Darkened Poker

Long time ago a friend sent me 20$ on PokerStars and I started playing 1$ buy in cash games.   Using good bankroll management I managed to not go broke and work it up to 200$ so I was playing 10$ NL cash games and 2$ tournaments.  By a good amount of luck I managed to win a tournament and got an extra 575$ dropped in my bankroll.   Normally this is a good thing but in this case it gave me a chance to make a really stupid mistake.

Since I was playing 1-2$ NL live games and had worked my way through the micro limit levels online so quickly with only my bankroll management requirements holding me back I assumed I could jump to the bigger games.  Given my bankroll was not big enough to match my live game limits I just jumped up to the 40$  NL cash games.  Well I quickly learned that at the higher levels online games are about 10X harder than live games.  I quickly lost the bankroll to play at that level and stepped down to the 20$ NL games.  After a week or so at that level I no longer had the bankroll to play and had to move back to the 10$ level.

Even though I was back at the same level before all this started I was on super tilt for having lost all my tournament gains.   So before long I am all the way back down to 5$ games and I finally realize I need to take some time off from the game to get my head reset.

What I should have done is taken that tournament win money and cashed it out.  There was no reason to keep it on there as I was steadily working my way through the levels and everything was going as planned.  A second best plan would have been to separate my cash game & tournament money and just used that 575$ to only play 5$ tournaments.

Painful lesson to have to learned but I am glad I learned it with a small tournament win rather than big one.

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Darkened Poker

Level two is done on my Cash Game only bankroll building challenge.  Finished with the .02 / .05 games and moving up to .05 / .10 now.  I am not even close to being on time though, should have took me 2 weeks but it has taken me 2 months, the live cash games have been too good lately and work has been crazy.

Interesting things I learned this time around doing this level again.

• People are starting to try and learn to bluff, their stories make no sense and usually just involves a big bet on the river that seems out of place, calling them with pocket 4′s really makes them tilt.  They even do this if you have been betting all the way and are pot committed.
• There are a bunch of people that do not know how to build pots since they play so tight and try to compensate by betting huge or re-raising all in on the river.  They are easy to spot as their stats are very small ie 8, 8, 12 or something crazy like that.  And unlike the bluffers on the river there is usually not a missed flush draw on the board.
• Get a copy of Poker Tracker, there is to much churn in the games to keep track of everyone so it is nice to get stats on people you played with in the past.  Also allows you to play more tables at once.  They have a 60 day free demo that can get you through these lower limit stages.
• There is a lot less big pots determined by kickers and a lot more set over 2 pair hands or picking off bluffs.  People in general are a lot more aggressive than level 1.

Will get through this limit quicker with the holidays coming up.

Last update

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Darkened Poker

Level one done on time of my Cash Game only bankroll building challenge.  Finished with the .01 / .02 games and moving up to .02 / .05 now.

Interesting things I learned this time around doing the low levels again.

• People will call you down with top pair weak kicker and get stacked off but you can not do that to by default as people will also just limp in and call you down with an over pair.
• When they re-raise you on the flop / turn they have a really good hand.
• With sets they like to call you down to river and re-raise all in, it is rarely a bluff.
• If they suddenly lead into you with a over bet on flop or turn it can be a semi-bluff or bluff.
• People will call over bets of the pot with some strange hands in general so bet much when you have locks on the hands.
• People pay way to much for their draws so get it all in on the turn so you do not have to make crying calls on the river.
• If you have a made hand and there is a draw out there, just move all in as they always put you on a draw and call every time drawing almost dead.

Thanks to greg for taking the challenge with me so I will be more motivated to keep on track and not get distracted with to much live play.

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Darkened Poker

Lots of very smart people like David Sklansky, Chris Ferguson and Roy Cooke have wrote about bankroll management and the effects of standard deviation on it.  I am not going to go over their impressive work but I do have a few thoughts to add.

Most bankroll systems for No Limit boil down to:

• Never put more than 5% of your bankroll into any one cash game
• Never put more than 2% of your bankroll into any one tournament
• You should get up from the table if you have 10% of your bankroll on table either through winning at the table or losing at other tables.

I started with a system like this and have added some exceptions over the years.  For live games I have never had a bankroll big enough that I could buy into a cash game for only 5% of it.  Every time I build up my bankroll something comes up in my personal life that kills a good chunk of it.  This makes it very hard to live by rule # 3 as I would always have to leave a table every time I won a big pot and in live games there is often no other good games to table change to just so you can protect your profit and bankroll.

What I have done instead is I will stay there as long as the fish do not get comparable stacks that can take you out in a bad beat.  I use to make the mistake of worrying about the other good players having the big stacks.  But over time you realize you should not be playing hands with the other good players but instead focus on the fish.  If you do play with the other good players it will most likely be with the nuts so it rarely matters.  But the fish always get you into bad spots were they usually have a draw and get all your money in.  So only stay at the table with > 10%  of your bankroll on it if fish are not stacked enough to hurt you.  I will even sometimes stay at a table with one big stacked fish if there are a lot of other small stacked fish and just not play him until he gets knocked back down.

Next online the rule for 5% of your bankroll does not work if your even slightly prone to tilt.  If you’re multi-tabling you might have only 5% at each table but you have 4-8 tables open and therefor have 20 – 40% of you bankroll in action.  I have once or twice in the past gone on tilt on one table and then blown off all my money at the other tables before I realized I was on tilt and shut it down.  Don’t think it will happen to you, it will happen to everyone.  Tom Dwan even had a great article in Card Player were he was playing live at the Bellagio with Lyle Berman and tried to bluff him off a royal flush loosing >800k in the process.  Busted out of the action he went home and started up a bunch of online tables before he had lost another 600k before realizing he should not play for a very long time. Online I do not believe you should have > 10% of your bankroll in action at any one time regardless of the number of tables.

Just some thoughts,

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Darkened Poker

So I flew to Vegas for the last weekend of the 2009 WSOP.  As I do every year I either have to win the buy in through Sat’s or cash games as I am not blowing $1500 on a seat.  Last year a friend and I did Sat’s but we got screwed in that they let us win our seat after they had already stopped registration.  So this year I wanted to try jumped into a 1-2 cash game at Bally’s to try and win enough in 12 hours to get myself into event 51.

Bally's Casino

My choice of Bally’s is by no means scientific, I have just had some good luck there over the years.  I like that they have enough traffic to keep the games filled with fish and I find there is less semi-pro’s there vs other places like MGM grand.

Well this game did not start out so well as it had in the past.

First Hand: 77, 5 of us head off to the flop

Flop: 7 8 J

I lead and it gets re-raised and then called by 2 people, not liking the draws out there I push and get called by 88 and 9 T which means I am drawing to 1 out.  Board does not pair and 9T gets a nice 600$ pot.

re-buy

Second Hand: KK, 3 of us head off to the flop after they call my 40$ re-raise

Flop: K Q A

All the money gets in on the flop and I am against QQ and A 8 suited, it comes runner runner spade to give the A8 the nut flush and an impressive 900$ pot.

re-buy again

Third Hand: TT, and 3 of us see the flop in a raised pot.

Flop: J T 3, I lead out, it is called and then re-raised.  At this point I am effectively pot committed if I call so I push to get rid of the flush draw.  One fold and then called by JJ who wins a nice 450$ pot.  This kind of bad luck can not run forever right?

re-buy one last time

In years past I would not even try that 3rd buy in yet less a fourth.  Loosing 2 buy in’s would be enough to put me on silent tilt and nothing good would come of the rest of my time there.  Especially with the added pressure of starting down 700$ in 1 hour when I was trying to make 1500 in < 18 hours so I could buy into a tournament.

What was great this years is I did not get down or go on tilt, I looked at the table and saw nothing but fish getting lucky.  So I took that last buy in and ground it back over the next 17 hours straight.  By 8 am I had won enough to get into the tournament but sadly by the time I got to the Rio, event 51 was sold out…

Wow, just like last year if you want to play you have to wait till Monday and play in that event.  It might have been just as well as I had not slept in a long time and might have just donked off my chips anyway.

I have said in past posts that you should leave a table after losing 2 buy-ins as you table image is shot and you can no longer bluff.  At a good table that might be the case but in your average low limit table in Vegas it is by no means the same situation.  You now have a bunch of fish that think they are invincible and will give you their entire stack whenever your ready.  You just have to make sure you’re OK to still play.

Given how many tournaments sold out this year including day 4 of the main event I think next year I will go ahead on reserve my seats online.  Although it is fun to go clean up the cash games I am now really dieing to play in one of these tournaments.