Downswinging!

Poker can get pretty tough when you are in the middle of a downswing. Tried switching to $50HU PLO, and that seemed to be going good when I got sucked out for 3 buy-ins within 10 minutes. Runner-runner straight flush for the last $50 was just enough to push me over the edge into raging monkey tilt.

Forced myself to log out and shut down the machine. Have switched to SnGs for the moment. Tried out this weird Super-Turbo SnG on FTP – 3.8$ buy-in for a 300 starting stack and 3 min levels. The level of play on this is awful! Not many people seem to have any clue of how to play shortstacked with fast blinds. Might use this to grind up to 15 buy-ins before going back to HU cash. Right now only at 6 buy-ins, so I have a long way to go!

On Monkey Tilt?

The last 1500 hands or so have been pretty brutal, especially when compared to my (unsustainably) high win rate during the first couple of weeks of the month. This is what a ~400BB downswing can look like -

My first take on this, obviously, was that I am on monkey tilt and maybe not catching as many cards as I was, hence, running bad as well. I was going thro’ a few hands where I lost big pots to see if I was tilting, making stupid bets or calls, etc. Here are a few of those -

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Full Tilt Poker, $0.15/$0.30 NL Hold’em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com – Hand History Converter

My table image was that of a maniac, I was raising most hands, re-raising pre-flop and re-raising c-bets a lot. I was showing down a lot of crappy hands that had connected with the flop, calling down 3 streets with mid/bottom pair sometimes.

MP: $85.45

CO: $66.80

BTN: $100.30

SB: $59.40

Hero (BB): $46.25

UTG: $21.80

Pre-Flop: A 9 dealt to Hero (BB)

4 folds, SB raises to $0.90, Hero calls $0.60

I decided to just call given that I was going to have position on SB for the hand, moreover, everybody else had folded to him, if I were him, I would have raised with any two cards. I figured that there was a good chance that I had the better hand. I also had no specific reads on the villain, dont think he was on the table for a very long time.

Flop: ($1.80) 4 J 9 (2 Players)

SB checks, Hero bets $8,

Generally, a pair with the nut flush draw with 2 cards to come is generally a very strong hand and I play them very fast. My objective was to get all-in if possible right away or to make the villain fold. At this level (NL30), I’ve found that overbets are usually called down because villains usually think its just an attempt to buy the pot; depending on the villain and my table image, I use this tactic now and then.

SB raises to $24, Hero raises to $45.35 and is All-In, SB calls $21.35

Villain obliged by re-raising and then calling my all-in.

Turn: ($92.50) 2 (2 Players – 1 is All-In)

River: ($92.50) 4 (2 Players – 1 is All-In)

Unfortunately my flush didn’t fill in, and I didn’t catch any of my other outs (Aces or nines). Now anything better than a pair of nines beats me.

Results: $92.50 Pot ($3 Rake)
SB showed K K (two pair, Kings and Fours) and WON $89.50 (+$43.25 NET)
Hero showed A 9 (two pair, Nines and Fours) and LOST (-$46.25 NET)

Villain had cowboys! Much better than the range I’d put him on, and that was about 150BB down the crapper.

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Was this a bad push? Was I tilting when I pushed all-in with the nut flush draw and middle pair on the board? My first impulse as soon as the river was dealt was that I was tilting and was spewing left, right and center.

Then I tried to be more objective about it, and here is what I figured -

Board: 4h 9h Jh
Dead:  

	equity 	win 	tie 	      pots won 	pots tied
Hand 0: 	69.224%  	68.54% 	00.68% 	         64465 	      640.50   { Ah9s }
Hand 1: 	30.776%  	30.09% 	00.68% 	         28304 	      640.50   { 88+, A8s+, KTs+, AJo+, KQo }

Even after assigning a reasonably tight range for villain, I still had close to 70% equity in the pot. Once my overbet was re-raised, with all the dead money in the middle, it was pretty much an automatic all-in. The only question now is – was my overbet a smart move! While it might have chased away any villain without at least a pair of jacks and one other heart most of the times, it probably was a bit too spewish! I still have to think about this a bit more to figure out what my line should have been.

A break helps..

When I started playing poker, I stuck to only tourneys – started at the micro-stake STTs, moved on to low-stakes STTs and MTTs, and have done reasonably well so far. But the attraction of making big money consistently from cash games always remained. Around early Dec, I started playing 10NL full-ring on FTP and Stars, was doing decently and by about mid-Jan moved to 25NL full ring even though I wasn’t really bankrolled for it – I had a pretty small bankroll, but I only had about 15-20 hours every week for poker, and didn’t want to grind it out forever at 10NL. I did okay in Jan and Feb, making about 6-7 big bets per 100 hands(obviously, the sample size is pretty small – less than 10K hands in total).

As you can see, nothing spectacular, but fairly steady. The stats for December and January were similar.


Then came March.

Then came March. A few suckouts early in the Month, and I was on monkey-tilt pretty much through the first two weeks. Towards mid-March, I just gave up, gave poker a break, and went back to my books. Got HOCG (Harrington on Cash games) and went through Professional No Limit Hold’em again. The 2nd volume of HOCG is pure gold, got some good tips on how to play weak cash games (Foxwoods!), how to play against LAGs, and also how to play deep-stacked. I guess the book really helped drive home some concepts that I had been reading about and thinking about for a while, but didn’t really know how to apply.

Fast forward to April -

I switched over to 6-max tables, and also to the 30NL “Deep” tables on FTP. I used to play at about a 21/11 on full ring, I am now playing 41/15 on the 6-max 30NL Deep tables and on the 25NL 6-max tables, and I am feeling so much more comfortable and in control. My hand reading seems to have improved considerably, and boy, do I get paid off when I hit!

The break helped in more ways than one – it obviously helped me get over the tilt, helped me stop worrying about the bad month, helped me figure out that I should try different things – play deepstacked tables where post-flop play is the nuts, play 6-max tables where aggression is the nuts, and just play a different style altogether. Obviously, its way too early to say if this is going to be a sustainable strategy, need a lot more hands at this level to figure out what I need to work on.

Will post specific hand histories, bankroll details and targets, this was just the first post to get the blog started.