey monitor sans distractions. Now if I could only have FT email me all the hh's I am constantly requesting.

Bruechips was in town for about a week during the horidays and we were able to mix in a good amount of HU action of a PLO/NLHE mix. I ran like god because I had the advantage of homefield but credit must be given where it's due - brue prayed rike a beast and I'm suprised I didn't quit poker altogether when he 4b the turn in a hand of NLHE with a 3rd pair no kicker which was good vs my 4th p+SFD (spade frush draw aka the nuts). Thankfurry I rivered a SPADE ftw...SHIP IT!

BTW - for any of you with an iphone/ipod touch - I HIGHLY recomend downloading a free game called "Imobsters." You won't regret it, trust me.

-BRACKCHIPS

Tales from Undergrads, Part 3

2009-12-08T08:44:00.001-08:00

Readers,

Sorry I have been posting Brackchips-style over the past month or so. The holidays had me traveling a bunch, and I've been busy with school without much time for poker or blogging. I will put up a big post later, but I just have to share with you this email exchange I had with an undergrad, which I am reporting here verbatim except for where I turned some stuff into *** to protect privacy.

Email 1:

From: hempinaintez@******.***

To: bruechips

Time: Saturday, 2 pm

David,

I noticed that the practice finals say a two sided cheat sheet is allowed. Are we allowed to bring a cheat sheet to the final?

Chris *****

(Sunday afternoon, I forward this to the professor to ask, he says yes, then I write back to the student:)

Email 2:

From: bruechips

To: hempinaintez@******.***

Time: Sunday, 6 pm

Yes, cheat sheets are allowed.

Email 3:

From: hempinaintez@********.***

To: bruechips

Time: Monday, 7 am

Wow, if I could I would give u the shittiest TA evaluation, u rele dropped the ball. I moved all day sunday, that's y I emailed u friday....... Thanks for nothing, I thought u were supposed to be helpfull .

Email 4:

From: bruechips

To: hempinaintez@*****.***

Time: Monday, 8:30 am

The time stamp on your email is from Saturday. Maybe on Friday you were hempin'? I hear that's not easy.

Email 5:

From: hempinaintez@******.***

To: bruechips

Time: Monday, 9 pm

Are we reading the same email? U sent it to him on sunday to ask I can see that email, and then u try to lie! Don't sit here and make me look stupid.

Email 6:

From: bruechips

To: hempinaintez@********.***

Time: Monday, 10 pm

Chris,

By "your email," I meant the first email you sent to me, which I received on Saturday, not Friday as your second email claimed. I then emailed you back on Sunday, about 28 hours later. If you feel this constitutes dereliction of my duties as a TA, you are free to complain to Professor ****** or to the Vice Chair of Undergraduate Studies. I'd advise you to spell out the second person singular pronoun and use a different email if you want your complaint to be taken seriously.

David

-BRUECHIPS

Isildur1 vs. durrrr

2009-11-12T10:06:00.000-08:00

There was some sicko poker going on over the last few days, but it wasn't at the ME. As we all know and have said many times here at Spritpot, tourneys are for donks and lucksacks. I did listen to a lot of the ME live on internet radio. The funniest part was listening to Hellmuth. How does this guy ever win? His "pupil" Jeff Shulman played terribly IMHO, much of it probably due to Hellmuth's advice. The retardo 4-5x raises? Phil's justification: "so they can't set mine against you." ROR! It was funny to listen to the Sebok/ZeeJustin team try their hardest not to ridicule him on live radio. Anyway, Shulman eventually lost all his chips on a suckout, so I'm sure Phil thinks that he gave Shulman great advice and he just got unlucky.

Anyway, the real show in poker was the Isildur1 vs. durrrr matchup on FTP. Everybody knows that durrrr is Tom Dwan, but there's been debate on who Isildur1 is. There seems to be the most consensus on some guy named Robert Flink, but I don't know much more about him. Aside from the fact that he RAPED durrrr over about 20k hands at 500/1000 NLHE for over $3m. Sunday and Monday durrrr dropped about $1m each day. Sunday he got in a big hole early, climbed all the way back to a win, then gave it all back, part of it in a short PLO session. Tuesday he started off running hot, at one point up nearly $2m between 6-tabling Isildur1 at NLHE and 2-tabling Ziigmund at 500/1000k PLO (yes, he really is that sick - 8-tabling HU vs. two of the best in the world for insane stakes).

We all know durrrr is a sicko degen. Which is why you gotta be amazed at Isildur1 - even durrrr had to chat in at one point vs. Isildur1, "ur quite a sicko". What else can you say when two guys can get all-in on the turn for 300k each with a pair of sixes vs. a pair of sevens?

How is Isildur1 pwning durrrr? He is certainly SICKO aggro postflop. But you can't just mash pot every time and expect to beat durrrr. There are two main ways I think durrrr was leaking. Obviously, this is my humble opinion. I'll never be as good as durrrr, and don't think this means I want to play him HU or anything like that. Just my opinion, after watching a lot of the hands between the two.

1: durrrr folding in big pots on the river

Durrrr is quite loose, but is actually not that aggressive on flops and turns. He likes to get deep into a hand and play a lot of rivers, but he likes to call down pretty light on earlier streets. This got him into trouble vs. Isildur1 who, particularly early in the match, was overbetting pretty much every river, and Dwan had to fold most of the time. Durrrr did adjust, partly by slowplaying some big hands and letting Isildur1 bet into the nuts, and partly by making some really big thin calldowns. This might convince some opponents to slow down, but Isildur1 managed to adjust very well by making some thin river value bets with anything from top pair no kicker to third pair to combat durrrr calling down light, and also checking back some pretty strong hands on the river when durrrr was slowplaying.

I think against a very good, aggressive player, you're just not going to be winning in the long run when they have the betting lead and you're getting to a river with a range of weak made hands, a few slowplayed monsters, and no idea what they have (check out the second game theory video I did on CR for more explanation). Especially out of position, which was the situation for durrrr a lot in this match. Occasionally he would make some sick hand on the turn or river and get a lot of value. But he was getting into these kinds of situations on the river so often after calling down light on earlier streets. Watching the match, there were so many times watching where you had $120k in the middle on the river and you were just waiting for the $160k bet from Isildur1 and a fold from durrrr.

2: durrrr underestimating Isildur1's pre-flop 4-betting range

Both these players are insanely aggro preflop and durrrr was 3-betting quite a bit, so of course Isildur1 is 4-bet bluffing sometimes, but I think durrrr went way too crazy with the 5-bet bluffing. Maybe he just was unlucky in running into a lot of monsters, but...he sure did run into a lot of them. When he wasn't 5-bet bluffing, he was often calling 4-bets out of position with J8o and J9o and then stacking off with top pair, which usually wasn't good. I think durrrr was a little off in not seeing how strong Isildur1's 4-betting range preflop was and not adjusting by giving him a little more credit and just folding to them preflop. Isildur1 wasn't immune from this either though, as this sick hand shows. And this one.

Anyway, it's been great theater so I hope these two continue to go at it. Durrrr was having to split stacks a lot in order to keep playing because he didn't really have enough money in his account to keep 6-tabling all the time, especially after losing a couple million the first couple of days. But this will probably change as durrrr will transfer in some massive amount and play Isildur1 until one of them is broke. Call me a fanboy, but I'm rooting for durrrr.

-BRUECHIPS

ESPN's WSOP Main Event Coverage

2009-11-11T03:23:00.001-08:00

WOW is all I have to say. Talk about some bad TV...we got to see roughly one hand per commercial break and the hands we did see - about 95% of them were preflop all ins. I don't really watch that much poker on TV these days other than HSP...but boy this was downright terrible. Unless you are interested in seeing suckouts/badbeats/Joe Cada run like GOD - this was incredibly terrible coverage. I'm not kidding you when I say that the most entertainment I got from that 2.5 hrs was the clips they had of Humphrys, Ivey's elderly superfans. The husband was wearing a button the size of a watermelon with a picture of Ivey...HILARIOUS.

I had not watched the FT at the ME for several years...but this year I had to check it out - the one and only PHILLIP HORATIO IVEY was somehow able to navigate through the minefield of 6k+ players and make it to the final 9. I can't imagine what a boost the ESPN ratings got since he made it to the FT. We are all just playing in his lil world of poker...where he is a god amongst men.

There were literally ZERO interesting hands that played out - aside from Joe Cada's insane ability to flop sets, Darvin Moon's desire to bloat pots out of position with no pair/no draw...you really didn't get much value. The only interesting hand I took note of was the A9dd vs 77 where Ivey xc'd the flop, turn was xx, Ivey led the river after his draw bricked off.

Does anyone have any info about the hand where Darvin Moon xr bluffed a flop with KQ high and then folded to a 3b shove getting like 400-1? He went back to his wife and told her that he had QUEENS. Either a) he misread his hand...which I highly doubt because there is no way he would have folded or b) he just decided to lie to his wife on national TV. Did he not think she was going to going to see the coverage?

So while the FT ME coverage was shit...if you want to get your fix on some high stakes action - check out the action running on Full Tilt lately. Durrr has been battling a Sweedish action junkie by the name who goes by Isildur1 at MANY A TABLE of 500/1k. These guys have been putting in some MARATHON sessions and the only thing that has slowed the action has been Durrr's apparent liquidity problems - which he has been working on since he's been getting pretty tuned up by this new Nordic phenom. I think Bruechips will be posting later this week about this high stakes bloodbath - stay tuned.

Congrats to Joe Cada...I'm especially glad that he took it down for one very special reason. With him eclipsing Eastgates record last year for the youngest person ever to win the ME...now Phil Helmuth is officially something like the 172nd youngest person ever to win the ME. LOL. Yer still the greatest Phil...I'm sure you have at least 11 more bracelets coming your way. Make that a double LOL.

-BRACKCHIPS

A Case of the Mondays (Part 10)

2009-11-09T09:31:00.000-08:00

People-watch right from your desktop:

www.peopleofwalmart.com

-BRUECHIPS

TPIG

2009-11-05T21:50:00.000-08:00

Top pair is one of the more difficult hands to play in a full ring game of Hold 'Em. Obviously it's a pretty good hand, much better than average, but every time you get a bunch of money in with it, doesn't it seem like things don't work out to well?

Most small-stakes full ring regulars resort to just folding top pair pretty much all the time to any pressure, regardless of the players or board texture involved. While that's probably not too costly a mistake vs. most players at those stakes, it's obviously massively exploitable. And it also misses out on a bunch of spots where top pair is truly golden, such as this one:

Full Tilt Poker $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em - 8 players - http://www.thehandconverter.com/hands/355876

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BTN: $113.40

SB: $100.00

Hero (BB): $100.00

UTG: $41.35

UTG+1: $82.60

MP1: $76.30

MP2: $73.50

CO: $37.00

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BB with 8s Kd

UTG calls $1, UTG+1 calls $1, 3 folds, BTN calls $1, 1 fold, Hero checks (UTG+1 is a 54/31 total fishcake)

Flop: ($4.50) 2c 2h 8d (4 players)

Hero checks (Top pair is absolute gold almost always here. It's possible that UTG limped a hand like 99-JJ, but he only has $40 so I'm not gonna hate stacking off against him too much. It is possible UTG+1 has a 2 just because he's playing so many hands, but even for him, he's not going to have a deuce that often limping in early position. If he had open limped I might worry about QQ+ a little bit, but limping behind a limper cuts down on that. But he's very likely to overvalue a worse one pair hand on this flop. If he has 55 or an 8 with a worse kicker, he's not going anywhere. I could lead and try to get him to call down three streets, but it allows him to control pot size somewhat by just calling, and plus by check/raising instead I can get at least one bet out of his total air hands, and it makes it a little more likely he'll spaz out with something completely random...)

UTG checks, UTG+1 bets $8, (He overbets the pot! I'd expect him to do this with a deuce approximately...never. And if he does, then he deserves my $80. He's more likely to do it with some hand he thinks is probably good, but is vulnerable, like a crappy one-pair. But since he thinks it's good, we know he's not folding!)

BTN folds, Hero raises to $24, UTG folds, UTG+1 raises to $40, Hero raises to $99 all in, UTG+1 calls $41.60 all in

Turn: ($167.70) Td (2 players - 2 are all in)

River: ($167.70) 4d (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $167.70

Hero shows 8s Kd (two pair, Eights and Twos)

UTG+1 shows 9d 8c (two pair, Eights and Twos)

Hero wins $164.70

(Rake: $3.00)

Valuetownd!!!

-BRUECHIPS

A Case of the Mondays (Part 9)

2009-11-02T07:00:00.000-08:00

If this doesn't start off your week right...yer pretty much hoperess. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxZkaEge0R8

PLO: Exactly 6 times as sick as NLHE

2009-10-30T08:08:00.000-07:00

In my last post I showed how to figure out what % of a player's range certain hands make up in PLO and how that compares to NLHE. An observant reader might have noticed that the answer for PLO was always 6 times the answer for Hold 'Em. Coincidence? No.

Consider a single two card combination, like AsKs, just to take an especially juicy two cards. In Hold 'Em, there's obviously exactly one hand that contains those two cards. In PLO, there are 50*49/2 = 1225, which is the number of combinations of any two cards that aren't the As or the Ks. So there are 1225 times as many hands that have AsKs in PLO as in Hold 'Em. How many total hands are there in PLO vs. Hold 'Em? In Hold 'Em there are 52*51/2 = 1,326. In PLO there are 52*51*50*49/(4*3*2) = 270,725, or 204 1/6 times as many. And 1225/204.1666 = 6. So a given two-card combo is six time as likely to be in an Omaha hand as a Hold 'Em hand. So while AsKs is 1/1,326 = .0754% of all Hold 'Em hands, the Omaha hands including AsKs are 1225/270,725 = .4525% of all Omaha hands.

This might not be too surprising since each Omaha hand includes six possible Hold 'Em hands (first card/second card, first/third, first/fourth, second/third, second/fourth, third/fourth). However, they are not independent. So it's not just like dealing a hold 'em hand, reshuffling the deck, dealing another hold 'em hand, and repeating six times and seeing if any of the hands dealt were AsKs. This would be (1-.000754)^6 = .4516%. On the other hand if you dealt out six Hold 'Em hands, without putting the already dealt cards back in the deck before dealing the second, third, and later hands, the odds of dealing AsKs are .5629%. It's not totally clear whether an Omaha hand should be more or less likely to have AsKs. The fact that the first and second cards are not the As and the Ks makes it MORE likely that the third and fourth will be. On the other hand, it makes it LESS likely that the first and third cards, for instance, will be. In any case, it turns out that the effects kind of balance out, so that the final result is that AsKs is included in .4525% of all Omaha hands, much closer to dealing 6 independent Hold 'Em hands with card replacement than dealing them without replacement.

Oh, and just so this post isn't totally useless and boring, if you've made it this far, here's a 900 bb pot I won vs. a complete monkey who had absolutely no fold button:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4835889

-BRUECHIPS

PLO Math: Answers

2009-10-28T06:08:00.000-07:00

Ok well, here goes:

First, the Hold'em warmup: there are 3 combinations of 66. You have two cards in your hand, there are three on the flop, so there are 47 cards unaccounted for. Since he was calling with any hand preflop, his entire range is all two card combinations of those 47 cards, which is 47*46/2 = 1081. So 66 makes up 3/1081 ~ 0.3% of his range. There are also 3 combinations of 33 and 99, so 9 combinations of sets, so sets make up ~ 0.9% of his range. If he calls with only 30% of hands preflop, then this increases, because we're taking a bunch of junk out of his range, so the number of combos he could possibly have is ~.3*1080 (*), so then 66 makes up ~ 0.9% of his range, and all sets make up ~2.7%.

Now that we see how to do the two-card problem, let's move on to the four-card (Omaha) problem. There are still 3 combinations of 66. But there are also two other cards in the player's hand. There are 43 cards left in the deck (52 - your 4 cards - 3 frop cards - the two sixes), so 43*42/2 = 903 ways to arrange the other two cards in his hand, for a total of 3*903 = 2709 hand combinations that include 66. There is a total of 45!/(41!*4!) = 148,995 ways to choose 4 cards out of the remaining 45 in the deck. So hands including 66 make up 2709/148,995 = 1.8% of the villain's range. Much more than the 0.3% from Hold 'Em.

Now consider all hands that include at least one set. We could just do 3*2709, and that's almost right, but it double counts TT66, 6633, and TT33. There are 9 combinations of each of those hands. So the actual number of combination of hands that include at least one set is 3*2709 - 3*9 = 8100 combos. So hands including at least one set make up 8,100/148,995 = 5.4% of all hands.

Just as before, if he calls with only 30% of hands preflop, then there are only ~ 148,995*0.3 = 44,698 combos possible (*). Then 66xx makes up 6.1% of his range, and he has at least one set 18.1% of the time. Sick!

Moral of the story: There's a good chance you will run into some very good hands in Omaha. Whereas in Hold 'Em when someone is repping a set and a set only, usually they are bluffing, if only because they only flop sets less than 3% of the time. In PLO, however, opponents make sets often enough that they would have to be raising a TON of flops for them to be bluffing a very high % of the time.

-BRUECHIPS

(*) - In order to do this, we have assumed that the cards on the board remove just as much of his pre-flop calling range as from his pre-flop folding range. This will never be exactly the case, but it's pretty close, and figuring out the exact number is ridiculously complicated and involves specifying his entire calling range, so it's way more trouble than it's worth.

Another note: 32% of PLO hands contain a pair, so if the villain is calling with any TT, 66,

and 33, certainly he is calling more than 30% of hands preflop.

PLO Math...

2009-10-27T10:34:00.000-07:00

Both Brackchips and I have been diving into PLO recently, I think partly due to some boredom with NLHE, partly due to the NLHE games getting worse by the day, and the PLO games still being very good. If you're a fish and you want to gamble, PLO is the game for you. Look how often you make a straight or a flush! Every frop you'll get at least a pair or something, how could you not stay in?

While it doesn't take a mastery of the game to pwn your average PLO game, I've been trying to do some more thinking about the game. Loyal spritpot readers might by now have become adept at the following types of NLHE problems:

You have AA, your opponent calls your pre-flop raise. The frop comes T63. How many combinations of 66 are possible? If your opponent calls with any two cards pre-flop, what are the odds he now has a set of sixes? What are the odds he has any of the three possible sets? What if he preflop calls with 30% of hands, and that 30% includes TT, 66, and 33?

Ok, that was a warmup. In NLHE it's not too difficult to work out those kinds of problems. In PLO it gets a little trickier since everybody gets four cards. But try the same problem:

You have AAJ9, your opponent calls your pre-flop raise. The frop comes T63. How many combinations of 66xx are possible? If your opponent calls with any four cards pre-flop, what are the odds he now has a set of sixes? What are the odds he flopped one or more sets? What if he calls preflop with 30% of hands, and that 30% includes all TTxx, 66xx, and 33xx?

Answers to come later...

-BRUECHIPS

A Case of the Mondays (Part 8)

2009-10-26T06:08:00.000-07:00

For this week, less comedy, more Ivey:

http://tinyurl.com/yhrfk53

But if you don't have ESPN Insider, here's some comedy for you:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8Vh9_Hi1kY

-BRUECHIPS

The Death of Set Mining?

2009-10-24T15:36:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago there were lots of full-ring nits who made a living just set-mining (calling raises with any pocket pair and shoveling in money when they hit three of a kind). As long as opponents didn't adjust, this strategy was quite profitable. You can see why - you flop a set about 12% of the time and when you get in the money you have about 90% equity. If your opponent's pre-flop raising range is mostly big pocket pairs that will often flop overpairs to your set, you will be getting the money in post-flop when you DO flop a set quite frequently.

How has the game changed to make this strategy obsolete? Two ways. One way is that players are more aware of the set-mining strategy, able to spot the set-mining nits, and fold a decent hand post-flop when these players start to show aggression. While this does make set-mining, less profitable, it's by far the less important of the two adjustments, which is that players have widened their pre-flop raising ranges, so that the set-miners will often make a set against 7-high, rather than an overpair, and make only a c-bet postflop rather than an entire stack. Hardly worth paying 3 bbs for a 1 in 9 shot at making 4 bbs. The other part of pre-flop raising ranges being wider is that sets actually have LESS equity when they do get the money in, because they will often be up against big draws or better made hands, which have far more than the ~10% equity an overpair will generally have.

There are exceptions, of course, where pure set-mining can be profitable, mostly when you are more than 100 bbs deep, it's a multi-way pot, and/or you know that the pre-flop raiser has a very narrow range and will be willing to stack off with an overpair (as I've described, these players are rarer and rarer).

I still see a fair amount of regulars set-mining in spots that I'd estimate are unprofitable. If you don't believe me that set-mining is dead, 1) go through your database and look at all the times you've called an pre-flop raiser HU with 22-66 and look at your bb/100 if it's a large enough sample, 2) look at the PTR pages of the guys that used to do nothing but set-mine. They've either moved to lower stakes, changed their games, or have lost all their money.

-BRUECHIPS

Yer Gonna Rove My Nuts! (Part 11)

2009-10-21T09:28:00.001-07:00

Inducing a bluff doesn't always mean slowplaying:

Full Tilt Poker $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 3 players - http://www.thehandconverter.com/hands/332056

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

SB: $42.05

BB: $116.35

Hero (BTN): $55.10

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is BTN with Kc Ks

Hero raises to $1.50, SB calls $1.25, BB calls $1

Flop: ($4.50) 5d Ts 4c (3 players)

SB checks, BB bets $3.50, Hero raises to $11.50, SB folds, BB raises to $114.85 all in, Hero calls $42.10 all in (If you read this brog regularly, you know that I do not give too much respect to donk bets from most prayers. I can't recall exactly, but I'm sure this donk had tried to lead into me a couple of times already and been denied and was starting to get fed up with not being able to take away the pot with bets that represent nothing. Like is he really expecting me to fold to a donk bet on this frop? Ever? I'm either raising or froating him every time. Which was maybe what he was thinking when he 3b shoves his entire stack in there. Which will work sometimes, but he's risking $40 to do it, whereas I'm risking only $11 to raise his initial bet. And since I'm holding pretty much the nuts, his bruff does not work.)

Turn: ($111.70) 7d (2 players - 2 are all in)

River: ($111.70) 9h (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $111.70

BB shows 8s Qs (Queen Ten high)

Hero shows Kc Ks (a pair of Kings)

Hero wins $110.70

(Rake: $1.00)

-BRUECHIPS

Art of the Min Raise (Part 17)

2009-10-19T22:54:00.000-07:00

Gotta rove the tasty pot odds:

Full Tilt Poker $0.25/$0.50 Pot Limit Hold'em - 4 players - http://www.thehandconverter.com/hands/330499

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BB: $88.80

Hero (CO): $70.40

BTN: $33.80

SB: $52.15

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is CO with 5h 4h

Hero raises to $1.75, BTN calls $1.75, 2 folds (From the cutoff I'll certainly raise up just about any suited connector unless some really good player is at the table punishing me a bunch. Get called by a donkey on the button.)

Flop: ($4.25) 2h Ah 8c (2 players)

Hero bets $3, BTN calls $3 (Frop a frush draw and a gutter, standard c-bet the ace-high board.)

Turn: ($10.25) 5s (2 players)

Hero bets $6, BTN raises to $12, Hero calls $6 (Turn a pair...certainly not expecting him to fold an ace, but folding a weak eight or a pocket pair sevens and below isn't out of the question. He could also call with a bigger heart draw that doesn't have a pair, which is obviously fine. In any case he instead min-raises, which tells me that he has some kind of pretty big hand. I'd be totally shocked if he ended up with a flush draw taking this line, so I can be pretty sure that my heart outs are good, with the possible exception of the 8h. I'd expect that a 3 would give me the best hand pretty much always as well. Those 11 outs alone are enough to allow me to profitably call this min raise, calling 6 to win the 28 in the pot, plus almost certainly the remaining 17 in his stack. The 8h and the other two fives in the deck are a little dicier, but I think I'm good enough of the time that they add to the profitability of calling, even if sometimes I will get stacked. A river four and I'd probably check/fold. I'd expect to get bluffed fairly rarely, although occasionally it will go check/check and I'll have the best hand.)

River: ($34.25) Jh (2 players)

Hero bets $34.25, BTN calls $17.05 all in (Just the card I was looking for...time for a trip to valuetown!)

Final Pot: $68.35

Hero shows 5h 4h (a flush, Ace high)

BTN mucks Ac 8h

Hero wins $66.35

(Rake: $2.00)

-BRUECHIPS

A Case of the Mondays (Part 7)

2009-10-19T07:00:00.000-07:00

This one is dedicated to all you chipotle lovers out there...

http://tinyurl.com/yznu28u

-BRACKCHIPS

Great Boxing Event Tonight

2009-10-17T13:32:00.000-07:00

The Super Six World Boxing Classic starts tonight on Showtime and I can't wait. For those of you who haven't heard about it yet, Showtime has gotten the 6 best 168-lb fighters in the world and gotten them signed up for a tournament. This is very rare in boxing, a sport which is plagued by a cornucopia of different championship belts and difficulties in getting the best athletes in the sport to face each other.

Every boxer in the tournament is a great fighter with a shot to win it all. The eventual winner will have a rock solid claim to being the best fighter in the division, and one of the biggest stars in boxing. The first round is round robin, with each boxers scheduled for 3 bouts. The four participants with the highest point totals move on to the semifinals, at which point it becomes a single elimination tournament. Tonight the action starts off with Jermain Taylor vs. Arthur Abraham and Andre Dirrell vs. Carl Froch. Be sure to tune into the action and cheer on the Americans.

-BRUECHIPS

THIN! (Part 17)

2009-10-16T12:24:00.001-07:00

Well I am still running like crap at 6-max...but god the donks are JUICY. I managed to get an hour or so of PT with this drooler the other night...unfortunately he had already sucked out on me for 100 bbs once earlier when we got in my K6 (BB special, he had limped) vs. his QQ on J66, but I got him back here: AK-high for 93% equity on the turn!

Full Tilt Poker $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 5 players - http://www.thehandconverter.com/hands/327300

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BTN: $183.25

SB: $50.00

Hero (BB): $67.00

UTG: $54.40

CO: $48.85

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is BB with Ks Ac

1 fold, CO raises to $2, BTN calls $2, 1 fold, Hero raises to $10, 1 fold, BTN calls $8 (Trying to get heads up with the donk on the button, he will call with ATC so this is a value bet more than a semi-bluff)

Flop: ($22.25) 3d 9h Jh (2 players)

Hero bets $14, BTN calls $14 (Not the best frop in the world...but gotta throw this out there I guess.)

Turn: ($50.25) 6s (2 players)

Hero requests TIME, Hero bets $43 all in, BTN calls $43 (Very very close. He's not very likely to fold really any pair. But there are shitload of draws out there...hearts, 87,QT,KQ,T8...he could have any of those for sure. And who knows, maybe he'll fold a three or something. Also I could get called by a worse "made hand"!)

River: ($136.25) 4h (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $136.25

BTN shows Ad Qh (Ace Queen high)

Hero shows Ks Ac (Ace King high)

Hero wins $133.25

(Rake: $3.00)

If I had had KhQh and bricked out I might have quit poker....

-BRUECHIPS

P.S.: Unfortunately we've gotten a few "spam" comments recently where advertisers or whatever come and leave a comment advertising their B.S. products. To combat that, we're now moderating comments, so we have to approve them before they actually go on the site. Sorry for the inconvenience to our fabulous long-time readers and commentors, rest assured you won't have to wait long to see your comments up once you submit them.

Non Poker

2009-10-15T14:00:00.000-07:00

In cerebration of the DOW rebounding to 10k...this is actually going to be a stock related post. Actually not stocks...but specifically online brokers.

I've been trading stocks online for over ten years now (FML I'm getting old) and have used MANY a brokers. Over the years I have experiemented with probably 7-8...etrade, datek, ameritrade, wit capital, schwab, firsttrade, scottrade, etc. Needless to say I've experienced a wide range of service amongst these brokers in this highly fragmented marketplace.

About a year ago I tested out Tradeking - a lesser known player but a playa nonetheless. Surprisingly I had never heard of them...but after calling and giving their website a test drive I figured try them out and transferred one of my Scottrade accounts over.

...A month later - the remainder of my accounts/securities were ALL over at Tradeking. These guys are the absolute ROCK STONE NUTS.

Unless you are someone who is mad old school and feels the need to physically spend time with a broker - IMO, you can't go wrong with the boys at TK.

1) Customer service

2) Extremely competitive pricing schedule

3) An excellent customizable web interface

I really don't even know where to start when it comes to the customer service...these guys are so far above the rim its ridiculous. However you contact them, email, chat, phone - you NEVER have to wait, and in addition to that - these people KNOW what they are talking about.

5 bux a trade people...5 bux. Ya I know some places are cheaper, and even free in some cases - but I'm GLAD to pay them for the trade. Oh and for those of you still who have not yet heard of the internet...call em up and it's STILL 5 bux. I don't think you can find anyone under 25 when you pick up the phone for a trade. Oh and none of those silly IRA/inactivity fees...no minimums either.

Big fan of their website/interface - fresh, easy to navigate, and customizable.

Oh one other HUGE thing - they offer DRIP for any security that has it available. This was a HUGE part of the reason I was seeking alternatives to Scottrade last year...HADDDD to get my DRIP on - had gone way too long without it.

TRADEKING

Give em a shot.

-BRACKCHIPS

New CR Vid, Case of the Mondays....

2009-10-12T06:57:00.000-07:00

The final part of my 'Pwning Shorties' series went up on CardRunners today. Don't forget that you can get a CardRunners membership totally 100% scot free by signing up for Truly Free Poker Training and accumulating enough FT points.

Also, here's your Monday fun link:

www.lamebook.com

-BRUECHIPS

I suck almost as bad as MLB umpires

2009-10-09T20:40:00.000-07:00

I've been trying out some 6-max recently, partly just for a change of pace, and also because there are lots of fishies there. I've had a few decent seshes, but unfortunately it did not go well at all for me tonight. Probably has something to do with me running like poo in life over the last 24 hours. Anyway my sesh had plenty of bad beats, some cooler situations, a couple bad calls, and a couple of spots where I thought somebody would fold a weak hand and they didn't. Oh well. You'll find a lot more just completely random and spewy play at 6-max than you will at full ring. I guess it's where the aggro donkeys go to have fun. For instance, there was this hand:

Full Tilt Poker $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 5 players - http://www.thehandconverter.com/hands/319888

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BTN: $33.70

SB: $57.10

Hero (BB): $50.00

UTG: $67.95

CO: $43.05

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is BB with 9h As

2 folds, BTN calls $0.50, SB calls $0.25, Hero raises to $2.50, BTN calls $2, 1 fold

Flop: ($5.50) Ah 3c 8h (2 players)

Hero bets $3.50, BTN raises to $7, Hero calls $3.50 (Probably not planning on folding this hand since I don't see what hand he'd limp the button with that now beats me...maybe A3 or 33 sometimes, but that's not too many hands. No reason to shove though, might as well allow him to continue to bluff if that's what he's in the mood to do.)

Turn: ($19.50) 2h (2 players)

Hero checks, BTN bets $24.20 all in, Hero calls $24.20 (Not the best turn card, but usually people don't min raise flops with draws, so I wasn't that worried about it...plus I've got the 9h anyway which gives me some outs if he has a 7-high flush or lower, or if he does have aces up.)

River: ($67.90) 4d (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $67.90

BTN shows 9d 6s (Ace Nine high)

Hero shows 9h As (a pair of Aces)

Hero wins $64.90

(Rake: $3.00)

Anyway back to the title of the post...even in the abyss of my deepest tilt sessions, I don't think I make as many mistakes as umpires have made during the playoffs so far. How many just blatantly obvious missed calls have we had so far? There were two in the opening game of the Phillies series, both favoring the home team (runner tagging up on a fly ball, and later Cliff Lee not being called out after being picked off at second). There was one in the Sox game last night, which also favored the home team (Youkilis coming down with a throw at first base, clearly tagging the bag with the runner being out by 5 feet, called safe). There was one, probably the most egregious of all, in the Yankees/Twins game tonight when a Joe Mauer double was inexplicably called foul, again favoring the home team. Terrible. And these are just the ones I've seen. And all of them I could call immediately, in real time, watching on my TV. I'm sympathetic to the fact that it's a difficult job, and it's easy to second-guess once you've seen slow motion replays from 3 angles. But ALL of those calls were immediately obvious to anyone watching in real time, even with much a much worse view than the umps on the field had. It's enough to make you want replay available for more situations. Hopefully it won't be a continuing issue that plagues the rest of the postseason.

-BRUECHIPS

Brack is Beautiful (Part 21)

2009-10-07T13:28:00.000-07:00

Can't really claim I played this hand particularly well, just counted on the power of spades to get me through it:

Full Tilt Poker $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em - 8 players - http://www.thehandconverter.com/hands/316714

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

MP1: $100.15

MP2: $101.50

CO: $100.00

BTN: $109.95

SB: $79.00

BB: $112.00

UTG: $197.00

Hero (UTG+1): $166.85

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is UTG+1 with As Ts

1 fold, Hero raises to $3.50, MP1 calls $3.50, MP2 calls $3.50, 1 fold, BTN calls $3.50, 1 fold, BB calls $2.50 (A little bit of a loose open for sure, but it's spades...)

Flop: ($18.00) 8s 2h 4s (5 players)

BB checks, Hero bets $13, MP1 folds, MP2 folds, BTN folds, BB raises to $46, Hero raises to $163.35 all in, BB calls $62.50 all in (5-way pot not exactly what I was looking for, but I manage to frop the nut frush draw and bet into the field. Maybe a check here is better with so many people involved. I get a free card pretty often, can sometimes check/raise to take it down while winning more dead money, etc....anyway, this time I bet, got raised, and shoved it in. When the BB raises, he definitely has a set a huge % of the time, but I thought he'd have worse draws often enough for me to get it in. Lower spades, maybe the occasional 6h5h or 5h3h, I think he'd play those similarly. If I had a lower spade draw like JsTs or something I'd be instafolding...anyway he did indeed have bottom set, but the river gave me the inevitable flush.)

Turn: ($235.00) Td (2 players - 2 are all in)

River: ($235.00) Ks (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $235.00

BB shows 2d 2c (three of a kind, Twos)

Hero shows As Ts (a flush, Ace high)

Hero wins $232.00

(Rake: $3.00)

-BRUECHIPS

Miscrick FTW

2009-10-03T15:21:00.000-07:00

Maybe he calls off a shove on the end anyway, but my misclick min-bet somehow induced this moron to shove on the river:

Full Tilt Poker $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em - 8 players - http://www.thehandconverter.com/hands/311915

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

MP2: $53.65

CO: $23.15

BTN: $107.30

SB: $26.00

BB: $123.30

Hero (UTG): $145.80

UTG+1: $48.00

MP1: $22.00

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is UTG with 7d 7c

Hero raises to $3.50, 2 folds, MP2 calls $3.50, 3 folds, BB calls $2.50

Flop: ($11.00) 6c 7s Ad (3 players)

BB checks, Hero bets $8, MP2 calls $8, BB folds (Frop set, bet dry A-high frop as I arways wourd)

Turn: ($27.00) Qs (2 players)

Hero bets $16, MP2 calls $16 (Smallish turn bet - could def be even smaller - to make sure an ace doesn't fold and sets up irresistable pot odds for the river shove)

River: ($59.00) 8c (2 players)

Hero bets $1, MP2 raises to $26.15 all in, Hero calls $25.15 (Obviously meant to just shove but I clicked the 'Bet' button before I realized that my click on the 'Pot' button had missed...so I end up betting just the minimum, but luckily even that doesn't keep this donkey from stacking himself. Maybe he thinks I'll fold some random queen?)

Final Pot: $111.30

MP2 shows Jd Jc (a pair of Jacks)

Hero shows 7d 7c (three of a kind, Sevens)

Hero wins $108.30

(Rake: $3.00)

-BRUECHIPS

Brack is Beautiful (Part 20)

2009-10-02T07:50:00.000-07:00

Hand played against a very aggro re-raiser from the brinds:

Full Tilt Poker $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players - http://www.thehandconverter.com/hands/310307

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

UTG: $224.45

MP: $110.75

Hero (CO): $100.00

BTN: $90.00

SB: $104.00

BB: $95.25

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is CO with 4s As

2 folds, Hero raises to $3.50, 1 fold, SB raises to $9, 1 fold, Hero calls $5.50 (Spades, so obviousry I'm seeing a frop...in addition, this player was re-raising from the brinds quite a bit, so I kinda wanted to see a frop in position. 4b-ing is an option too, but getting 5b bruffed is def a possibility, and I trust my ability to make good decisions post-frop.)

Flop: ($19.00) 3h 2d 5s (2 players)

SB bets $10, Hero raises to $27, SB raises to $95 all in, Hero calls $64 all in (Also, spades pretty much guaranteed to frop at REAST the second nuts. I think his bet/3b is pretty spewy. This is one of the crappier boards to c-bet, and there's not much that I would be raise/folding on this board. Maybe he thinks that I will raise/fold AT or 66 or something I don't know. More likely he's just aware that he has re-raised a bunch from the blinds, and therefore thinks that I am going to be fighting back on any frop, and therefore has just decided he's never folding. It's good to be aware of those dynamics, but you still have to look at your hand and the board and do a little thinking. If this frop were 6h2s2d, then I think his play would be a lot better.)

Turn: ($201.00) 8h (2 players - 2 are all in)

River: ($201.00) Td (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $201.00

Hero shows 4s As (a straight, Five high)

SB shows Kc Qh (King Queen high)

Hero wins $198.00

(Rake: $3.00)

-BRUECHIPS

THIN! (Part 16)

2009-09-29T06:55:00.000-07:00

Standard shorty-pwning thin-ness:

Full Tilt Poker $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em - 8 players - http://www.thehandconverter.com/hands/302786

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

UTG+1: $47.25

MP1: $109.05

MP2: $60.75

CO: $15.50

BTN: $18.85

Hero (SB): $100.00

BB: $29.80

UTG: $123.95

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is SB with Kc Jc

1 fold, UTG+1 calls $1, 3 folds, BTN raises to $5, Hero raises to $17, 2 folds, BTN calls $12 (Button is a shortstacker trying to punish an EP limper...how far behind could KJs possibly be? They ARE brack cards...)

Flop: ($36.00) 4s 7s 3d (2 players)

Hero bets $3, BTN calls $1.85 all in (Not exactly the nut frop for KcJc, but I'll put in his rast $2...as a sick varue bet!)

Turn: ($39.70) 8h (2 players - 1 is all in)

River: ($39.70) As (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $39.70

BTN shows Kh Th (Ace King high)

Hero shows Kc Jc (Ace King high)

Hero wins $37.75

(Rake: $1.95)

Red cards? Way behind....

-BRUECHIPS

A Case of the Mondays (Part 6)

2009-09-28T00:05:00.000-07:00

An homage to the virtues of objective analysis:

http://deadspin.com/5360440/jesus-is-the-derek-jeter-of-christianity

-BRUECHIPS

Untitled

2009-09-23T07:00:00.000-07:00

So I was away from the game for about two weeks at the beginning of the month...good to take a break from things, relax, and enjoy the freedom and flexibility of being a poker player :) Went on a travel tear up to NYC, LA, Niagara Falls, Toronto, Chicago, Knoxville, and back home. Surprisingly despite bringing my laptop along for the trip...I didn't feel the urge to fire up Full Tilt.

After I came back earlier this week, I was INSTA ready to fire things up and pick up where I left off. However I definitely hit a few speedbumps in my return to the tables...which has become a pretty consistent theme when I take extended breaks. The most difficult about my game/style is striking a balance between LAG/MANIAC. IMO there is a razor thin line between the two styles and when my game starts veering towards the latter - 3 words come to mind. FML. My variance goes through the roof and then my game suffers in general. There are also alot of THIN decisions that I find myself being on the wrong side of...and if I were in the grove, I'm more confident that I would make the correct decisions.

Here's to pwning donkeys and bringing your A game!

-BRACKCHIPS

Vegas Trip Report

2009-09-21T11:30:00.001-07:00

Got back from Vegas last night - all in all, a very solid weekend. Boxing, gambling...only downside: a lot of us got sick (cold sick, not drunk sick), including me. All in all I managed to end up a slight winner on the weekend, up ~$400 from poker, down $100 from boxing and $150 from blackjack. Fawking blackjack.

As usual, we did all our gambling downtown (except for the boxing bets we placed at the MGM Sportsbook). This gives you great value at the brackjack table (if you get lucky, you can find $5 at Las Vegas Club's "Fetish Pit", which involves hot brackjack dealers dressed up in various uniforms (e.g., nurse, biker babe, etc.), and some scantily clad female dancing on a pole in the middle. Unfortunately it doesn't offer the best poker games - The Golden Nugget only had $1/$2 hold 'em, and while the game was obviously pretty soft, I'd imagine the $2/$5 games on the strip were much juicier.

In any case, I did play the $1/$2 games at the Nugget for a few hours. It really couldn't be any more different than the online game. Probably the most notable hand of the weekend happened in the first half hour or so of my Friday night sesh. I had been playing fairly tight while the whole table was seeing 6-way limped flops, etc.. Anyway finally I picked up 4c3c on the button and raised up a couple of limpers to $15. A couple of them called and we saw a flop which was...arr crubs!! I think it was Qc8c5c. They check to me and I bet $30, only to be min check/raised by a lady with a bunch of the money on the table (like probably $800), which I thought might be an indication that she has some clue. Enough of a clue that if I 3-bet, she'll fold everything, and if I call she'll put me on a single club or a scare one-pair and shove the turn. So I kind of played with my chips for a while and finally called. The turn paired the 8 and she shoved. I wasn't crazy about the board pairing since she could have 55 or Q8, maybe even 85, but I'm obviously not folding. I made the call and she showed a single queen, saying she didn't have a club. She just mucked her other card as the river came a 5h. Then she went on for about 5 minutes about how it was so hard for her to put me in 4c3c. I'm like...lady...it's not the 4 and the 3 that matter. It's the crub and the crub! If you don't want to put me on 4c3c, put me on AcJc and don't overplay your Q! All of that was in my head of course...I just told her it was a tough hand and stacked the chips.

The boxing match Saturday night was definitely well worth the trip. It wasn't a sold out show, so we moved down and ended up with seats significantly better than the ones we paid for. Which was the other side of the bad part of it not being a sellout, which was that we could only get half price for the extra ticket we had. So we basically ended up with 5 $600 seats for the price of 5.5 $300 seats. Not too bad. The Katsidis-Escobedo undercard was, as anticipated, the highest-action fight of the night.

But Floyd Mayweather was the undisputed star of the show. Say what you will about Floyd (and after some of the things he said leading up to the fight, you'd be justified to say he's an idiot), on Saturday night you got to see an all-time great at the peak of his powers. It was the kind of performance that I will put with getting to see Jordan play for the Bulls, and getting to see Pedro pitch for the Red Sox, in the category of truly spectacular athletes I have gotten to see in person. Sure, Floyd did have a size advantage (although according to the ESPN measurements, Marquez has a longer reach than Floyd). But if you made a list of all the fighters in the world that could take the fight at 147 lbs (Justin and I tried to do this), you'd be hard-pressed come up with 10 that would be liver dogs than JMM. Here are the ones I can think of (no particular order):

Definites:

1. Pacquiao
2. Cotto
3. Mosley
4. Paul Williams
5. Andre Berto
6. Josh Clottey

Maybes:

1. Tim Bradley
2. Devon Alexander
3. Margarito
4. Luis Collazo

I don't think you can really make a case for anyone else, although if you want to, feel free. I haven't seen Sergei Dzindziruk fight, nor do I know if he could make 147, so maybe him. I don't think Sergio Martinez could safely make 147. Even putting Paul Williams on the list is questionable. Among the guys I've listed here, Clottey, Collazo, Bradley, Alexander, and Williams are complete non-starters because they can't bring any fans to the table and therefore don't offer Mayweather as big a paycheck for a fight. That leaves Mosley, Cotto, Pac-Man, Margarito, and Berto. Throw out Margarito because he's still not even licensed to fight in the US. That leaves four feasible guys that Mayweather could have picked that would have been tougher fights for his comeback, two of which (Cotto and Pacquiao) are fighting in November, a fight whose winner Floyd will probably face next year in a megafight. So just keep that in mind when you hear people talk about Floyd cherry-picking opponents. Sure, he could have come back against Mosley, a much tougher fight for probably not much more money than he made vs. Marquez. But it's not like Marquez is some tomato can. He's ranked #2 pound-for-pound in the world, has gone toe-to-toe with Pacquiao twice in fights that many thought he won. Even coming up in weight, he has to be considered among the top 10-15 people in the world for Mayweather to face.

And Floyd completely dominated him. Totally and absolutely. Watch any other Marquez fights and then compare it to this one. Watch his fights against Pacquiao, or against Juan Diaz or Joel Casamayor. I have seen all those fights and can tell you that Marquez deserved every bit of his #2 p4p status. He is a very accurate combination puncher and a skilled and experienced boxer. Floyd made him look like an amateur. Floyd stood right in front of him as Marquez threw whiffing combinations. Floyd landed jab after jab and peppered Marquez with counter right hands and left hooks. He landed 290/493 of his punches for 59%. Marquez landed 69 of 583 for 12 percent. Of course the weight difference helped Floyd, but it's not as if they were trading bombs all night and Floyd's power and chin were the difference.

Marquez showed great heart to make it the whole 12, although some of that has to be attributed to Floyd not really going all-out to get the KO. I had bet the late-round KO, so of course I was disappointed that didn't happen.

It's OK to be frustrated with Floyd for not fighting Mosley and for not trying harder to KO Marquez. But at the same time, you can't take anything away from his boxing skill. He's the #1 p4p fighter in the world, and he should be considered a significant favorite in any fight he takes next, whether it be Pacquiao, Cotto, or Mosley. If he wants to be considered a true top 20 all-time pound-for-pound fighter in the conversation with Sugar Ray Leonard, for instance, he'll have to take those fights and win them. If not, he's merely the greatest fighter in the game today, and a wonder to watch.

-BRUECHIPS

A Case of the Mondays (Part 5)

2009-09-21T06:39:00.000-07:00

Enjoy.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xaf03z_dating-montage_creation

-BRUECHIPS

Vegas Here I Come!

2009-09-17T16:27:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow morning I'll be up early driving out to Vegas for the Mayweather/Marquez fight. I'm really looking forward to it - should be a great fight in the main event, with a couple of very nice undercards. Anybody else going to be in Vegas for the fight? I definitely encourage all SpritPot readers to get the PPV or watch the card at your local movie theater.

I'm sure I will try and hit the tables at some point, but I'll be with a group of guys so not sure when I'll be able to negotiate a few hours away from the crew to pwn some live donkeys. More likely there will be hours and hours of low stakes brackjack with the free drinks flowing like wine.

-BRUECHIPS

P.S.: Anybody watching the PAD cash game this week and last? Did you need further conclusive evidence that Howard Lederer is a donk/durrrr is a beast?

Turn OBFV

2009-09-16T11:08:00.000-07:00

It's been a middling run at the tables for me recently but every once in a while I still play a hand well. I think this was one of them:

Full Tilt Poker $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players - http://www.thehandconverter.com/hands/285085

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BTN: $120.05

SB: $198.05

Hero (BB): $113.00

UTG: $178.65

UTG+1: $68.55

UTG+2: $135.75

MP1: $20.30

MP2: $49.00

CO: $37.85

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BB with 5h 4h

4 folds, MP2 calls $1, 3 folds, Hero checks

Flop: ($2.50) 3h Th Kh (2 players)

Hero bets $2.50, MP2 calls $2.50 (Frop a frush...red cards though. Generally I like to lead in these spots because it's hard to get much value out of a check/raise, often it gets checked through, and since it's a limped pot, I have to start building it now to get his stack. Also if another heart comes my hand kinda sucks.)

Turn: ($7.50) Jd (2 players)

Hero bets $14, MP2 calls $14 (Here's the interesting decision. With the Jd on the turn, I think his calling range is very inelastic to my bet size. That is, if he's gonna call, it doesn't matter what I bet. And there are a lot of hands that he's gonna not want to fold, like any Ah, any Qh, KQ, QJ, JT, etc....so a big bet gets called just as often as a small bet, and it sets up a pot-sized river shove.)

River: ($35.50) 9d (2 players)

Hero bets $35.50, MP2 calls $31.50 all in (BOOM goes the dynamite!)

Final Pot: $98.50

Hero shows 5h 4h (a flush, King high)

MP2 mucks Qs Ks (Huge suckout by me, obv...he had SPADES!!!)

Hero wins $95.50

(Rake: $3.00)

-BRUECHIPS

New CR Vid Today

2009-09-14T16:50:00.000-07:00

My new CardRunners video is up today. It's the first video in a five-part series about combatting shortstackers. So there will be a video every Monday for the next five weeks. Apologies again to those who don't have a CR membership. But if you do, please give it a look and leave a comment and rating letting me know what you think.

-BRUECHIPS

A Case of the Mondays (Part 4)

2009-09-14T06:13:00.000-07:00

My favorite standup comedian...enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG4f9zR5yzY

-BRUECHIPS

Back from Vacation!

2009-09-11T09:45:00.000-07:00

Just got back from NY. A friend of mine got married last weekend upstate, so we scheduled a few days in the city around it. Does anything beat the Big Apple? I've been all over the world, and I'm gonna go with a no. For its energy, dynamism, intelligence, rapacity, and beauty, I think you just can't beat it.

We saw a couple of Broadway shows, the best of which was God of Carnage. Jeff Daniels and James Gandolfini in a witty comedy involving a whole bunch of power plays/marriage commentary. Good stuff.

Wednesday night we ate at one of the better restaurants I've ever been to, Eleven Madison Park. I made the reservation about a month ago after reading a glowing NYT review, and it was well worth it. It may seem crazy to call an $88 Prix Fixe dinner a bargain, but it really is.

Anyway, I'm back in town now, with a lot of work to do. Gotta get back to pwning the tables, hopefully it'll be a good weekend!

-BRUECHIPS

Yer Gonna Rove My Nuts! (Part 10)

2009-09-01T01:54:00.000-07:00

Not much comment on this one...just your standard call 3b/OOP float c-bet with gutter for 1/2 your stack/shove turn...

Full Tilt Poker $50.00 No Limit Hold'em - 8 players - http://www.thehandconverter.com/hands/260173

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

UTG: $8.50

UTG+1: $63.35

MP1: $92.05

MP2: $22.30

CO: $62.70

BTN: $33.40

SB: $47.75

Hero (BB): $50.75

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is BB with Ah Ac

1 fold, UTG+1 raises to $2, 4 folds, SB calls $1.75, Hero raises to $8.50, 1 fold, SB calls $6.50

Flop: ($19.00) 5h Jd 9h (2 players)

SB checks, Hero bets $14.00, SB calls $14

Turn: ($47.00) 7c (2 players)

SB bets $25.25, Hero calls $25.25

River: ($97.50) Js (2 players)

Final Pot: $97.50

SB shows Td 7d

Hero shows Ah Ac

Hero wins $94.50

(Rake: $3.00)

-BRUECHIPS

A case of the Mondays (Part 3)

2009-08-30T20:53:00.000-07:00

http://tinyurl.com/nnev6q

-BRACKCHIPS

Brack is Beautiful (Part 19), ATM FTW!

2009-08-28T06:00:00.000-07:00

True HH, Bruechips was actually railing me at the time...no commentary/analysis necessary, this one plays itself out.

Full Tilt Poker $3/$6 No Limit Hold'em - 7 players - http://www.thehandconverter.com/hands/252376

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

UTG: $600.00

UTG+1: $652.00

MP: $1544.60

CO: $93.00

BTN: $1008.00

SB: $2330.15

Hero (BB): $858.00

Pre Flop: ($9.00) Hero is BB with Ts Ks

2 folds, MP raises to $24, 3 folds, Hero calls $18

Flop: ($51.00) 2s 9s Qh (2 players)

Hero checks, MP bets $24, Hero calls $24

Turn: ($99.00) 8s (2 players)

Hero checks, MP bets $99, Hero raises to $330, MP calls $231

River: ($759.00) 7s (2 players)

Hero bets $480 all in, MP calls $480

Final Pot: $1719.00

MP mucks Jh 7c

Hero shows Ts Ks (a flush, King high)

Hero wins $1716.00

(Rake: $3.00)

-BRACKCHIPS

BTW, how often is it that you frop no pair and have your virrain drawing that thin, even though he shares no cards with you? 93% equity on the frop with K-high vs. J-high ROR.

-BRUECHIPS

Yer Gonna Rove My Nuts! (Part 9)

2009-08-26T05:54:00.000-07:00

Despite this virrain being on the nitty side, I managed to hoodwink him into committing himself drawing pretty thin:

Full Tilt Poker $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 8 players - http://www.thehandconverter.com/hands/250963

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

MP2: $71.25

CO: $9.25

BTN: $52.30

Hero (SB): $54.90

BB: $20.00

UTG: $50.00

UTG+1: $70.90

MP1: $11.25

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is SB with Ad Ah

5 folds, BTN raises to $1.75, Hero raises to $6.50, 1 fold, BTN calls $4.75

Flop: ($13.50) 2s Qs 9c (2 players)

Hero bets $9, BTN calls $9

Turn: ($31.50) 6c (2 players) (Pretty standard up to this point with me 3-betting the nuts preflop and c-betting a Q-high draw-y frop. I think the turn is a good spot to check/raise all-in because 1) Since the board has draws on it, a lot of the times that I'm checking this turn I'm giving up and folding, 2) I don't think he'll call 3 streets with less than a Q, so I don't lose much value by him checking back, say, JJ 3) If he has some sort of draw or float, he'll probably bet the turn if I check, so I don't worry too much about giving a free card.)

Hero checks, BTN bets $27.50, Hero raises to $39.40 all in, BTN calls $9.30 all in

River: ($105.10) 3c (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $105.10

BTN shows 8h 7h (Queen Nine high)

Hero shows Ad Ah (a pair of Aces)

Hero wins $102.10

Did not expect him to peel the frop THAT light!! He did pick up an open-ender on the turn, but peeling the frop with 8-high no draw is pretty roose. As I said, I am folding a lot of the time I check this turn so it's not terrible terrible...but I don't think I check it THAT often - I will be double barreling it quite a bit. I definitely got furr varue out of that part of his range by checking here though, and I don't think I rose too much varue when he has a decent hand.

-BRUECHIPS

A case of the Mondays (Part 2)

2009-08-24T06:00:00.000-07:00

Take a look!

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1918771

My Play with the TT

2009-08-18T06:54:00.000-07:00

Thanks to all the commenters on my last post. I think it's super close between folding and shoving. Calling and then folding at some point seems pretty spewy, as does calling and then calling a 4b shove from MP...4-betting and then folding is even worse. I think 4-bet/calling is essentially the same as shoving, so I'm not going to differentiate between the two in my analysis.

The first step is making a guess at the shorty's range. Given that MP opens pretty loose and CO is a donk with 40 bbs, it's an awesome spot for him to squeeze. I'd make his range something like 66+, AT+, although I wouldn't be surprised if he showed up with lower pp's, lower aces, and the occasional KQ/KJ. Against that range I have 54.8% equity. If I shove and get heads up with the shorty and win, then I win (22.2 + 7 + 1.5)*.9 = 27.63 (the .9 is there to account for the rake). If I lose, then I lose 22.2. So my EV given that I get HU with the shorty is:

.548*27.63 - .452*22.2 = 5.1.

So that would be clearly good, to get HU with the shorty. The issue is how often that happens, and how much equity I have when MP calls my shove. I'd estimate his range for calling my shove to be pretty much exactly JJ+ and AK, with some possibility of him folding JJ. But say he sticks around with JJ. Then in a 3-way pot, my TT has 26.3% equity. That is, 26.3% of the time, I win the whole thing. In this case I win 102.6 + 3.5 + 22.2 + 1.5 - 3 (the rake) = 126.8. Then sometimes I win the side but not the main (when I beat MP but the shorty beats me). The shorty wins 26% of the time, so maybe 10% of the time I win the side but not the main (I don't know how to get PS to do this, so it's a well-informed guess). In this case I win 80.4 - 22.2 = 58.2. If I lose both, I lose 102.2. So given that MP calls, my expected profit is:

.263*126.8 + .1*58.2 - .637*102.6 = -26.2

So that's obviously bad. But it doesn't happen all the time! AK and JJ+ represent about 3.2% of all hands. They're maybe a LITTLE bit less likely given that the shorty has shoved (more likely to have some high cards), and also that the CO called (more likely to be QJo than 56o, for instance). But then I have TT, and not T's are in his calling range. On net, I don't think I can make too many conclusions based on card removal. But he's calling about 3% of his range. How often does he have to fold for me to show a profit? In other words, what's the solution to this equation:

5.1*f - (1-f)*26.2 > 0

Answer: f > .837. So if he's calling 3%, he has to be opening .03/(1-.837) = 18.4% for me to show a profit. And I'm pretty sure that's the case. Folded to him in the hijack, he's 19/15 overall...I'd guess he's raising something like 20-25% from there. But it's razor thin. If the shortstack were a bit tighter, for instance, I'd need more folds from MP and the play wouldn't be profitable anymore. I've also just assumed that CO will fold every time, which is probably a fair assumption, but if he slowplays AA or KK a significant % of the time that might swing the play to -EV. In any case, I did shove and MP used almost his entire time bank before calling with JJ. The shorty had AK and the board bricked off. So, in summary, it's quite close and I couldn't fault a fold, but shoving probably slightly better.

-BRUECHIPS

NEW SERIES - A case of the Mondays (Part 1)

2009-08-16T16:21:00.000-07:00

I'm a bit bored with poker content right now so I figured I'd start up a new non poker series...

This new series is going to be dedicated to giving everyone coming back to work after the weekend a good laugh. Each week I will try and dig up a new and entertaining clip and post it here.

We'll start the series with George Brett. It's not baseball related...so you will just have to watch!

Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6403VV2oyu0

-BRACKCHIPS

Another WWYD...

2009-08-15T15:27:00.001-07:00

Original raiser is 19/15 or so, not too much info on anybody else in the hand...Also note that it's 7-handed, so MP is also the hijack:

Full Tilt p0ker $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em - 7 players - http://www.thehandconverter.com/hands/233057
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

UTG+1: $23.65
MP: $128.50
CO: $41.50
BTN: $22.20
SB: $85.50
Hero (BB): $102.60
UTG: $132.75

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BB with Td Th
2 folds, MP raises to $3.50, CO calls $3.50, BTN raises to $22.20 all in, 1 fold, Hero ???

-BRUECHIPS

Part 2 of CR Vid Going Up Today...

2009-08-12T22:52:00.001-07:00

CardRunners is publishing the second part of my game theory series today. As always, please go forth and watch and comment if you have a CR membership (attainable at no cost through truly free poker training). For readers who are not CR members, you're missing out (on a lot of awesome CR content, not just my vids)!

-BRUECHIPS

Blogger alternative suggestions PLEASE

2009-08-10T08:58:00.000-07:00

Spritpot has been utirizing Brogger since the inception of our blog 18 months ago. Its been a rocky relationship with Brogger...we both agree that their software is the ABSOLUTE NUT low. Its terrible - full of bugs, restrictions, and all kinds of assorted gheyness.

If you have any suggestions for alternative blogging software solutions...please comment! Also - suggestions with regards to transferring our current blog to a new program would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
-BRACKCHIPS

Thanks for Not Stacking Me, Bro! (Part 18)

2009-08-10T08:26:00.000-07:00

Long time no blog…Bruechips has been flat out DOMINATING the spritpot airwaves. I took almost a month off the game (the longest I have ever taken off) after a gross-ish June - the RNG just left me helpless. I played a mix of NLHE games ranging from my standard 2/4 game all the way up to a few hands of 25/50 cap and ended up getting tuned up by the RNG to the equivilant of 40 bi’s in my normal 400 game. Granted some of it was at higher stakes…but it just left a bitter taste in my mouth (that’s what she said!).

Off the whine train and onto our regularly sked’d program…poker!!!

Full Tilt Poker $2/$4 No Limit Hold'em - 7 players - http://www.thehandconverter.com/hands/226596

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

CO: $410.00

BTN: $561.00

SB: $559.50

Hero (BB): $803.00

UTG: $260.10

UTG+1: $456.00

MP: $180.00

Pre Flop: ($6.00) Hero is BB with 7c 7s

4 folds, BTN raises to $15, 1 fold, Hero requests TIME, Hero calls $11

(this is pretty standard for me…although an argument could be made for a 3b. 77 is towards the top of my flatting range vs a CO open. It doesn’t play fantasticly postfrop oop, but I knew my villain to be somewhat passive and felt like I could wrestle the pot away in most spots. If there was another caller I’d be more inclined to sqeeze.)

Flop: ($32.00) 7d 5c Jc (2 players)

Hero bets $24, BTN calls $24

(Can you say nuts? If he has Jacks then FML…but I would never consider folding here for 100bbs. Considering my opponent is so passive and does not c-bet enough…its time to put some money in the pot, there are a multiple draws out…and I will certainly get called by ANY one pair hand.)

Turn: ($80.00) 6d (2 players)

Hero bets $64, BTN calls $64

(89 compretes here but I’m making another VB, I figure he has a one pair type hand at best…when he does not raise here I’m quite confident that my hand is best).

River: ($208.00) 8s (2 players)

Hero bets $144, BTN calls $144

(this decision actually was not at close as it looks. Granted there is a one liner straight out there…but I STILL have him on a one pair hand, and my hand does not look like particularly strong. Honestly in retrospect its tough for me to figure out what I was repping here, its quite rare when I call an open oop and donk the frop, turn, and river. I think he still calls my river bet with any one pair hand, and letting him check back QQ+, Jx, or a 2 pair hand would be pretty ghey.)

Final Pot: $496.00

BTN shows 8d 9c (a straight, Nine high)

Hero shows 7c 7s (three of a kind, Sevens)

BTN wins $493.00

(well he shows up with the second nuts, ROR! I flop the second nuts, he ends up with the second nuts and I loses a TON of value. Clearly he must have had me on 9T not to raise that river, ROR. I insta stack off on the turn without HESITATION…and its very thin regarding calling a river raise.)

-BRACKCHIPS

Spam Email Titles

2009-08-08T10:05:00.001-07:00

Despite how annoying they are, I find that spam e-mail titles can be entertaining, creative, even poetic at times. Here are a few I just noticed in my spam folder:

"She prefers your lovestick bigger"

"Your staying pole will be like a magnet for gals!"

"Support for your boning!"

"Discover the secret of your existence!"

What are your favorites?

-BRUECHIPS

Shortstack Shoving in Tournies

2009-08-04T08:36:00.000-07:00

Comments over on Foucault's brog made me want to post about shoving short stacks (or, almost equivalently, shoving when only short stacks are left to act) in donkaments. Say it's folded to you in the small blind, and you're holding some miserable hand like J3o. Let's say it's 200/400 with a 25 chip ante, and you've got 4k chips. Let's consider 4 options: folding, raising to 1100 and folding to a shove, raising to 1100 and calling a shove, and just open shoving yourself.

If you fold, you win zero. Simple enough.

If you open shove, your expected winnings obviously depend on how often your opponent calls you. But so does your equity in the hand when he calls. If he calls more often (bad for you), you win more often when he does call (good for you), since in order to call more often he calls with weaker hands. To give an idea, if he calls with top 10% of hands (as defined by PokerStove), your equity when called is 26%. Against top 20% of hands, it's 29%. Against top 30%, 32%. By the time he's calling 50% of all hands, your equity is 35%. Recall that your expected winnings in the hand are:

f*(400 + 200 + 225) + (1-f)*(-3775*(1-e(f)) + e(f)*4200)

Where f is the % of the time villain folds and e(f) is J3o's equity when called which, as I mentioned earlier, is a function of f. So for instance if villain calls only with top 10% hands, then this equals:

.9*825 + .1*(-3775*.74 + .26*4425) = 572

For f = .8, it's 368, for f=.7, 211, and finally for f=.5 (at which point the villain is calling with hands such as 96s and J7o), it finally goes slightly negative at -79. So for all but the very loosest of strategies by the big blind, shoving will be better than folding.

If you change the stack size to 15 bbs, however (replace 3775 in the above formula with 5775, replace 4425 with 6425), expected profit goes negative around the f=.7 area. Even a quite loose tourney player wouldn't call off 10-15 bbs in the bb much more than 20% of the time, as this is basically all pairs and broadways, so shoving here is probably still better than folding 15 bbs deep (although maybe not if raising from the button...the chances of one of the two players being dealt a top 20% hand is roughly (1 - (4/5)^2) = .36).

In order to evaluate raising a smaller amount and then either calling or folding, we have to guess how often the villain is reshipping on us. We'll just have to assume that he's either raising or folding, since 1) that's what most players do anyway, and 2) it's difficult to model our expected profit when he calls.

So let's say that we're raising to 1100, and our villain is folding f percent of the time, and re-shipping 1-f percent. If we're folding, EV is:

f*825 - (1-f)*875 = 1700*f - 875

For a given f, this generally gives a higher expectation than open shoving. The problem is that you're inducing more re-shoves, or at least calls, when you do this relative to shoving yourself. So, for instance, shoving when f=.8 yields a higher expectation than raise/folding with f=.7. However this is not the case with 15 bbs. Notice that the EV of raise/folding is invariant to stack size, whereas the EV of shoving goes down as stack size goes up, keeping f constant, since you lose more when called. The difference in f (i.e. the additional fold equity) has to be pretty large for shoving to be better than raise/folding with 15 bbs. For instance, with f=.8, shoving yields 213 chips in expectation, whereas raise/folding earns 315 even with an f=.7. Add in the fact that it's a lower variance play, which matters in tournaments, and I think raise/folding is clearly superior to shoving with 15 bbs.

Raise/calling is clearly going to be worse than raise/folding even with 10 bbs since in order to show a profit on the call, we need to be getting 2900/(2900 + 4425) = 40% equity in the pot, which we don't have unless the BB is re-shipping just about any two cards, in which case we should just be open folding anyway. Raise/calling with 15 bbs is even worse.

So in summary, I think 10 bbs is really the right point to start shoving to steal blinds and antes, rather than 15 bbs.

-BRUECHIPS

Night at the Fights

2009-08-02T19:33:00.000-07:00

Last night a couple of buddies and I went to the Bradley/Campbell fight at Agua Caliente casino a couple of hours from San Diego. We felt like high rollers since my friend Justin splurged and got floor tickets for the three of us, which turned out to be an excellent decision. The fights themselves actually turned out to suck pretty hard, since both of the losers in the main two fights (Bradley/Campbell and Witter/Alexander) just quit on their stools between rounds without even getting into that much action. Witter claimed some sort of elbow injury. Campbell quit basically hoping that the cut on his eye would be ruled to be caused by a headbutt (it still might be), resulting in a no contest rather than the certain, yet probably entertaining, loss he was headed towards.

But all was not lost, as we did some serious hob-nobbing before and during the fights, starting with Johnny Bench. That's right, Johnny Fawking Bench. I shook his hand, took a picture with him (see above, for some reason Blogger forces me to put all pics at the beginning of the post), even joked with him for a little bit. The first thing that I noticed was his hands. I have pretty big hands myself, but this dude just has absolute meathooks. He's a couple inches shorter than me, but if felt like shaking hands with Andre The Giant. He also seemed like a really nice guy, taking pictures with anyone who asked.

We also got to sit next to frequent California referee Jack Reese (see above for photo of me and Jack). This guy knows a LOT about boxing. He also was genuinely surprised and honored that we recognized him and knew his name and whatnot. Anyway, he sat next to us throughout the entire TV card and pointed out a lot of stuff to us that we wouldn't have otherwised noticed.

Cris Arreola was there as well. That guy is massive. He's got a date with Klitschko in Staples Center on Sept. 26, there's definitely a good chance I'll be at that one.

We were hoping that Shane Mosley might be there as well, since he shows up at a lot of cards in Southern California, but he wasn't. We saw one guy that we were pretty sure was his dad, but Shane himself did not make an appearance.

Of course after the fights ended early we hit the tables for a little gambling. I sat at a very juicy 3/6 limit table but was pretty card dead and lost $75 in 3-4 hours of playing. Those tables can be frustrating, because the rake is big, and winning a pot without showdown is VERY rare (probably 80% of hands go to showdown, maybe more), so you just have to keep patient and keep paying blinds and rake while you wait. And of course your top pair or whatever will get rivered plenty of the time since it's usually 4-way or something ridiculous the whole way down. But whatever, it was a fun time. We capped it off of course with a trip to Denny's (a boxing tradition for us) on the way home.

All in all, a good night at the fights, even with limited action in the ring. Can't wait until our next boxing trip, which should be Mayweather/Marquez in Vegas.

-BRUECHIPS

Thanks for Not Stacking Me, Bro! (Part 17)

2009-07-30T10:28:00.000-07:00

Ok, so this one makes no sense. I had just lost a big all-in and had 50 chips more than big blind + ante. And I get dealt 85o in the big blind. So of course I'm thinking, fawk, I'll have to get some gross suck-out to win this one...but no, some how it folds around, even with the big stack in the small blind! And this is a KO tourney! Ha! Are the idiots at this table even paying attention??

Full Tilt Poker $12 + $1 KO No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t600/t1200 Blinds + t150 - 6 players - http://www.thehandconverter.com/hands/211438

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

MP: t5645 M = 2.09

CO: t19338 M = 7.16

BTN: t27185 M = 10.07

SB: t53789 M = 19.92

Hero (BB): t1403 M = 0.52

UTG: t9070 M = 3.36

Pre Flop: (t2700) Hero is BB with 8c 5h

5 folds

Final Pot: t2100

Hero wins t2100

-BRUECHIPS

Thank You Poker Gods

2009-07-29T14:32:00.001-07:00

When I fired up some tourneys today and had this happen early on, I thought that the madness would continue today. But fortunately I hung end there and ended up taking down three donk-n-gos (two 90-mans and a 45-man), and scored 4th in another. Of course, I scored some suckouts along the way, as is necessary to take down a tourney of any size. In any case, I have been brought back from the precipice of insanity, which I hope not to revisit anytime soon.

-BRUECHIPS

Edit: Reflection has shown me how irrational my moods are. For some reason if I lose hundreds playing poker while making thousands in the stock market as in the past few days, I am miserable. On the other hand if I pwn the tables for a few hundo but my portfolio drops a few grand like today, I feel good. I guess if it's from poker I feel like it's more my own accomplishment/fault. But still, it's obviously pretty silly.

Book Review: Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters

2009-07-27T18:24:00.000-07:00

Well, since poker has been so unenjoyable recently and it's more fun for me and to write and for you to read about enjoyable things, allow me this non-poker post. When I was in NYC a couple of weeks ago I needed some reading material and so strolled by a nearby bookstore. I ended up buying four books, one of which was Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters by Alan Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa.

The book is a lay-person's summary of the field of evolutionary psychology, which challenges the Standard Social Science Model, which the authors describe (caricature?) as the following:

1) Humans are exceptional in that their behavior is not determined by evolution, but rather by cultural influence, which is orthogonal to evolution.

2) The brain is exceptional within the human body in that its structure is not the result of evolution.

3) Humans are born with a "blank slate" for a brain, which is then written on as the sum total of their experiences, etc..

I've been interested in evolutionary biology in general for a while, and therefore skeptical of this view. I had already read a few interesting books by Steven Pinker which, although they deal mostly with language, argue strongly against the idea of a 'blank slate'.

Miller and Kanazawa describe a number of trends (although some are disputed), some of which aren't very politically correct, but which would be adaptive in the evolutionary sense. The most controversial, and fun to read, parts, regard differences between men and women. It seems like society would like to believe (if the reaction to Larry Summers' comments a few years ago is any measure) that men and women couldn't possibly be different fundamentally. Sure, men are taller and grow hair on their faces, but there couldn't be any fundamental differences in mental capabilities or personality (remember #2, "evolution stops at the neck"). Therefore any differences that do exist must be a result of cultural pressures or stereotypes.

There are two groups of evidence that indicate this is not the case. The first is infant studies. There is significant difference in what boys and girls are interested in as early as 24 hours into their existence. It would be hard to argue that these differences are a result of socialization so early in life. The second is cross-cultural studies. If gender differences were a result of cultural brainwashing, wouldn't there be at least some cultures, if not now then throughout history, that didn't have the same characteristics of men being more aggressive, violent, "structural" in thinking, and women being more nurturing and passive? The reason none exist, or have ever existed as far as the historical record shows, is that biology determines culture - cultures develop that promote these stereotypes because the seeds of these traits are planted in our genes. Why would evolution drive each gender towards these roles?

The variance of male reproductive success is much greater than the variance of female reproductive success. Almost every female has some children, while it's virtually impossible for any female to have more than 15 or 20. Meanwhile, some men may have zero children, while a wildly successful man can have virtually unlimited numbers of children.

From this fact two results follow: one is that men should engage in riskier choices, both genetic gambles and risky, competitive or violent behavior, because the difference between "winning" and "losing" for them is so great, while for women it is relatively small. Two is that women should put more value on men who can improve the survival chances of each child, since each child to her represents a large fraction of the total number of children she could possibly have. She must choose carefully which men she "uses" her eggs on, as she doesn't have many to give. Men should instead value women who have good reproductive characteristics, conducive to the bearing and rearing of children. They should try to have sex with as many women as possible, since sperm is virtually costless to them.

Basically, this is stuff that you already "know". Men like to gamble, fight, and compete. They like women who are young and fit (the waist/hips ratio of .7 is favored by men around the world from many different cultures - the ideal of female beauty is anything but a media invention, but rather a universal determined by reproductive fitness). They are generally more willing than females to have sex with strangers and with many differnet partners. Women are less competitive and more empathetic. They like men who have the ability and willingness to provide for their children. They prefer time to assess a man on these criteria before having sex, and have less desire to have many different sexual partners.

Of course none of this has any moral content. It doesn't mean that girls shouldn't be encouraged to be scientists or that men shouldn't be proud to stay home with their children or that it's alright for men to cheat on their wives or girlfriends. In modern-day life, evolutionary pressures are largely absent. But their effects are still felt in our DNA, and it's silly to pretend they aren't. Improving society without understanding the forces that motivate its individuals is an impossible task.

-BRUECHIPS

I Wish I Could Post About Something Different...

2009-07-26T19:54:00.000-07:00

...(warning: bad beat links) but all that has been happening this weekend is me getting sucked out on by absolute morons in donkfests. There's just nothing I can do about it. I feel completely helpless. Some are just coolers, but mostly these people have absolutely no clue what they were doing. Yet they continue raking in my chips as they get saved by the RNG. I could go on and on and on linking these hands, but not much point. Eff my life. If you are an idiot donkey out there reading this, I hope you eat shit and die.

-BRUECHIPS

Handicapping the Main Event Final Table

2009-07-20T16:29:00.000-07:00

Brackchips and I were discussing what were the odds of Ivey taking down the Main Event this year. Obviously it would be completely sick if he could take it down, as it would just provide more evidence to shove in the face of morons in Congress and elsewhere who insist that poker is a game of chance rather than skill. As if the fact that this is Ivey's FOURTH top-25 Main Event finish since 2002 isn't enough.

So I will definitely be rooting for Phil, a fantastic and entertaining player as well as a pretty cool guy, as far as I know at least. I don't think the odds are that good though. Three reasons:

1) Ivey is a great player, but this is NOT a soft final table. Certainly you'd think Ivey is the best player there, but there are five pros at the table BESIDES Ivey. The other three players are all business/finance types, which means they're probably 1) pretty decent with math and strategic thinking, and 2) not scared money.

2) The delay before the final table almost certainly hurts Ivey. First of all, the other players, particularly the non-pros, will have time to work on their games and learn as much as they can. Ivey plays poker full-time and is more experienced than the other players anyway, so he's less likely to be able to improve much over the next three months. Also, there's more information out there for other players to study about Ivey's game in particular than there is information about how these other pros play that Ivey can look at.

3) Ivey's stack is short. At around 10 million, he'll be sitting around 30 bbs, and with half of the average stack. If all players at the final table were of equal skill, you'd expect an average stack to have a 1/9 shot of winning it all. A 1/2 average stack would also have a 50% chance of doubling, so not accounting for Ivey's skill advantage, he should have about a 1/18 chance of winning. No matter how much better Ivey is than the rest of the table, with 30 bbs, if he gets top pair at some point and it's not the best hand, it'll be hard for him to avoid going broke.

Putting all these things together, I'd give Ivey about a 1 in 9 chance of winning the thing. I have put my money where my mouth is as well, giving my buddy Zach 7:1 odds when he wanted to bet on Ivey. But I'd still be happy to pay out the money, as Ivey is very marketable and I think him winning would be "good for business".

-BRUECHIPS

New CardRunners Video Up Tomorrow

2009-07-15T12:06:00.001-07:00

My next CardRunners video comes out tomorrow, so be on the lookout! It's kind of an 'Intro to Game Theory' with a poker-related example at the end. I'm not sure whether people will be into it or totally uninterested and bored....I guess we'll see. But feel free to check it out and leave a comment telling me what you think and asking any questions you might have.

-BRUECHIPS

Thanks for Not Stacking Me, Bro! (Part 16)

2009-07-12T13:04:00.000-07:00

Heads up at the end of a 90-man KO tourney on FT:

BB: t89354 M = 6.38

Hero (BTN/SB): t180646 M = 12.90

Pre Flop: (t14000) Hero is BTN/SB with 3s 6h

Hero calls t4000, BB checks (Usually I don't limp the SB HU, but I thought this guy was pretty bad post-flop, so I didn't want to lose the opportunity to take a frop in position against him, and he hadn't shoved on my rimps before. So I thought calling was better than folding. Our stack sizes make raise/folding a mistake, I think. The other option would be just shoving, and again I think the stack sizes are bad for that. It's still probably better than folding, but with my chip lead and what I perceived to be a skill advantage, I didn't want to risk him showing up with a decent hand.)

Flop: (t18000) 2c 6s 2s (2 players)

BB checks, Hero bets t12000, BB calls t12000 (Frop top pair, usually the nuts in a HU limped pot. If he had check/raised me, I would absolutely be just insta-getting it in, and getting shown 34/45/K-high all the time. His call was somewhat alarming though...it could be A-high, but you'd think he'd probably shove over my limp with a decent ace prefrop. I would think he'd check/shove spade or straight draws if he wanted to go with him, so the check/call represents a made hand. And what kinds of made hands other than A-high is he calling with?)

Turn: (t42000) 9c (2 players)

BB checks, Hero checks (My thought process above led me to check back this card.)

River: (t42000) Jh (2 players)

BB bets t16000, Hero calls t16000 (He bets 1/3 pot, I'm obviously not folding given the size of the bet and the fact that I have a pair. If he did in fact slowplay a deuce or rivered a J or something, so be it.)

Final Pot: t74000

BB shows 2d Ts (three of a kind, Twos)

Hero mucks 3s 6h

And there you have it, a recipe for fropping trips heads up and extracting the absolute minimum from top pair. I eliminated him to win the tourney a few hands later when I flopped top pair and he check-raised all-in with middle pair. True story.

-BRUECHIPS

New FT Software Update...What the Ghey?

2009-07-09T12:19:00.000-07:00

Oh, let me count the ways I can't stand the new update...at first nothing would work...the bet slider/mouse wheel wouldn't work anymore, the HUD froze after 10 hands, the new cards were harder to read, tables wouldn't pop up when it was my turn anymore...an overall disaster. For some reason I decided to play out my session to get my 200 pts anyway...although a variety of misclicks and timeouts cost me probably $75. Rame.

Now they appear to have fixed some of these things with another update (although tables still don't always pop up), which my desktop was able to download. However on my laptop whenever I click 'OK' to download the new update, the whole program just shuts down. Really, the only reason to play at FT is that you get rakeback and the software is better than PS, or at least most people feel that way. If their software starts to suck, well...that's one less reason. Their support/customer service is legendarily terrible, and their rules/enforcement are often arbitrary and oppressive.

I hope they get this crap worked out soon.

-BRUECHIPS

Update Update: I had to re-download the FTP software on my raptop...kind of a pain, but eventually worked out fine. Tables still do not pop up sometimes when it's my action.

WWYD - My Play

2009-07-08T06:34:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who commented on my last post. I thought it was an interesting hand since every decision I had in the hand was a close one, where I could have easily made a different play. I'll go through my thoughts on earlier streets and then my river play and the results:

Hero (MP2): $150.30

CO: $101.30

BTN: $100.00

SB: $159.50

BB: $93.15

UTG: $100.00

UTG+1: $202.60

UTG+2: $95.55

MP1: $57.40

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is MP2 with Ks Ah

1 fold, UTG+1 raises to $3.50, 2 folds, Hero calls $3.50, 1 fold, BTN calls $3.50, SB calls $3, 1 fold (I do 3-bet here quite a bit, but I have been just calling with AK, especially suited, in position more frequently of late. There are a few reasons I thought this was a good time for that here. First, the UTG+1 raiser is loose and aggressive. He should therefore be raising a good deal of ace-high hands that I dominate, but will often fold them to a re-raise. From these hands I can get pretty good value post-flop if an A flops or we both hit our kicker. I should also be able to extract bets out of bluffing hands on A- or K-high boards since he will feel like he should be able to represent AK, and I shouldn't have that since I just called preflop. Another reason to just call is that I'm 150 bbs deep with him. Even against a loose and aggressive player, I don't think it's profitable to get AK in for 150 bbs. vs. an UTG or UTG+1 raiser. Finally, two of the players left behind me with 100 bbs liked to squeeze. I'd be very happy to 4b over the top of their squeeze if UTG+1 didn't, so I was hoping to induce a 3-b/fold from one of them. Unfortunately that didn't happen, and instead we took a frop 4-handed, which is OK too.)

Flop: ($15.00) 5c Kh Jd (4 players)

SB checks, UTG+1 bets $10, Hero calls $10, BTN folds, SB calls $10 (This is the decision I might change looking back. I could put in a raise right here, but it's such a dry board that it's tempting to call and play pot control. The only draw to really worry about is QT, which the BTN or SB could have...UTG+1, even being LAG, probably doesn't have QTo in his range, but perhaps QTs. However I am giving hands like JT a chance to draw to a 5-outter pretty cheap, and I'm not sure I can get much more value out of a worse one-pair later. But one other advantage of the call is that it allows me to get away cheaper if there's a raise from one of the other two players, which I think would almost always be a hand better than AK. In general - this applies to the preflop call too - when I'm in position, I'm more willing to let hands go longer and delay aggression to later streets when I have more information, rather than try to end a hand early with a bet or raise, which I'm more likely to do out of position. Information accumulates over the course of a hand, usually more to the benefit of the in-position player. But in this case, with one of the players remaining to act having position on me, I think a raise to $27-30 might have been the best play. Still close, though, IMO.)

Turn: ($45.00) 7h (3 players)

SB checks, UTG+1 bets $26, Hero raises to $52, SB folds, UTG+1 calls $26 (This is definitely a weird-ish play from me, not something I would do very often. But I think in the limited number of times that I'd take this line, I'd have JJ or 55 very often, and occasionally even KK. JJ and 55 I'd almost certainly play the same way preflop, KK maybe I'd call 1/4 of the time and re-raise 3/4 of the time. On the flop, I'd slowplay a set pretty often too, for the same reasons mentioned above, with the frop being a very dry one, really with only a broadway draw to worry about. I do it here with AK so as not to let the SB get a look at another cheap card, and potentially to get some value out of KQ/AJ/QQ, although I think often he'd check these on the turn, or draws, with a heart draw now having appeared.)

River: ($149.00) 9c (2 players)

UTG+1 checks, Hero ??? (QT has now gotten there, and there's the outside chance that I have something like QhTh and was monkeying around on the turn, but I don't think either of us is really too worried about the straight. At this point, with his call on the turn, I was pretty sure he had one pair, perhaps with a heart draw that missed. For some of these hands...QQ,AJ,KQ,KhTh, etc...whether I bet or check behind on the river, I'm going to win what's in the pot and nothing else, as I don't think he'll call a shove with those hands very often. The only hands left that will win some share of the pot if I check behind are AK and AA. There are 6 combinations of AK and 3 combinations of AA possible. So really the question for me was if I get called by these hands. There's $149 in the pot and $85 left in my stack. Focusing attention just to the cases where he has AA or AK - again, if he has something weaker I don't think it matters much what I do, and I don't think he's ever stronger, although some commenters suggested he could have JJ or KJ, I think those hands he shoves on the turn - if I check back, I win 1/2 the pot 2/3 of the time, for an EV of 149*(1/2)*(2/3) ~ $50. If I bet, letting f_1 be the chance that he'll fold AK, and f_2 be the chance he'll fold AA, then my EV is (2/3)(f_1*149 + (1-f_1)*(1/2)*149) + (1/3)*(f_2*149 - 85*(1-f_2)) ~ 50*f_1 + (235/3)*f_2 + 65/3. Set equal to 50, the EV of checking back, and you get 50*f_1 + (235/3)*f_2 = 85/3. So if he folds AK 100% of the time and never folds AA, the shove is still very profitable. If he never folds AA, he has to fold AK more than 85/150 = 17/30 for me to show a profit. I thought that was the case, since I could very credibly represent the JJ and 55, as well as perhaps a Jh9h or occasional QhTh thrown in, so I shoved it in. He went into the tank and used quite a bit of his time bank, so I thought for sure we had the same hand and I was freerolling for half the pot...until he finally called with AA! Definitely a bummer to valuetown myself like that, but being that this was the absolute top of his range and he tanked so long before making the call, I still like my play on the river here.)

-BRUECHIPS

WWYD?

2009-07-06T05:47:00.000-07:00

I played this hand over the weekend...I am almost sure that I decided on the right play, but I kinda want to hear from the peanut gallery. Villain 30/20 over 100 or so hands, but seems to be fairly competent...WWYD? I'll save all of my thoughts on the hand until after others have made their comments...

Hero (MP2): $150.30

CO: $101.30

BTN: $100.00

SB: $159.50

BB: $93.15

UTG: $100.00

UTG+1: $202.60

UTG+2: $95.55

MP1: $57.40

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is MP2 with Ks Ah

1 fold, UTG+1 raises to $3.50, 2 folds, Hero calls $3.50, 1 fold, BTN calls $3.50, SB calls $3, 1 fold

Flop: ($15.00) 5c Kh Jd (4 players)

SB checks, UTG+1 bets $10, Hero calls $10, BTN folds, SB calls $10

Turn: ($45.00) 7h (3 players)

SB checks, UTG+1 bets $26, Hero raises to $52, SB folds, UTG+1 calls $26

River: ($149.00) 9c (2 players)

UTG+1 checks, Hero ???

-BRUECHIPS

Yer Gonna Rove My Nuts! (Part 8)

2009-07-03T18:24:00.000-07:00

Dear Spritpot readers,

Sorry for the rack of posts recently - I went to a conference last weekend in DC and headed up to NYC for a few days to catch up with some friends. Not too much time for poker playing and even less time for brog posting. Had a great time though. How does anybody ever go to NYC and NOT enjoy themselves? I've traveled all over the world, and there's really one city that stands out above all others, and it's New York. There's just no place like it. I hope at some point I'll get a chance to live there. Brackchips is also doing some traveling of his own, trying to run down some chicks in Eastern Europe or something.

Anyway I'm back in San Diego now, and I've got this hand to add to my list of hands that confirm my growing belief that AK should pretty much never be folded preflop for 125bb or less, unless you're in EP and get action from some major nits. In this case I'm in late position, and needless to say the player I'm getting action from here wasn't too nitty:

UTG+1: $130.40

MP1: $100.00

MP2: $168.70

CO: $164.60

Hero (BTN): $119.75

SB: $179.15

BB: $213.85

UTG: $200.00

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BTN with Ac Ks

3 folds, MP2 raises to $4, 1 fold, Hero raises to $13.50, SB raises to $179.15 all in, 2 folds, Hero calls $106.25 all in

Flop: ($244.50) 2h 8s 4s

Turn: ($244.50) 7c

River: ($244.50) Kh

Final Pot: $244.50

Hero shows Ac Ks (a pair of Kings)

SB shows Th Jh (King Jack high)

Hero wins $241.50

-BRUECHIPS

Frop 3b'ing

2009-06-23T21:00:00.001-07:00

Long time no post...I've been completely beaten down this month - games are tougher, I'm running like poo, I haven't been as sharp, and confidence is down. Recipe for disasater for sure...ROR. Well the focus of this post is to look at a few hands where I 3b the flop.

Games are becoming increasingly aggro lately - everyone understands c-betting and how profitable it can be...thus people are leveraging their position with raises. Obviously one method for combatting this strategy is to 3b...a strategy that right now is used pretty infrequently. If you are going implement this into your arsenal - you need to think a little deeper.

Check out the two examples...

Full Tilt Poker, $2/$4 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players

BTN: $257.90

SB: $258.80

Hero (BB): $607

UTG: $410

MP: $62.90

CO: $334.90

Pre-Flop: 6s Qh dealt to Hero (BB)

3 folds, BTN calls $4, SB calls $2, Hero checks

(pretty standard x through here with rags, but we have a donk alert with the button limping - stay tuned.)

Flop: ($12) Tc 2d Ks (3 Players)

SB checks, Hero bets $8, BTN raises to $36, SB folds, Hero raises to $70

(ok this is where things get interesting...I opt to lead with the intention of 3b'ing the B bc of his limp - he has a relatively high steal % so him not opening the B eliminates quite a bit of his range. The B goes ahead and raises my lead and I follow through with a min 3b which gets him to insta fold. On this board I can rep a pretty wide range, bottom set, any two pair combo, QJ, and the occasion Kx type hand. If he decides to call the 3b on the frop - I'm bombing the turn unless the QJ draw completes.)

Results: $84 Pot ($3 Rake)

Hero mucked 6s Qh and WON $81 (+$41 NET)

Unfortunately this one did not turn out so well...crashed and burned in an epic fashion.

Full Tilt Poker, $2/$4 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 9 Players

UTG+1: $91.70

UTG+2: $444.10

MP1: $406

MP2: $900

CO: $468

BTN: $450.40

Hero (SB): $402

BB: $400

UTG: $92.70

Pre-Flop: Td 9c dealt to Hero (SB)

7 folds, Hero raises to $12, BB calls $8

(standard open in the CO)

Flop: ($24) Ks 3c Jd (2 Players)

Hero bets $14, BB raises to $42, Hero raises to $104, BB calls $62

(this board is SOOOO dry that when my C bet gets raised by a semi competent regular who propensity to raise more than the fair share of c bets, I feel obligated to put in another bet in order to rep the absolute top of my range - AA, KJ, and sets. It is a bit thin with my gutter ball (which could potentially be no good) but I think I can blow him off Jx, 44-88. The only value raise he is making on this board is with KJ, 33, and the occasional KQ. I am certain he will 3b other value raising combos. QT is the only draw out there...could have that - my 3b is small enough that it is definitely profitable for him to call.)

Turn: ($232) 7c (2 Players)

Hero bets $112, BB calls $112

(sick turn, I open up a double gutter...I had intended to bet the turn regardless - but some added value is nice. I was very close to overbet shoving the turn...but i thought a small bet would be scarier.)

River: ($456) 2h (2 Players)

Hero checks, BB checks

(for some reason, my vagina swells to epic proportions and I can't put the rest in...let's see how things work out for T high? Somehow I convinced myself that he could not fold KQ).

Results: $456 Pot ($3 Rake)

Hero showed Td 9c (King Jack high) and LOST (-$228 NET)

BB showed Qs Th (King Queen high) and WON $453 (+$225 NET)

(Q high outkicks T high for 56 bb's...FML)

When thinking back on this - first off I need to shove that river with T high no matter what. That being said, even if I do get looked up by KQ - SO EFFING WHAT? Gotta think back to my Gbucks equity...which absolutely DESTROYS KQ.

-BRACKCHIPS

Yer Gonna Rove My Nuts! (Part 7)

2009-06-23T20:18:00.000-07:00

Back to the cash games today, feers good...

Hero (CO): $101.50

BTN: $24.80

SB: $44.05

BB: $105.35

UTG: $65.90

UTG+1: $109.90

MP: $100.00

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is CO with Jh Th

2 folds, MP raises to $3, Hero calls $3, 3 folds (This virrain was kind of nitty and the brinds not too aggro, so not too much fear of getting squeezed. 3-betting is OK, too, as I think he'll either fold AQ/AJ or call and then check/fold the frop when he misses. I mix up between raising, carring, and maybe the occasionar ford in this spot.)

Flop: ($7.50) 9c Jd Ts (2 players)

MP bets $5, Hero raises to $15, MP raises to $97 all in, Hero calls $82 (Frop top two, definitery good. I raise the frop because there are a bunch of turn cards that could kill my action if he has an overpair, and maybe he'll think here on the frop that I'm just messing with him and spazz out. When he overbet ships, I'm not super-duper excited, but I'm obviously not folding. I'd estimate most of his range is QQ-99, AQ,QJ, and JT (if he had KQ for the fropped nuts, I don't think he'd 3-b shove), against which I have almost 55% equity.)

Turn: ($201.50) 2h (2 players - 1 is all in)

River: ($201.50) Tc (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $201.50

Hero shows Jh Th (a full house, Tens full of Jacks)

MP shows 9d Td (a full house, Tens full of Nines)

Hero wins $198.50

Bet sizing fail!! This is a classic "I don't want to fold but I also don't want to play the rest of the hand out of position on this gross board" play. I'm pretty sure my range for calling this shove is limited to QQ-99, KQ, JTs, and 87s. His equity against that range is 25%, so pretty crappy. Given the relatively small pot when he shoves, he'd be way better off calling and check/raising a safe turn (non-J/Q/K/8).

-BRUECHIPS

Bleh...Pwnd in the Step 6

2009-06-21T19:16:00.001-07:00

I finally played my Step 6 ticket on Poker Stars, but unfortunately the results were not so good. It was a 12-player tourney which started out with 2 tables of 6. I think I got a little bit of a crappy table draw as just through observation of the other table it seemed like play there was worse. In any case, through the first few levels, I was fairly active, opening often in late position as I normally would at a 6-handed table. I got re-raised a couple of times and had to fold. A couple of other times I re-raised other players' opens and got folds. In general I thought the play was pretty solid.

The first interesting hand I had came when I raised UTG with 88 and got called by the big blind. The flop came 554 with two diamonds and my c-bet got check-raised. Definitely not a great spot, but folding there is way too weak. On the other hand, not much reason to raise. I called and the turn came an offsuit deuce, a pretty big blank. The big blind checked. There was about 1700 chips in the pot, and a little bit more in the big blind's stack. It's pretty close between betting and checking there, I think. I'd like to price out a flush or straight draw if he has it...it's possible he'd fold TT/99. Even if he has random overs, I don't want to give him a free river. But it's also possible he has QQ or a boat and I don't want to stack myself. I ended up deciding on a check. The river came a non-diamond 3, giving a wheel to any hand with an A. He checked again and again I had a close decision, as it's tough for him to call a river shove with an overpair that's better than mine, and I don't think he'd check a boat or rivered straight to me. Finally I checked it back and he showed KQo, so I won that one, getting my stack up to 3750 or so from the starting stack of 3000.

A couple of orbits later, one player had already been eliminated. With blinds at 50/100, I opened to 275 with 99 from the CO, with my stack at around 3200. It folded to the big blind, with a stack about the size of mine, who re-raised to 800. This guy hadn't 3-b me yet, but he had 3-b I think three times at the table thus far. I had folded to a three-bet three times already. It's a pretty thin spot. I could force him to call off more than 2k more, so I certainly think I have fold equity if he is weak. I'd think his calling range is JJ+, AK snap-calling, TT, AQ probably timing down a bit and flipping a coin. The question is how wide his 3-betting range is. With over 1000 chips in the middle already and 33% vs. the snap-calling range, I don't have to be getting a fold that often to show a profit on a shove. I don't think calling is really a viable option 30 bbs deep. If I thought the table was full of donkeys that I could beat handily playing small pots, I would fold, but I decided here I had to go with it...so I shoved and got instacalled by the nuts ROR. I'm still not sure what I think of the play though. 99 is a little bit light to shove with that early. But if I'm folding 99 to a re-raise when I open from the cutoff it's just insanely exploitable as 99 is towards the very top end of my range for opening from that position. Oh well. The guy who stacked me went on to bubble the tourney so...eff that guy ROR.

So anyway, no Vegas for me this year. Thank God. Now I can avoid arr this tourney gheyness and get back to the cash game grind.

-BRUECHIPS

THIN! (Part 15)

2009-06-17T13:48:00.000-07:00

First off, big congrats to Rana on scoring 10th place in the $1500 HORSE event at the WSOP. Of course I'm happy in part because I had a piece of her action, but also I'm just glad for LJ playing well and getting a nice score. Great job, LJ!

On to some thintastic value:

UTG: $35.80

UTG+1: $44.35

MP1: $57.55

MP2: $50.00

CO: $50.00

BTN: $54.05

SB: $105.05

Hero (BB): $50.00

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is BB with Th Ts

1 fold, UTG+1 calls $0.50, 3 folds, BTN raises to $2.50, SB calls $2.25, Hero calls $2, UTG+1 calls $2 (The UTG+1 limper is a donk of the 45/0 variety. The button I didn't have too much info on, but seemed pretty nitty in the small sample I had. 3-betting here is definitely an option, but I decided to play it safe and just call.)

Flop: ($10.00) 7s 8h 6h (4 players)

SB checks, Hero checks, UTG+1 bets $1, BTN raises to $13, SB folds, Hero raises to $47.50 all in, UTG+1 folds, BTN calls $34.50 (Here's where the action happens. I decided from the beginning that I was going to check and make some sort of committing raise, unless it went something like UTG+1 pots and button shoves all-in. But the way the hand played out was perfect for me. I'm not really worried about UTG+1 at all - his min donk-bet is weak and retarded...if he calls, he's as likely to have A7 as 86, which I'm not that far behind anyway. The more relevant player is the button. I think this is a great place to shove because he's almost MORE likely to call me with a weaker hand than a bigger overpair. Stacking off on this board with AA-JJ would be pretty gross. Sets and T9s are just all over my range, as well as monster draws like JhTh or AhTh. But he will call off with 99, AhKh, and AhQh, all of which I beat (70% equity vs. these hands). Of course he could have a set already, but in that case I do have straight, running hearts, and higher set outs. Also, I think he'd be limping 66/77 at least some of the time instead of raising preflop. Even if you put all the sets in his range, vs. 66-99 and AhKh/AhQh, I'm only a slight dog. My other options are to fold...which isn't terrible I guess, but a bit too nitty I believe, and call, which I do think is pretty terrible as I am lost on later streets and so much of the deck is difficult for me, especially if UTG+1 calls too.)

Turn: ($106.00) 8c (2 players - 1 is all in)

River: ($106.00) Ad (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $106.00

BTN shows 9h 9s (two pair, Nines and Eights)

Hero shows Th Ts (two pair, Tens and Eights)

Hero wins $103.00

Ship the thin value! As for his play, I think he played it fine. He's almost definitely value betting vs. the donk, and he can't expect me to show up with a hand that often. And I just happened to have the absolute worst possible hand for him. Against other hands I might be shoving with (say, sets, AhTh,QhTh,JhTh,T9s,87s,67s), he has almost 40% equity.

-BRUECHIPS

Yer Gonna Rove My Nuts! (Part 6), Plus My First CardRunners Video

2009-06-15T01:21:00.000-07:00

My first CardRunners video is now available for download/viewing, so if you're a member of the site, it would be much appreciated if you give it a look. The topic is playing out of position on the river. If you like it or have suggestions, go ahead and leave a comment and rating.

I finally hit a little more of a stride in tournaments over the weekend, getting a couple of pretty good scores in 90-man SNGs and 45-man SNGs. Soon I think I'll be ready to go ahead and play my Step 6 on Stars.

I've talked before about how playing "small ball" often works out well in tourneys, keeping your bet sizes smaller than normal. The obvious advantages are that you lose less when you're bluffing, but you also get called more often by worse hands (although obviously you make less when you are called in that case), and you also induce some spazz-outs some of the time.

MP1: t1485 M = 33

MP2: t1425 M = 31.67

CO: t1455 M = 32.33

BTN: t1500 M = 33.33

Hero (SB): t1755 M = 39

BB: t1500 M = 33.33

UTG: t1380 M = 30.67

UTG+1: t1500 M = 33.33

UTG+2: t1500 M = 33.33

Pre Flop: (t45) Hero is SB with Ks Ah

2 folds, UTG+2 calls t30, 1 fold, MP2 calls t30, CO raises to t90, 1 fold, Hero raises to t270, 3 folds, CO calls t180

Flop: (t630) Jc 9s Kc (2 players)

Hero bets t275, CO raises to t550, Hero raises to t1485 all in, CO calls t635 all in (Nail top pair but on a kind of gross board...given the stack sizes, I'm never folding, but I want to induce as many bruffs as possible by underbetting and hoping he goes nuts with AT,AJ,QJ,JT, or...)

Turn: (t3000) 7c (2 players - 2 are all in)

River: (t3000) 2d (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: t3000

CO shows 8d 9d (a pair of Nines)

Hero shows Ks Ah (a pair of Kings)

Here's one more:

SB: t1335 M = 17.80

BB: t1460 M = 19.47

Hero (UTG): t1365 M = 18.20

UTG+1: t1530 M = 20.40

MP: t6275 M = 83.67

CO: t1260 M = 16.80

BTN: t1730 M = 23.07

Pre Flop: (t75) Hero is UTG with Kh Kd

Hero raises to t150, 4 folds, SB calls t125, 1 fold

Flop: (t350) 8d 4d Ks (2 players)

SB checks, Hero bets t175, SB calls t175 (I could even bet less here, just because I want to keep in the hand - I want him to call me down with 66, A4, etc.)

Turn: (t700) 3c (2 players)

SB checks, Hero bets t350, SB raises to t700, Hero raises to t1040 all in, SB calls t310 all in (Another 1/2 pot bet, whereas in a cash game I'd be betting more, mostly because there would be more money behind that bet in our stacks. Whether because of the sizing or whatever, he decides either middle pair is good or I'll fold pocket jacks...or more likely he just knows he doesn't want to fold and doesn't want to make a decision on the river.)

River: (t2720) Qh (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: t2720

SB shows 8s Ah (a pair of Eights)

Hero shows Kh Kd (three of a kind, Kings)

Hero wins t2720

-BRUECHIPS

Mets Are Frustrating, Big Boxing Match this Weekend

2009-06-12T09:36:00.000-07:00

If you want to add a lot of stress to your life, one way is to become a Mets fan. I'm sitting there watching Wednesday night's game vs. the Phillies. Mike Pelfrey has somehow managed to get through 6 innings and allowed only one run to a potent Phillies lineup. He hasn't exactly been dominating, striking out only 2, allowing a home run to Chase Utley, and gotten lucky with quite a few hard-hit balls right at infielders. Moreover, he gets into some sort of confrontation with Chase Utley at the end of the sixth.

With the Mets up 4-1, and Ryan Howard leading off the 7th, to be followed by Raul Ibanez, it should be COMPLETELY OBVIOUS that Pedro Feliciano, the best lefty in the Mets 'pen, should be starting the 7th on the mound. Howard's career OPS vs. right-handed pitchers is 1.065. Vs. lefties, .770. There is no earthly reason why he should ever be allowed to face a right-handed pitcher from the seventh inning on. Moreover, lefties have an OPS of .553 against Feliciano over his career. Any way you slice it, Feliciano vs. Howard is WAY better than Pelfrey vs. Howard for the Mets.

Of course, Mets manager Jerry Manuel left Pelfrey in, Howard and Ibanez (another left-handed hitter) both got base hits, leading to a big inning for the Phillies. As if to laugh in the faces of Mets fans everywhere, Feliciano started the 8th inning, once the Phillies had already tied the game, and retired Utley, Howard, and Ibanez in order. FML.

I am looking forward to another big sporting event this weekend in New York: Miguel Cotto vs. Joshua Clottey in MSG Saturday night. The fight will be on HBO and is a must-watch for anyone who likes boxing. We've talked about Cotto fights quite a bit in the past here at Spritpot, and it's because he's one of the best fighters out there, puts himself in against top competition, and doesn't shy away from action. He looked fine in his first fight back from his loss (perhaps unfair, as Margarito was later found to be using loaded gloves in his next fight against Shane Mosley) to Margarito, but against overmatched competition. Clottey will definitely provide a true test of whether Cotto can regain his previous form.

-BRUECHIPS

Shock and Awe

2009-06-10T01:39:00.001-07:00

The title of this post is pretty much how I feel after witnessing the cesspool of idiocy that is online tournament poker. Tournaments are where decent poker goes to curl up into a ball and die, while a whole parade of stupid comes and has a party at its funeral.

My last post was about how even at lower stakes cash games, the game has gotten much tougher, with even the donks tightening up or at least playing more aggressively. After playing through a bunch of tournaments over the past few days in preperation for playing my Step 6 ticket on Stars, I can safely say that the same is not true in tournaments.

Somehow I managed to barely eke out a win in the ~100 tourneys I played, finishing with a 4.2% ROI. I could regale you with all the ridiculous bad beat stories, etc., but I think I'll just spare you. The question remains...why is play in tournaments so terrible compared to cash games? Shouldn't the better players move to tourneys from cash if the play there is so much worse? Well, here's my list of reasons why that hasn't happened:

1) For a given difference in skill, the difference in expected earnings is larger in cash games than in tourneys. This is the biggest reason. It's mainly due to i) the fact that most tourneys get short-stacked pretty fast, which decreases the number of decisions in a hand, and therefore the advantage to those who can make better decisions. Cash games are usually deeper, so this isn't a problem. ii) The fact that the expected winnings function is concave in chip totals, which means that (good players, at least) should try to play more conservatively and keep the pot small early on. Bad players can very easily combat that in a no limit tournament by going all-in early and often. In cash games this isn't the case, since chips are money, so winnings are obviously linear in chips.

2) The rake is higher in tournaments. In cash games, rake is 5% of the pot up to $3. At .25/.50, I think this comes out to a little less than 3%, on average. In tournaments, if you buy into a $10 tourney, you'll pay $1 in rake. Even for a $69 tourney you'll pay $6 in rake. So if your expected earnings are equal in cash and tourneys before taking rake into account, then you'll be better off sticking to cash games.

3) Variance is higher for tourney players. Of course cash players have gross downswings (and I am no stranger to them), but in general cash players have less variance than tournament players, especially those playing in big tournaments with large fields. I think this high variance is part of what brings the donkeys out that like to gamble, paying a $10 for some infintesimal (for them at least) chance at a big prize, but for serious players variance is a bad thing.

4) Tournament play is boring. This is more my opinion...but with the shallow stacks and the large population of retards that are infesting your tables, the decisions just aren't as interesting. Now there are all these simulators and wizards or whatever that just tell you whether you're supposed to shove or not pre-flop. To me post-flop play is a lot more fun. Also, to me tournaments are more frustrating because i) you almost always lose at some point, and ii) when you lose, you can't rebuy and start right back up pwning the same donkeys. You have to go start some new tourney with new donkeys, meanwhile the donkeys that lucksacked into your stack get to keep on donking along in the old tournament, probably thinking how hard they pwnd you when they limp/called 1/3 of their stack with 52s and fropped a frush or some other such nonsense.

Anyway, just my 2 cents. If you're some tournament player that's really offended by my assessment...well, come and play some cash games and see what you think.

One more thing: If you're on the lookout for my first CardRunners video, I'm told it will be up on Monday, June 15th, with the author bruechips919, which is my CardRunners member ID.

-BRUECHIPS