2010 Q1 report - $239.55

I'm calling it a quarter. I just finished up a session which got me over the 50 Full Tilt Points mark for the day and qualifies me for silver status and 40 bonus medals which I will convert over to cash when I accumulate enough. For simplicity's sake, that achievement will be worth approximately $8. I had been stuck on the same green line number for a while though with rakeback the chart for overall roll has continued to inch higher. Fortunately for this last session I ran into a bunch of people just trying to give their chips away and I was happy to oblige them. Sucker end of straights would pay me off in full. Sets were willing to pay any price in hopes the board would pair. Random aggro garbage would try to shove me off of a set. Good times.

Based on official FTP HH files and rakeback reports, the preliminary number I am going with for the April 1 cutoff is $239.55 in total which is actually leaving off about three bucks of rake from today. The finalized number will be available tomorrow around 7am. I am actually still way EV- against the rake and am 41.92 in the hole but thanks to the miracle of rakeback the $181.47 that I received more than offsets that. Adding that $139.55 difference on top of the original $100 stake and even Andersen Consulting would have come up with the same total for the quarter.

Looking forward to next quarter I feel like I should at least be able to match that amount since much of Q1 was spent fumbling around. There is also the Take 2 promotion which will be good for $25. A second month of Iron Man silver status will add another $8 or so to the ledger which I won't convert to cash yet but it is an asset which can be tapped.

My Full Tilt Point balance sits at 4,178.56. I'm actually able to afford some reasonable gear at the FTP store now but I'm still sticking to plan to save them up for some fancy electronics. Currently I'm eyeing the MacBook Pro for 270,000 though I'm sure there will be a different model there by the time I get that much. Still, I'm between 1% and 2% of the way there at the very lowest stake level so gaining points is only going to get faster.

All told, a quarter with ups and downs, some aggravation, and plenty of teething issues. But systems are in place to smooth out the ride and I have hardly even scratched the surface of optimizing my play. I will likely branch out into another discipline next quarter but keep PL Omaha as a staple. Hopefully the Q2 report will be full of good news.

Session not what it seemed

Earlier today I had a pretty solid session. I was making what I felt were disciplined folds at the right times, winning my share of pots, getting away with stealing enough to be profitable at it...or at least I thought. I kept checking the cashier window to see how I was doing and it seemed to be continuously stuck on a buck down. I even brought the window and made sure that it was refreshing properly because I couldn't believe that I wasn't doing better. I'll need to do more inspection of that session to see what the deal was but it was just really odd to see the numbers not reflect how I thought the session was going.

Later on in the evening though I racked up a decent $2+ session thanks to pot equity working out correctly. All the hands I was favored in I won and all the hands I was not favored in I lost except for one time when I was only 10% needing an ace to make broadway and couldn't shake loose a donk who was willing to go broke with the king high straight and flush redraw.

Still looking over my shoulder as we head into April.

HOTD: Overplaying quad aces

For some dumb reason I have this compulsion to retain my undefeated streak when dealt AAAA as my hole cards. The first time I was dealt quad aces I was in the SB and simply raised the BB out of the hand for a cool .02 profit...rake free mind you. The second time I picked up AAAA was actually just three days ago. I potted from the button and got folds from one limper, the SB, and the BB netting .05 that time. Well today I picked up AAAA for the third time and decided that I'm going to push this one through. I potted to .11 from the button and got folds from one of the limpers and both blinds but MP hung around to see the flop. Flop is Ts7s2d and I obviously have no draws to go with my hand. MP pots it which puts me all in. I quickly invent a hand that I'm beating...ummm...he has a flush draw, then I call. He turns over 78TQss, a pretty rough hand IMO, but it was good for top two pair which is a lot better than him flopping a set which would leave me drawing dead. Turn is a deuce which counterfeits his two pair. River is a blank and I teach that donk a lesson about playing crap hands...like quad aces as your hole cards. The streak remains alive and that hand now averages over 7 BB each time I play it.

HOTD: Chasing the same flush draw

I have Ah9hxx and complete the SB leaving me .22 behind. Five to the flop which comes K63 two hearts giving me the nut flush draw. I pot it and everyone drops out except for UTG. He could have anything but my read was that he was on the same flush draw as I was given the board texture though his is obviously inferior. 5d on the turn makes a low wrap straight possible but I'm sticking with my read. If he indeed has a heart draw he would call my bet since I only have .12 behind and all I have is ace high which has limited showdown value. Likewise I am pretty sure he will check behind since it wasn't a heart. The plan is to leave myself some chips behind so that I can fire on the river. If the river is a heart I'm getting paid. If it is not a heart then he'll have to fold his missed draw. True to plan he checks behind on the turn. River is a Tc which does not complete the flush and is a relative blank. I fire the last of my stack into the middle and villain snap calls after rivering his set and shows QTT2 two hearts. The play was was executed properly and if villain didn't happen to catch his two outer on the end he almost certainly folds since there is the king on board. It was the right play, just didn't work out this time.

MMM: Over-rolled?

Welcome to the first edition of the Monday Morning Mailbag. This week's email reads:

Hey Sushi,
What's the deal with the stakes you're playing? You're sitting on top of well over two bills and I saw you playing .01/.02 and buying in short. When you buy in to the shallow tables you're only putting .40 on the line and the normal tables you're coming in for .70 which is less than 1/3 of a percent of your roll. Even if you play eight tables at your highest buy in you have less then 3% of your stake in play at one time. That seems pretty conservative.

Kenny T.
Arcadia, CA

Kenny,
Thanks for writing. Yeah, I know that I could be putting more money out there at once. Right now I do not plan on touching anything until after April 1 since I have a prop bet going with my poker buds. I just want to stay the course so as not to mess up the mojo for now. I also don't feel like I am consistently crushing these stakes. At one point I was up $20 against the rake and now I'm down $40 so I'd say that there is an issue with my play. I'm still learning a lot, part of it is the play of hands but I think a bigger part of it is the human element. I think that by far the biggest challenge is being able to stay focused and disciplined while grinding away. I also doubt that I am playing optimally in all situations. I probably should be stealing more and defending my blinds more instead of only playing premium hands but I'm going to do more research into what I should be doing in those aspects of the game. I have played some hands at .02/.05 and ran really bad at it when I first tried it about a month ago. That move destroyed my bankroll and started me on a long decline so I'm a little gun shy about it. I know that moving up is inevitable but I want to make sure that I am better prepared before going up the next time.

Sushi Cowboy

Coming down the homestretch

After turning the odometer over, the green line descended to a new nadir before taking a big rebound to the tune of about $15 or so. I played a little more nitty than usual but most of the difference was due to the refreshing change of having the lead hold over an extended stretch. There were also a number of just having villain in bad way like set versus two pair which is a great way to get chips added to the stack. Another non-trivial factor was that I put in 131 hands of .02/.05 winning all five all-ins with equity of 45% (three way), 61%, 78%, 87%, and 93%. No shocker being ahead but winning all of them was a welcome occurrence. The funny thing is that bumping up in stakes had nothing to do with the April 1 milestone, in fact that would be a reason for not moving up to me. But the fact was that I was busy today and got behind schedule earning points for the Iron Man challenge. I took a couple days off earlier in the month and got too busy on other days so for the last quarter of the month I need to clear 50 points every day in order to reach silver status which is my goal for March. I cut it a little too close on Sunday so in order to accrue Full Tilt Points faster I moved to .02/.05 with about an hour or two to go since the bigger game creates more rake and thus more points. Cleared 50 points with about 20 minutes to spare. The nice kick to the bankroll comes at a good time as the April 1 deadline looms ominously. Apart from Adam applying pressure, the other blogs have been dark for weeks so I don't have a real accurate idea of where I stand beyond the latest chart updates. All I need to do until April is fade someone deciding to take an 11th hour shot by playing over their roll and/or avoid myself doing something stupid over that span of time. We shall see how things turn out.

HOTD: Quad kings no good

UTG limps and it folds around to me in the SB with AA23ds. If I make a pot size bet it will not fail to isolate but will also mark my aces with way too much left behind since I'm starting too deep at .63 so I put in a small raise to .05. Fortunately, the BB pots it then UTG calls. Perfect, since now I can get my entire stack in pre-flop. BB snap calls and UTG gets out of the way. Villain shows KKKK and is already drawing dead. The meaningless board runs out and I make an easy double up plus extra from UTG.

HOTD: Wrap versus open ender

I'm in the SB with 89TJss. UTG limps, cutoff pots to .09, button calls, I feel like I have decent equity so I call. UTG calls. Four to the flop of 478 rainbow. Not bad, top pair and 12 clean outs to make the nut straight. Checks to me and I pot it for the remaining .29 in my stack which isn't even a pot sized bet. Quick call from UTG behind me and everyone else gets out of the pool. He turns over basically nothing but the the 9T open ender, a K and a trey along with a backdoor flush. I was worried when he called so quickly fearing a set or overpair but actually I was way ahead with my pair of eights plus I had a much better straight draw than he did. Basically I just need to fade a king or some goofy runners. Turn pairs the 7 and kills his backdoor flush. River bricks a deuce and I'm home free. Wasn't expecting to have my pair of eights hold up for the win but it was great to be largely freerolling on him.

The first 100,000

At 3:09:55 this morning I was completed my 100,000th hand...for the record, I folded it. So what's been happening over the last 1/10 of a million hands?

• I am down $49.70 in raw earnings against the rake.
• Including rakeback I am up $118.87
• Worst hand up to that point was 4444...rainbow
• Was dealt quad 4s, 8s, 9s, Qs, and As each once. Won the AAAA hand by raising the BB out of his blind from the SB. Netting even overall with quad hole cards.
• Had 17 straight flushes including two royals, won all of them. Flopped five of them thanks to good pre-flop hand selection. Got paid in full on four of them but had to get there after the money got in on one of them.
• Made quads 91 times and won 90 of them
• Spent a shade under 357 hours on the felt over the previous 70 days and change for an average of a bit over 5 hours/day according to HEM's session calculations which will always be high.
• If it weren't for the $572.63 of rake paid during that period the bankroll would be at $522.93 which means I'm paying about $1.46 each hour to play online compared to the approximately $.33/hour that I'm making.
• For those interested in the poker geek numbers, VPIP is 17.7%, PFR is 5.5%, 3bet is 3%, Agg is 4.15, WTSD is 29.6%, W$SD is 50.8%. I think I have enough data for these averages to be relevant so maybe I'll do more research now on what these numbers should be. I'm pretty darn sure that they are far from optimal.

I'm of course happy that I'm up overall. Disappointed that I need rakeback to be above even though particularly since I was above water for a significant portion of the duration up to this point. Feel that I'm a much better Omaha player than I used to be which comes with the territory of playing so many hands. Next steps for Omaha will be to keep tuning my game to make sure that I put in the procedures to ensure I'm playing sharp and also to delve into finding out what I need to do to take my game up to the next level by reading up more on strategy and hitting the poker forums. Thanks to all those who have been following along. Much, much, more to come.

FTP Take 2 promotion

Full Tilt Poker is running a new promotion called Take 2 where they are trying to encourage players to multi-table or play Rush Poker...in other words, pay rake faster. From Saturday April 3rd to Sunday April 11 you can get double Full Tilt Points when playing two or more ring game tables or any Rush Poker table. Not only that but if you earn at least five Take 2 bonus points for any five days during that stretch you get a cash bonus of $5 and if you qualify for all nine days of the promo then it's an additional $20 in your account. Hello $25 and extra Full Tilt Points for doing nothing more than what I'm already doing. Easy. Money.

Tactic: Betting the draw, checking the flush

Full stack for me and I get AK75 with A5 in diamonds. Limps around, I check my option, and four of us go to the flop. Which comes 984 two diamonds. SB checks, I pot it to .08 which isolates me and the cutoff.  2d on the turn and I check so that villain can either bet his flush or rep it but he checks back. Qd on the river and I put out a stabby looking half pot bet. Villain pots which is enough to put me in and I snap call. He shows 9d7dxx and was presumably checking the turn to see if the board pairs. I give him credit for being astute enough that I am pretty sure he wasn't trying to "slow play" his flush. I also do not think he would have gone broke if I had checked the flop and only started betting or check/raising after the flush got there though there are plenty of players out there who would stack off with any flush. In this case he actually had a hand but I've also pulled off the same maneuver when villain bets with complete air. There is some risk involved with giving a free card but if villain doesn't raise on the flop it is unlikely he has a set though a boat on the river may come from a running two pair.

Aces races

The story for this last session is losing with aces. I know they're not bulletproof but they are at least favored, aren't they? I picked them up 28 times in the session and won ten of them for a net of -2.80 from aces hands alone. Managed to draw villain in pre-flop eight times in the session and lost seven of them. That's pretty dismal. Once I was in a virtual coinflip when it was another AA and I against a third player who scoops. Then I had a heads up AA vs AA 52% edge and lost that. Otherwise I was between 60% and 70% to win the other five and lost them all. For the session I was down a total of $2.73. Considering the shellacking I took from losing those hands it wasn't that bad a session. No tilt crept in despite getting pasted by draw outs. Just have to call it a session and get back on the horse later. I know the numbers will come around eventually but today's session was creating some doubt about it.

HOTD: Top boat misplayed

I am in position and nail a flop of J77 with JJxx. Checks to me and I put out a min bet of .02 into a pot of .12, three callers, good. Turn is a T which also double flush draws the board. SB bets .20, better! One caller (even better) then I flat call (boo!). I believe the correct line here is to min-raise. I did have one player behind me but and am not sure if they would call. The best case is that they would shove if they had something like TT or T7 in which case they are coming over the top of me anyway. Anyone willing to commit .20 on a paired board should be willing to commit .20 more, if not re-raise if there is a min-raise back to them. Anyone on one of the flush draws will pay nothing on the river if they miss which is more likely than them hitting and stacking off. River is Qh which does not complete either flush. Both check to me and I make a minor value bet which gets called by the SB with the formerly nut straight who slowed down when a higher straight was possible. Though I didn't win the minimum I do think I cut into that hand's potential.

Three of a not-so-kind

The upside is that I had a great session. Two cents shy of four bucks from 315 hands in 44 minutes. The down side is that three of a kinds were killing me due mostly to me butchering the hands.

I have A853ds and the flop is Q55. Checks to me and I pot for .08. Min-raise to me. Cue sirens, alarms, red flags, and claxons. Trips with top kicker? That's nothing on that board especially to a min-raise. So what do I do? Call! What part of "pot and stop" do you not understand soldier!? Turn misses me. Checks to me (so obvious to check here), and I flush the remaining .19 down the toilet. Snap call by queens full and I have the case 5 as my only out which fails to materialize somehow. Bye bye extra .27 cents after my first pot.

K723ns in the BB. Flop comes 7J7 I pot it and get one caller. Turn is a 9 and I only have .19 behind into a .26 pot and feel like riding this one out because of the pot size. .19 more goes in and gets called by J833. Jack on the river. Nice hand, sir.

TTK2 in the BB (again! when will I learn?) sees a flop of K7K. I pot it for .04 and get repotted. This is where I am supposed to stop, the second half of the pot and stop procedure, instead of draining off an additional .64 into the pot over the next two streets to some guy with AK.

I min-raise UTG with AA77 and see a flop of 992 with two others. Checks to me and I bet half pot of .06, fold then a call. I slow down after that and we check through to the river. Villain has a 9 and shows enough restraint to not go overboard with it unlike some other players (ahem).

And finally I complete the SB with QJ96ss which is actually below normal SB standards. Five way to a flop of QQ8 two hearts. Here we go again! I pot it for .10, one flat call,  then an all in of .11 which does not open the door, call, call. Turn is an offsuit 4 and I feel that i am getting reasonable equity for tossing in my last .09 since I have a Q, and three pairs to my J and 9 side cards that can boat me up and possible the 6 as well. Get called and both others show nothing but flush draws. River is one of the six remaining hearts but not a good one for the flush draws since it pairs my jack.

Oh what could have been if I had just followed procedure. Would have been up over five bucks if I had just had the discipline to dump those trap hands early.

Time for another break I guess

Chart is down. I misplay some hands and (surprisingly!) lose. I get my money in good and lose a lot of those too. Based on HEM data, last session I was all in 10 times chopped one when I was 51%, lost 4 of 6 when I was 2:1 or better, and won 1 of 4 when I was 40% or worse. Small sample size of course but enough of a downswing to take the day off and take care of other stuff, regroup, and try again later.

Down over $15 from the weekend peak on the green line which is the one I really want to build on. The blue rakeback line masks how badly the base line has fallen. Two steps forward, one step back. I'm glad that I'm at least still a good margin above $200 but have lost focus and just am not playing sharp right now.

Suckouts galore

It's been a pretty rough ride so far today. In the morning my game got pretty loosey goosey and my roll took a hit for it. TAG became LAG which I'm not very good at and it was high variance all day. I shake my head in disbelief at the screen when I get half my stack in pre with AAxx and shove the 223 flop only to get the guy win 446T call and boat up on the turn. Aces versus kings and he catches his backdoor flush. Aces versus nines and he flops a set. I have A6xx and flop 66A and pot it, Q on the turn and I pot it again, ace on the river and I pot it a third time then pay off AQxx. Lather, rinse, repeat. And yes I had my share of getting it in bad like going to the mat with AJ on an AJ9 flop then draw out on a set of nines. I also backdoored a runner runner straight against a flopped wheel when I had A5. Equity-wise HEM says they pretty much balanced out. Sure doesn't seem that way to me though. All in all I'm only down about a buck which is getting off relatively easy considering my donkish play and having the cards work against me in big hands.

Time for dinner

Just followed the last session up with some atrocious play. Misread a board and shoved with the lower straight into the higher different straight. Also made an ill advised curiosity call and paid off a boat with trips since villain didn't bet his top two pair on the flop. That's enough for now, time to go get some food before I screw anything else up.

I'll settle for a split on 50/50 pots

I ran my aces into aces yet again and ended up getting scooped. I actually flopped two pair on the guy but he went runner runner hearts. Bummer. I also totally missed the paired board and paid off a boat with my nut flush. At least I ended up for the session despite those setbacks. Up $1.96 in a little half hour session.

Still a little deflated to lose some of the inertia coming out of the weekend both via the accounting discrepancy and a couple down sessions but I'm not worried that it will turn around. Also, I'm continuing to clear my Iron Man requirements and look forward to banking some medals by the end of the month.

Accounting giveth and accounting taketh away

A while ago I noticed that HEM was shorting my bankroll by not calculating the rakeback correctly so I added on to my chart to accurately reflect my actual position. Recently, after experiencing an increasing amount of crashes on my poker system I rebuilt it and fed all the official FTP hand histories from scratch. As it turns out there were about a few hundred hands which were not accounted for previously which brings my total down. Add to that a couple of down sessions and the new adjusted figure for my bankroll is at $212.19 after 91,298 hands. My assumption is that the crashes interrupted the hand history file from being written out correctly and that was where the hands were lost. Regardless, the chart has been updated and since HEM is smart enough to not double enter the same hand twice I will start importing the official FTP HHs more often to ensure greater accuracy.

Card dead

400 hands in a little less than an hour and not a lot of connecting with flops. Fold pre-flop, fold on the flop, fold after the flop. Pretty simple. No glaring errors just didn't have the cards cooperate. Got out flopped when I got half my stack in with AA42ss and saw a flop against A642ds which I clearly have crushed pre-flop since I have his ranks nearly fully covered. But he flops a super draw 335 in his suit and he flushes on the river. Other hands I'd flop the nuts then a flush would get there and I'd have to fold to pressure. Top set got run down by a flush draw from a guy who couldn't get his chips in fast enough on his draw. Down $1.73 for the session with no regrets.

HOTD: Darn nuts

I'm in the BB and am saddled with T642ss in clubs. Flop comes 357 two hearts. So I flop the nuts. Checks to me and I pot it for .08, a fold, button calls, then the SB re-pots. What to do. Have the current nuts, no redraws, a drawer behind me and a check-raiser ahead of me. If folding the nuts is ever the right thing to do then I think this scenario is a textbook example. This can easily be one person with a draw to beat me and one person that I'm chopping with so it's basically like being freerolled upon assuming that I'm chopping at best. It's a BB hand as well which is even more reason to dump it. Normally if I flop the nuts on that board I would either have a higher straight redraw, nut straight with two pair, or if I'm lucky a flush redraw. As is I have none of that and I'm violating the rule about getting invested with a BB hand. I go ahead and shove in the rest and get called both ways. Button has 689J drawing to a higher straight and SB only has 75xx for top two pair. Nobody has the flush redraw. I'm actually in better shape than I had hoped but still am only even money with the wrap above me. Turn is a 4 and I'm drawing dead.

Even though I'm short stacked I still had a full .70 in front of me and was only .10 invested in the hand. I am not yet good enough to escape the trap hand of flopping the nuts but hands like this will make it easier for me to wriggle off the hook the next time. Yes I was priced in and there was nothing wrong with my play in retrospect but I could have been in really bad shape very easily. Based on the action and my stack I can find a better place to get my money in.

Patchwork complete for the weekend

On Friday I wrote that "I'm under $200 again and will need to do more patchwork this weekend." Since that time I've been playing super solid TAG ABC Omaha and the bankroll reflects that. Not only am I once again over $200 but I've put on twenty bucks since that post. That's 1000 big blinds worth of grinding at .01/.02 for 12 hours and 4000 hands for a rate of 25bb/100 hands and an average of $1.32/hour over that span. I momentarily tipped $220 before settling down a nickel shy of that to end the session.

The biggest improvement has been just being aware of the play of every hand. Every street of every hand of every table gets weighed and acted upon based on the ground rules I've set up and if I deviate from them then I'm at least aware that I'm bending the rules. If I start to go off the rails then I jump off the throttle and step away from the felt.

I believe I've recaptured whatever it was I was doing in the 20,000 to 40,000 hand range that was working so well but I'm more aware of everything that's going on. I also have tens of thousands of more hands experience now to fall back on as well. The diversion that sent my green line plunging was detrimental to my roll at the time but I think it has forced me to tighten up my game and has gotten me in a groove that I want to stay in. I can only imagine where my roll would be at if I had continued the trend from my first extended climb. But things happen for a reason and if the nosedive was to get my game straightened out then it will pay huge dividends going forward.

Chart of the weekend from Friday afternoon to Sunday evening

Medium heat

The first significant hand of the session I had top two on and AQ2 flop. I pot it and get one caller. Turn is an offsuit 4. I pot it again which puts me in. Villain calls with KKJ3ds one in diamonds obviously. Diamond on the river. Standard, someone wants to pay any price to chase a flush draw which incidentally was not even the nut flush. He had a gutter to broadway as well. Bad start but not a biggie.

Next big hand has the cutoff pot to .07. Then the button re-pots to .34. I have AAJ7ss and regret that I didn't keep a better eye on my stack because I am sitting on $1.03 which is on the high side. I consider my options since the re-pot can easily be aces and I could possibly be jumping in with only 50% equity in a high variance pot. But there are so many donks out there who will go the distance with far less than aces that I believe that I am priced in against the average range at these stakes. I say hello to my friend variance and commit the chips. Everyone else, including original raiser jumps out of the pool. Button re-pots and I call. He has AA45 with his 45 suited in spades which I have covered by my suited ace. Looks good. Flop is K93 of diamonds, turn 2, river 6 to complete his single sided straight since all aces were accounted for. Currently on low simmer.

Then I pick up 6789ss and can cap the action with a call to .07. Flop is 852 rainbow. Not bad. I check and the three others in the hand check behind me. Wasn't expecting that. Turn is 3d which gives me a flush draw now. I bet pot and the original raiser calls, everyone else folds. River pairs the deuce. I put in my last .22 which is about a 1/4 pot bet. Original raiser thinks about it for a while then calls showing AJ98 for top/top and sweeps the pot. Turn the burner up to medium. As I'm cursing him for making a donk call I remind myself that any time I say "he should have folded" that directly translates into "I shouldn't have bet."

Before I start really hurting the bankroll I decide the prudent thing is to pull the plug and shut down all tables since I can see the warning signs of some steam play coming up. I don't bother taking free hands. I just get out of Dodge. The session cost me $1.10 which isn't really that bad considering that losing that AA vs AA hand was essentially that much. So I had enough other profit in the session to counter my poor aggression and the first suckout. Gold star for limiting the damage before it escalated. Will step away from the tables and come back later after the dust settles.

Big favorites holding up

Had seven all-ins this session, five of them favored by 90%+, one of them "just" a 2:1 favorite, and the last one was a comparative coinflip at 42% in a three way pot which I lost when I got it in AA vs KK vs random crap and a kind came out on the flop. I had a set and a flush draw against a guy drawing super thin chasing an inferior flush draw. Two set over sets. AA versus guy chasing a gutshot. Boat versus irrelevant flush draw. And aces which fended off a super draw.

I'm not going to claim any wizardry post-flop. These hands basically just played themselves out no matter who is at the wheel. I do take credit however for pre-flop hand selection. I very, very rarely end up getting stacked with an underset and that is because I don't set mine with anything worse than jacks. In fact I even reduce the value of a playable hand if it contains a small pair just to avoid falling into a potential trap hand.

It was heater of a session. 25 minutes, 167 hands, $2.23 of sugar. Trailing 2K hands good for $8.30 and a $1.29/hour rate. This is a far cry from having negative values for the trailing 2K stats a few days ago. Pushing the blue line into unchartered territory now with a new peak of $216.92.

Session chart is below. First early dip was when my AA got run down by an open ender. Second big dip was the three way all in which would have been worth over $2 if aces held.

Minimal mistakes

I've really been happy with my play as of late and that's not just being ROTty. Even when I've been losing hands but getting the money in good I've been satisfied with the play. Today I ended up making mistakes though the damage from them was minimal.

Got my money in bad on one hand though I would consider this more of a cooler than a mistake. On a flop of AK2 I had top two with nut flush draw. I went with it and ran into second set which boated up on the turn. No ace to save me and I lose that hand. Turns out I was still 40% despite being up against a set so I don't feel bad about being behind on that one.

I get a free card to the turn where I make broadway on a double flush draw board. Pot it to .08 and get two callers. One of the flush draws gets there and there's a bet to me. I'm getting 3:1 on a call because I'm short stacked and I figure there is a chance that the guy is just betting a scare card so I call and he turns over 7c9c for a junky flush but still a flush that beats me. Poor decision there which was due in part to my short stack which improved my bluff catching odds. If the pot were larger that would be an easy fold. In the future, I'll have to watch out for playing hands differently purely because of my stack size.

I have bottom set on a KJT flop. A cautious bet is placed ahead of me. I call. Turn is a jack. He leads, I raise, he calls and shows JT. I actually have some outs with my K but in really bad shape with the underboat. I've seen this before too where there is broadway possible and action only fires up after the board pairs. The nut low boat is just never good in those spots because if he had something like KT or something then you're not getting action after the J pairs. In fact that's probably a fold on the flop since you're drawing just to get in to a trap hand and only have one clean out to quad up.

I call a raise to .07 with AJT8ss and three of us see a flop of JT8. I'm OOP in the SB and inexplicably pot it with my three pair. A raise behind me and I donk call off my remaining stack of .33. Villain shows not just Q9 for the nut straight but he has a K for a redraw to a higher straight and a flush redraw so he's carrying a substantial 72% edge. If I had a set I wouldn't want my side cards to hit the board but for my situation having three pair is better then just two pair so having my side cards hit is good. Turn is 6 in the off suit with gives villain yet another flush draw (I'm jealous of his hand) and he completes his flush on the river but it pairs my 8 giving me his pot.

I flop trips, pot it from EP then get re-potted which I call. Pot and stop? Ignored. Checks down the rest of the way and trips is good enough to beat a missed flush draw.

Made some errors and knew them all at the time. Some bit me but some worked out. Up $1.96 for the session despite several miscues. Trailing 2K hands are very good at $7.09 and $1.09/hour. I would be thrilled at netting out $1/hour after rakeback so getting above that in raw earn rate is welcome news.

Sweep

Granted, it was a short 20 minute session of only 120 hands but my WTSD% was 28.6 (whatever that means) but I won every showdown. Even though I was favored in all of them it's still nice to have the heavy side of the coin land down each time. Biggest loss for the session...$.02. Yup, two red cents, one big blind, which happened whenever I limped or was in the BB. This might sound rather common sensical but minimizing one's losses is the trademark of a great session. Part of that is getting you money in good but there is an element of not getting unlucky that needs to happen as well. Up $1.22 for the session and my trailing 2000 hand numbers are looking healthy again: $5.66 profit and .83/hour (before rakeback).

Solid session

Keeping everything under control. Managed to grind out about .90 of profit for the session despite getting kicked in the teeth multiple times by the poker gods. My biggest seven losses of the session were all all-in situations and I was even money or better in all of them. 37% (three way), 50%, 55%, 59%, 62%, 69%, and 70%. In all fairness, I did "suck out" a win when I was only 40% to win even though I was ahead in the hand at the time but not favored against a wrap and flush draw. My top 11 wins were all 71% or better to win as well. At times like this, one's faith in odds and probability are put to the test but I managed to not let it affect my game and pressed on regardless. No tilting, no steaming, just playing by the book and no letting results affect other decisions...and THAT is the biggest win of the session.

Overquads again?

For the second time in two days I caught overquads on someone. AAJ5ss in the SB. I pot it to .10 and get two callers. AAT flop...yawn, check, check, then cutoff pots it which is enough to put me in. Call. He shows TT62 and is already drawing dead but just to make him feel better the turn puts up the case T so he can improve to underquads. In general I prefer to play short stacked but if there were one hand where it would have been handy to have a full buy in this would be it since the guy had $2.24 before the hand started.

HOTD: Trips misplayed

My big blind special is 9642ss. The four way flop is T99 rainbow. SB bets pot into it for 08 and I'm stuck. What to do. Don't get invested in BB hands doesn't even cross my mind. Pot and stop comes to mind but really applies more to being first to the pot. I proceed anyway to  re-pot and commit half my stack. Fold, fold, and they shoves. So what am I beating here? Not much based on that action. I could hope that he has a 9 with three kickers all lower than a 6. Maybe the board will run high and we can chop. For some reason I go ahead and put in the other half of my stack fully expecting to be drawing thin and/or dead. Villain turns over J855 for two outs to fives full and a gutter straight. Turn, jack (ick). River, 8. I have to admit that takes guts/idiocy to reshove for the rest of your stack with only .08 invested after a guy re-pots you clearly repping a 9. I should have not gotten in that deep at all yet I escaped with the pot. Terrible play on my part which ended up working out though I am definitely not taking this hand as positive reinforcement that I should stack off in that situation because the vast majority of the time that is spewing chips.

In retrospect I think the right line would have been to min-raise OOP then dump the hand after getting more pressure. I think the min-raise actually sells more strength than a re-pot. If he were stabbing then he'd have to release. If he has it (or at least willing to rep it) then I'm getting re-raised and I can dump my hand.

Down but not out

Played a few more hundred hands. Satisfied with the play for the most part. For all of the hands that I played I had 50% or more all-in equity except for a couple. In one hand I flopped broadway OOP and got it in against broadway with a heart draw. Survived with a chop on that one. Got my money in terribly after pot committing myself with AA82ss pre-flop and shoving on a QQT flop which gave villain quads. I somehow missed my runner-runner outs and his 99.9% edge magically held up. I'm down .96 but was way further down than that due to my hands not holding up.

A comeback? Don't call it that.

However, I am making progress. Yesterday I was lamenting having my roll dip below $200. Now less than 24 hours later I am not only back above that milestone but have tacked on eight bucks above where I was. Since I'm buying in for either .40 or .70 that means I'm up at least 12 buy-ins so there is absolutely an element of run good in there. Any secrets? Nah. Just avoiding marginal situations, no steaming, and having hands hold up. Nothing much to report other than what is already known, just make good decisions and the bankroll will follow. Definitely a good bounce from bottom though and I hope to keep it going better than the last time I turned it around.

HOTD: Aces...good?

I have .33 and get AA77ss in the cut off with two limpers in front of me. I figure a pot sized bet to .11 has a reasonable chance to isolate...and then I woke up. Not only does it not narrow the field but it creates a family pot including the button who cold calls .11 so there is .66 in the middle as we see a Q42 flop with two clubs. Six way to the flop and the probability of surviving this hand is about the same as winning Powerball. But, as the saying goes, someone has to win so I throw the remaining .20 in the middle and get two callers. Turn is a 9, river is a T. The remaining guy in position bets at the meager side pot and elicits a fold and shows a naked pair of kings for the win on the side pot which means a lone pair of aces is miraculously good for the main pot. I am astonished that they somehow dodged the onslaught of five other players' four card hands.

Three bucks

The good news is that I boosted my roll by three bucks this session. The bad news is that I dug a hole three bucks deep first. All I have to do is avoid steaming off chips and all those up swings get to move my chart in the right direction. Just have to follow procedure. What could be easier? Sheesh. Played like crap for portions of the day and as the saying goes, no bad play will go unpunished. I'm under $200 again and will need to do more patchwork this weekend.

Chart was climbing so well there for a while. Green line has dipped down again and actually has plunged to new depths. Time to straighten up and fly right.

What do I have to do to get a break around here?

Yes, another whine post about suckouts. I think I actually prefer losing hands by being a donk because at least justice is served. I lose a three all ins where I am 72%, 83%, and 88%. Losing coinflips, meh. Losing after getting it in real good, irritating. Aces with nut flush draw loses to tens on the turn, nice. Broadway versus two pair and he rivers his four outer. Aces versus kings pre-flop, king on the turn. Granted, I did "suck out" when I was only 45% and put it all in with top two and the nut flush draw against second set but somehow that doesn't really seem to balance things out. More Sklansky pennies for the piggy bank. Despite the bad run I am only down .29 for the session.

In other news, it's rakeback Friday and I cash in on my accrued RB from last Tuesday through Monday. My cashier window now reflects that I'm in the $190-$200 zone. It's nice to have the cold hard digital cash in your account instead of just showing up in the rakeback report.

Technical difficulties

For some reason bandwidth has been dogging all day. Perhaps everyone streaming NCAA hoops or something but it really messes with the rhythm. There was actually a relatively low amount of tables running tonight as well presumably because of hoops as well. Between attempts by the FTP client to reconnect to the servers, I managed to dump off some chips.

Middle set and flush redraw loses to donk calling with a gutter and ends up making his backdoor flush.

Steamed off a buy in with QQ overpair to the board to what I knew was AA. Turn is an A but gives me a backdoor heart draw. Turn is a heart...that pairs the board. Nice. Ran kings into aces again though I was short enough that I was actually getting some semblance of proper pot odds to call of the rest of my stack against marked aces. Missed draws. Getting money in good with hands that don't hold. The usual downswing. Blech.

HOTD: Getting cold in here

AA45ss in the SB and I'm saddled with a full buy of .70. Two limps to me and I press the "pot" button to see how large a bet that would be but I do not commit the chips because I don't feel that I'd get isolation then I'd be stuck OOP having to make a substantial cbet so I complete the BB instead. Flop is AA6. Flopping quads used to be cool but now they are just a waste of a huge hand because you never get any action. I curse myself for being an idiot and not raising pre because now I won't make anything except for taking down blinds. I check (duh). BB checks and the first limper bets pot. Well at least I'll take his money. Other limper now re-pots. OK, NOW this hand has my attention.  I briefly consider the various possible things that can be going on here but in the end I'm positive that it is what it looks like, namely that I'm up against pocket sixes. Now I don't want to make this sound like any genius maneuver because there is no way that this guy is folding and I certainly am not going anywhere but I instinctively go with first level thinking and flat call hoping somehow to draw in more action from the first bettor. BB smartly enough folds. First bettor slinks away. Good fold dude, nice stab but I can guarantee that you are well behind here. Turn is what I presume is the case 6 as if I needed any more help getting chips in the middle. I check, he shoves, I...call? Yeah, I think that's the right move here and he sees the bad news. Unfortunately for him the river is a non-hand voiding Jh and I double up. By the way, I'm a genius for limping pre-flop.

Meanwhile, simultaneously over at an adjacent table, I inherit 4722ds in the BB and flop bottom set on a K72 board. I know the drill, pot and stop so I deposit the obligatory 8 cents hoping nobody has anything. UTG pots. Cutoff raises. Third nuts on a scattered rainbow flop? Easy fold. Re-raise, shove, call behind me and I can name both of their hands before they are turned up. KK is in the drivers seat. 77 is stuck putting him on Kx or 22. If they only knew what I threw away. Turn and river are harmless and pocket kings drags the pot.

Overquads and under-underset at the same time on two different tables. Brrr...coolers.

Right moves, wrong results

The session started off well enough. First hand is AA96ss in the BB. Cutoff pots, SB calls, I re-pot which enough to get me halfway in. Cutoff re-re-pots and I call. Villain shows T643ss. Standard aggro donkage. My aces hold and I punch out of the table.

Another table, button pots, I re-pot with AAT3ns again getting halfway all in. He flats and we see a 974 flop with two hearts and the rest goes in. He calls with KT95ss (not hearts) and trips up on the river. Standard.

I fold a while then I see a flop with AKJ3ds. Flop comes AA2 and I'm in position against two others. A 2xmin-bet from first to act, then a call, then it's to me. I have the nut flush draw which I'm not counting on but it's better to have it than to not have it. Top trips top kicker but more importantly three side cards above the one on board. Admiral Ackbar is discreetly informing me that it's a you-know-what. Threepio is telling me the odds against being good here. I tell him not to tell me the odds by potting it. Get a call and a shove. Trap: confirmed. At this point I'm priced in with three live kickers and if I'm lucky an extra ace if one of them has an ill advised flush draw and the other has deuces full. Everyone's all in. Second to act has AQ92, as suspected. Lead donk has an irrelevant lower flush draw and an equally irrelevant wheel draw. Cool. Dead money that gives me correct odds since I am a 2:1 dog but have three live cards to trump his boat with a better one. Miss. Miss.

A765ss sees a 77K flop. I do the first half of a pot and stop. One call. Limped pot which makes KK less likely but still wholly possible. Ace on the turn which makes me flush proof and I'm willing to pay off a better boat at this point so I shove and get called by a 5789 who's drawing dead.

Guy pots it in front of me. Flop comes 887 no suits. He leads into the pot and I repot with 9TQK for an open ender and some fold equity. He calls and shows 4459 for a severe underpair and a gutshot that's no good. I miss the however many outs I have that gives me a 60% edge and he takes it down.

Get it in on on the flop with set over set and the underset catches running straight thus showing why he was 6% to win on that hand.

And to cap it off I get my money in terribly when I just don't want to fold QQ on a TT6 flop. Actually, I wanted to suck out on a ten more than I didn't want to fold. Steam shove there that was the least necessary hand of the session.

Down $2.86 mostly due to the cards not falling the right way but with some self inflicted loss too.

Taking a break today

Just feeling like taking the day off. I'm up .64 for the day already plus another $3+ that I bumped up my roll by due to diligent accounting of rakeback. Not a bad day's work. I have cleared 50 Full Tilt Points on 13 days so far this month which means I only have to clear 7 of the next 14 to earn bronze medal status, a walk in the park, or 12 of the next 14 to earn silver which is totally doable and what I plan on doing.

Tactic: Pot and stop

In previous posts I've mentioned the term "pot and stop" which is the term I use for the tactic of potting a relatively small pot once if I am the one opening betting then bailing on the hand if I get any heat whatsoever without improving. This is what I use for trap hands which are strong but not worth going to the mat with. Some examples of where I would do this include:

• Hitting bottom two or top and bottom on a relatively dry flop
• Sucker end of a straight
• Bottom set
• Non-nut flush
• Trips but not a boat
• Flush on a paired board
• Flopping three pair
• Set with a straight or flush possible

I used to get too invested in these types of hands but there's a reason why they call them trap hands because they seem like they are good and in Hold'em they often are but in Omaha they just lose way too often to play them to the hilt.

Bankroll rakeback adjustments

Earlier I had posted that HEM is not calculating the rakeback properly. I've done some revisionist history'ing and retroactively adjusted my rakeback along the way based on the weekly rakeback reports. I took my actual raw roll amount, added the cumulative rakeback up to that point, compared that amount to HEM's value, then finally added a bonus at midnight of that date to adjust for the discrepancy. This will smooth out the curve instead of having that one big jump like I had previously. I will periodically make adjustments so that my blue line better reflects the actual bankroll amount instead of HEM's calculated amount. My current adjusted roll is $206.33 after 82,705 hands.

Getting it in good

Just had a little 30 minute session good for 264 hands and .53 of sugar. I was all in seven times, had equity of 55%, 64%, 70%, 88%, 90%, 91%, and 100% and won all but the 91% one (see below). Would have been a nice sweep if not for the irritating one outer but still, can't complain too much lest that be excessively ROTty.

Probably the most entertaining hand sequence went like this. I get AAKTds UTG and min-raise. Folds to SB who pots it. Back to me and I repot, call. We're all in going to the flop and I need to fend off JQ32 rainbow...as you can see villain has somewhat different pre-flop hand selection standards. I flop the nut flush draw then the turn completes it and villain is drawing dead. I sweep the pot and cards are dealt for the very next hand where I pick up AA85ss in the BB. A limp, a fold, and then the SAME villain pots it, I re-pot, he shoves, I call. This time he shows KKQTss, a much better hand than last time but a terrible matchup against aces. Board runs T48 5 2 and I win with an unnecessary two pair leaving villain with .07 after which I leave the table. See ya, thanks for playing!

All rivers are one outers

Imagine if you will a battle of the blinds. I raise with AKK6 single suited from the SB. Villain defends with who knows what in the BB. Flop comes KQ2 rainbow. I lead for pot, villain re-pots, I shove, villain calls. I show top set, villain shows 226J for bottom set and needs either running hearts or the case deuce. Turn puts out a three of diamonds and the river produces the you-know-what.

At times like these I try to remember all the times that I sucked out a one outer. Of course good players don't get themselves in the situation where they need to catch a one outer, right? Well it happens, both ways...though it seems to always happen the other way more often. And it stings when it does. But I always try to keep things in the math perspective. After 80K hands there are bound to be one outers along the way. And then it occurred to me that ALL rivers are one outers. The odds of the river being the jack of diamonds are the same as the three of clubs or the ace of spades. Now whether that card makes someone's hand or not is another question and whether or not that is the ONLY card that can make someone's hand is a different situation still. It's actually a pretty rare occurrence that there is even a scenario where someone only has exactly one out much less hit it.

So the hand is an interesting study in probabilities and notable for its rarity. Still sucks though.

HOTD: Kings full of aces, not as great as it sounds

I limp in on the button with K3K6. Flop comes AAK, good and bad. Now in NLHE this would be a moderately great flop but in Omaha this is the purest of trap hands. The BB has me well covered and leads out for pot. Folds around to me and I pot him back since I do not give him credit for being able to lead out with aces full of kings there from early position since any ace will bet for him and he can afford to let pocket pairs boat up first. Likewise I take him off of quad aces. So now we know he has one ace, no kings, and three other cards. Villain is very deep stacked and I give him credit for being a competent player. He likewise probably does not give me credit for aces full of kings either or I would likely flat call. He flat calls my raise. Turn is a Th which happens to make a royal possible too. I was really preferring not to see any other broadway cards come out but in reality no card is safe since he was in the BB. He checks to me and I'm just too short stacked to worry about having to make any really tough decisions. I commit the rest of my chips and hope for the best. He calls and shows AJ62. So far so good. Turn is an 8 and I drag the pot.

Underboats are a terrible place to be and I was fortunate that I didn't have to be put to the test if we were both really deep stacked. I was also lucky to be in position in the hand because I would have led out and villain may well have just flat called to be conservative though it looks exactly the same as slow playing AK and I would have been in a real bind then. This particular hand didn't really tax me due to my stack but the hand analysis would be identical to having a full buy at risk.

Solid showing

Very good session. I avoided mistakes, played smart, made a couple of nauseating laydowns to what I believe were bluffs, and benefitted from atrocious villain play.

Biggest loss of the session was when I was dealt AT23ds. Flop comes KJ5 with two of my suit. I make a min stab then get potted back. With clean flush and straight outs I call. Turn gives me a glorious queen for broadway and the nut flush redraw. Villain and I get it all in on the turn and I figure I'm freerolling on the guy but he turns over a set of jacks then rivers a paired 5. But if the biggest loss was when I was 77% to win I can't complain about my play at least.

Biggest mistake was paying off the nut flush with a seven high flush. No excuse for that one.

Biggest win was when my flopped broadway averted two flush draws, chop outs, and two pairs waiting to boat up. I also benefitted from villain trying to push me off the nut hand on the river. Ummm...call?

Bottom line: $3.31 to the good.

Down session then finally an up session

Now wait, a flush beats a boat right? I had a terrible call off with trips queen kicker on a AAK flop. That turns into the nut flush with the same card that boats up villain. Lousy play and by far the biggest error in the earlier session. Lost a big all in with my AAxx ahead which cost me over a buy in. First session put me down $2.39.

Second session was much better with a $1.52 profit despite getting my money in with 95% equity on a brutal suckout with villain going runner runner to make a bigger boat than I could muster with my top set on the flop.

Trailing 2K hands are still well EV- but at least the slide has been turned around for now.

Largely mistake free but still a down session

Biggest mistake was not giving credit for a broadway wrap. I flop AK top two then a T peels off on the turn. I figure there's no way he'd chase a gutter but he had QJT. I'd play it the same way as he did. I didn't boat up and ship my chips over to him.

Lost with an underset of queens to kings. Cooler, though I had an inkling after the third raise. But that ends up being KQ or bottom set as well.

Flopped top set and charged villain the maximum on the flop and turn but he caught is bare nut flush draw on the river. Nothing I could do about that.

Played a hand perfectly where I flat called a pot with the nut straight. Then potted him back after picking up a flush draw in case we were chopping before. He caught a four outer when he was going nuts with bottom two.

Lost a flip and was also surprised on a different hand when a guy was chasing a straight draw on a paired board. He made it and was good but he's begging to lose chips in the long run doing that.

Those were the major battles. I did feel like my game was running off the rails about 3/4 of the way through the session but I re-focused and pulled it back together. Still, I took it on the chin to the tune of $2.26. My earn rate is way negative over the past 2000 hands at -$1.81/hour.

Some lessons learned, some not so much

Back to the grind and with the sting from last night's implosion still front and center. The session netted exactly zero on the green line which is really a like a win considering the mistakes I made. Some of the hands followed procedure while others deviated and I paid the price.

I started out very solid. Simply folding hands, taking free cards when I don't have a made hand, winning uncontested showdowns due to good pre-flop hand selection, etc. Sweet.

#14 I call with AQJ2 on the button. Flop is JJ3 and the hijack seat pots it for .10. This is an odd situation because normally I would be the first to the pot after which I should give up unless I boat/quad up. So in position I decide to flat call instead. Turn brings a T and villain pots it again, enough to put me all in. If I was not behind before then I most certainly can be now. Everything tells me that he has threes full or J3 though. I might have six outs to win if we don't share the ace or queen. I'm getting roughly 2:1. Even though I'm short stacked the right play here based on read is to fold. So of course I call off the rest of my stack and am looking at jacks full of threes as suspected. Queen on the river rewards me for making the wrong play. That was a warning to tell me "you get away with this one because you at least knew better but don't tempt fate anymore."

#84 I min raise UTG with ATAJss in hearts hoping for someone to open the door. No luck. See a four handed flop of K95 two hearts. So far I have .04 of my .83 starting stack in the middle. I pot it for .17 and get repotted. Folds to me and I calculate that I have 8 clean hearts (possibly 9 if he doesn't have a set), two clean aces, and three clean queens for a gutterball straight. I'm actually getting sufficient overlay here so I shove and get snap called by second set. I miss and lose the hand. I don't regret the min-raise. I could have check/called the flop then folded if I didn't improve. I did get sufficient overlay but only after I put so much money in when I was behind. Marginal spot.

#179 I get 8242s in the BB, see a flop for free, and flop bottom set on T52 flop. OK, what's the procedure here? Pot and stop. So I pot it and get two callers. Turn is an offsuit 8, a total blank. What's that procedure again? Oh I'm supposed to stop as in bail on the hand. No more VPIP, understand? So with red flags all around and alarms going off, what do I so? Not only do I bet it but I pot it. I get re-potted and I call of the few remaining pennies and hand them over to top set. What's the other rule? Don't get invested in BB hands unless you have either a premium hand that you'd play anyway or the nuts, nothing else. The hand that should have cost me .08 max ended up costing me .54 instead. Wrong, wrong, wrong. And I knew it at the time too which is the most ridiculous part.

#189 I pot to .09 pre-flop (leaving me .58 behind) from the BB with AA23ss and get two callers. Flop comes 6Q8 with two clubs giving me an overpair and the nut flush draw. I bet half pot (gold star here, that is enough to figure out what is going on). Then I get re-potted. What do I do? Fold? Like I should? Nope. In goes the money and I lose to a set of sixes. If I can get pot committed then it's OK to stack off but I was not getting correct pot odds to proceed and drove right through the red light. Hand should have cost .16 and cost the full .58 instead.

#237 Finally I do something right in a big pot. I get my entire stack in pre with AA83ss. I have 50% equity in a three way pot for a healthy overlay. Flop comes Q86 and BB shoves, not a good sign. Cutoff calls and I see 89TJ for a wrap and QT58 for top two and a flush draw who takes the lead. Turn 3, river 3 and I take it down with trips though at the time I thought I merely counterfeited the two pair. That hand brings me exactly back to even for the session. Sometimes ending up with zero profit is like a victory.

Overall the lesson is pretty cut and dried. Just play properly, avoid investing in trap hands, fold when you are EV+ to fold, get your money in good, etc. There was no mystery in any of these hands. In each case I pretty much had the hands read correctly and knew whether I should proceed or not. Sometimes I crossed the street against the light and got lucky but the right move is not to be in that situation in the first place. Again, I am very satisfied with the fact that I at least know when I am getting money in bad instead of scratching my head wondering why I'm losing. Just need some more work on folding in those situations.

More badness

Just had another session riddled with mistakes.

Getting over involved in a hand with top pair of aces.

For some reason got went to the mat with top pair of jacks with a paired board.

Went with the sucker end of a straight which happened to be good but lost to a running flush. I know that might seem ROTty but I shouldn't have been in the hand anyway.

Went all in pre-flop with kings which ran into, of course, aces. I have to say that the aggros will get definitely get action when they have it because of all the times they raise with junk.

Another hand with just top pair of aces. Loses to running flush.

Broke protocol by going with bottom set. I played QQ44 pre-flop and hit the four. I should pot and stop but instead I put the foot to the floor and top two pair ended up pairing for a better boat then proceeded to quad up just to drive the point home further.

Had a very discouraging suckout when I got over a buck all in on a Q63 rainbow flop with top set and an 84% equity against AATT then have villain spike an ace on the turn. I didn't need that hand to accompany my bad play but when things are going bad they're going bad.

Get it all in pre-flop with aces double suited and run into...wait for it...aces double suited. He rivers a third spade and my 51% edge pre-flop (due to kickers) fails to even chop.

Pot it pre-flop with kings and get a re-pot. I'm only invested .07 at this point so did I learn my lesson from earlier in the session? Nope. Get it all in and run into aces single suited in diamonds which proceed to flop the nut flush.

At this point I'm done. I know I'm playing badly so I pull the plugs on all the tables and shut down operations. I've gone south of the $200 mark again and am trending in the complete wrong direction. Very disappointed in my play because I know better. The silver lining here is that I DO know better than to get involved in the spots that I did. It's hard enough to have the nuts hold up and win so there is absolutely no need to spot villain major pot equity by mixing it up in marginal spots or when way behind. Next step is just to follow through and simply fold those hands. We'll try again tomorrow.

Mistakes + suckouts = bankroll damage

The bad news is that the last session was disastrous on the bankroll. The good news is that I know what I did wrong which is much better than not knowing why chips are going the wrong way.

#62 Session started out strong with a big win on hand 62 where I tripled up a fat buy in when I flopped top set of aces and they held through all streets.

#125 Raised pre with AAQQss in clubs and got 40% of my stack in before an all diamond flop comes out. The pot is bigger than my remaining stack and I shove it in there with no flush and no set leaving me with runner runner outs to win at best if I am up against a made flush. Not sure what the numbers are here but it seems like I could have gotten the same information with a smaller bet and saved myself some money. Or, I could have just check/folded to a potential bluff or a made flush. Just bad board texture that I don't need to go after.

#142 For some reason I was going crazy with top pair of aces no redraw and ran into second set.

#252 Marginal stack off with KKxx on a 666 T 9 board. I was only behind quads, AAxx, tens full, and nines full and sure enough I found tens full.

#791 I violated the pot and stop rule after flopping trip fives. Stack off to the flopped queens full without boating up.

#904 Get stacked when I am betting the nut flush and happy to be getting action until I noticed the board is paired. Duh.

The rest of the major losses were people catching two outers to my aces and one underset of sevens.

All told the session cost me $5.24 to the green line. The mistakes cost me about half of that. Ironically I feel good about the session in that I can pinpoint exactly what went wrong and where. I'm also still above the $200 mark thanks to the padding I had built up. The session took a terrible toll on my trailing averages as I knew it would but keeping tabs of those numbers helps me to keep focused on what I need to do in order to drive the bankroll up. This was the proverbial wake up call to make sure that I don't get complaisant about the play of hands and that I need to stay sharp to avoid mistakes.

HOTD: Another misclick

I raise to 3xBB from the cutoff with TJQK single suited in clubs trying to steal the blinds with the best hand. BB calls. Flop comes AhJh2h which looks nothing like my clubs. Check, check. Turn pairs the deuce, BB bets pot, and I'm totally done with this hand since I have second pair on a paired flushy board. But instead of jettisoning my cards I end up snap calling instead. Oy. River is a 6d, BB checks to me. If there was ever a "have to bet to win the pot" situation I think this one is it, then again I could still be ahead and the guy was bluffing a scare card with air. Nonetheless I take the check to me as a green light and I bet half pot and take it down. That was yet another misclick or the second one in about 80,000 hands. Clearly this is getting to be a significant problem that I'm going to need to work on. At least I won this time instead of dumping the nuts.

Under control but stepped away anyway

I took a couple beats (AAxx favored in a three way all in pre and top set losing to a bare open ender) and a semi-cooler (jacks full of kings versus kings full of aces). I felt that I was still playing well and made some of the money back but decided that it would be best to just shut down the tables anway. Took down a couple of small pots on my way out. I'm just playing it very conservative to avoid tilting off chips. The tables will be there any time I want and I can just come back later. No need to stay and risk playing less than optimally. Dropped $1.17 in that session. I'll write it off to variance.

How Sushi got his groove back

I wish I knew. For whatever reason it is, I've been putting together good sessions all weekend and am definitely trending upwards. Granted, there was a significant bump in the bankroll due to the rakeback correction but I've added on between two or three times that amount since so the adjustment is not all at play here. I'm particularly pleased with getting my green line turned around and headed north again because when I get the raw bankroll numbers climbing the rakeback numbers ascend even faster. It is possible to keep building your overall bankroll even if you are "losing" according to the raw score but beating the rake is necessary if you want to accrue money with speed and critical if you hope to move up in stakes.

A couple of things that I'm doing which I believe help are the following:

• Post my starting bankroll number. All I do is type my current bankroll number in a text document and put that number in the lower right corner of the screen. Then I put the FTP window right next to it so I can see at a glance where I am in relation to my starting point of the session. If I donk off chips I can immediately see the damage that has occurred and I know that I'll have to fight to get that back. And thanks to rake, gaining a buy in is definitely harder than losing one. Tilting off chips seems like the right thing to do in the heat of the moment. You might know that it is wrong and that you will regret it later but that doesn't stop you from paying way too much to chase draws or trying to push a bluff through. By getting real time feedback of your actions it brings the consequences front and center instead of sticking your head in the sand and looking at the damage later.
• Watching my trailing averages. Along the same lines, I have set up HEM so that in session view I just monitor the last 2000 hands which equate to the past day or so which is a short enough window to reflect the last session but long enough to smooth out variance. That allows me to easily inspect the hands that I just played since the latest session is right at the top of the list. But it also lets me keep tabs on how much I've made in the past 2000 hands. As of my last session I'm at $8.77 profit for the trailing 2000 hands which works out to a very healthy 44 big blinds/100 hands on the green line the rakeback figure would obviously be more. I don't expect to be able to sustain a number that high but by keeping tabs on the trailing average it makes me think more about each hand as it relates to that number and not about how it relates to the current session.

It feels really good to be north of $200 again and have a buffer to weather out a bad run or two. So the plan for now is to try to just put it in cruise control and continue to grind at current stakes. I want to keep better track of what I am doing so that I can bottle up the play good formula and refer to it when I start to stray from it. I'm getting in enough play per day to make sure that I clear my Iron Man minimum for the month. As long as I can combine solid play and hand volume the bankroll will fall in line automatically.

Full Tilt Points

Another form of rakeback on FTP is their Full Tilt Points program where you get one point for each dollar raked from the pot at your table. You get points even if you didn't play the hand so if you're at a table of maniacs you benefit from their action in the form of points and if you can stand the variance you can get your chips in with a big overlay when you pick up a premium hand.

Once you accumulate enough Full Tilt Points, what are they good for? That's where the company store comes in. You can buy all sorts of stuff including a lot of FTP branded merch like hats, jerseys, cups, etc. The more points you acquire the closer you get to more desirable stuff like iPods, cameras, and home electronics all the way up to a Mini Cooper selling for 6 million points. A custom avatar sells for a cool million.

Right now I'm sitting at 3,152.05 points or in other words I've been at tables which have been raked for over three grand which further translates to about fifteen times that amount of chips being churned through. That's approaching 50 thousand dollars of action at the tables I've seen and almost all of that has been at the .01/.02 stakes. Personally I am not really interested in a lot of the garb up for sale; however, one thing that caught my eye is a MacBook Pro going for 270,000 points. Since you can't really do anything else with the points except for use them to buy stuff from the store I plan on just banking them until I get enough for the laptop or until something else appeals to me. I'm already over 1% of the way there!

Sick run to get back over $200

I've been on a heater over the past couple days. I feel like I've been playing pretty clear headed and the cards have been working out too including some big hands holding up and my share of suckouts. Over the past 3000 hands (about 2.5 days of playing) I've run my raw bankroll up $11.51 which puts me at $1.10/hour, strong. Including rakeback that play has boosted me up over $15 and put me back over the top of the double century, hopefully for good this time. I wish I knew more about exactly what I am doing differently. Part of it is tempered aggression, not totally aggro but measured pressure when I think I can take down a pot with what may or may not be the best hand. I've also been treating my big pairs like aces after I finally realized that much of the time any overpair to the board is as good as any other.

Next step is to keep building on top of the $200 figure for my blue line and work on getting my green line back above the zero point which is still $33 in the hole.

Stop loss needed

Just had a session where I dropped over 200 big blinds before scraping about a third of that back. So what happened?

Hand 22: Had some small skirmishes then hit top set for a healthy pot.
Hand 27: Three way all in pre with AAQ6ss, flop top set, lose $2 pot to a gut shot wheel.
Hand 58: Hit second set of queens, get it on on the flop when I'm 65% three ways, lose to both others making wheels.
Hand 83: AAQ6 outflopped by K5J8ss which catches two random pair.
Hand 87: AA28ss vs bottom two on flop.
Hand 116: Set of sevens run down by runner runner flush.

Hand 118: AA83s runs into trips made by J872ss

Hand 151: My trip aces get outkicked.
Hand 160: Queens overpair to board loses to trip sixes.
174-180: Mini-heater where I catch a string of hands that hold up.
188: I do get 25 BBs back when my aces catch up on the turn to a flopped top set of jacks.

Losing the big pots where I manage to get it all in with AAxx was a bad start to the session. I could tell that I was starting to overplay hands. When I ran aces into trips I could tell that I was losing by the betting action and the only reason there was betting action to be seen was that I hadn't gotten enough in pre to pot commit myself. I also donked off chips when I had my set of sevens find an ugly turn which made a straight possible then an uglier river which put three hearts on the board, either one of which should have kept me from betting OOP. With A343ds on a AAs flop I am literally beating nothing that is giving me action there. This hand was a violation of both getting invested with a BB hand and the pot and stop procedure. I talked myself into proceeding based on my wheel draw outs which might not even be good.

Bad luck followed by bad play. I really need to set up a protocol to stop the bleeding so that I can limit the losses to just bad luck before it turns into bad play. It gets so tempting though to just try to play through it since all the tables are in motion and there is inertia to try to just power through it. Playing it out would be a viable option as long as I continue to play level headed but once I start donking I need to pull the plug. Tough part is to figure out a way to enforce a stop loss system because the line can get gray between run bad and play bad.

75,000 mile checkup

It's been a very frustrating past few weeks. After breaking the $200 mark my green line has continued to plunge to new depths and my overall bankroll is basically only treading water thanks to rakeback. If I had never had the chart climb like it did in early February I wouldn't be so vexed but the fact that I did have such success just makes it all the more puzzling why I can't get the same results.

Part of the issue is a bit of run bad. For instance, according to HEM getting it all in pre-flop with AAxx is EV- for me over the past few thousand hands whereas it is way EV+ over the entire catalog of hands. One of the suckouts happening recently was when some donk got shove happy with 6669ss and I of course gladly took my AAJ9ss to battle with his hand. I even had his 9 covered but the two diamonds he had were enough to give him a flush to eliminate my staggering 83% pre-flop advantage.

From time to time I can tell that I'm steaming off chips though I can contain the damage largely by buying in short and staying at the lowest stakes. Overall though I feel like I'm playing reasonable. When I check hands after importing them into HEM I can see that I'm usually getting my money in good and when I'm not it's usually after pot committing myself with AA pre-flop. At least I stopped the slide in my bankroll and I'm concentrating more on mending the $60 drop in my green line from its peak.

HOTD: Thanks for the slow play

I have a big blind special J433ds I'm actually not even watching this table since I'm ready to fold to any pressure whatsoever. By the time I get back to looking at the table it has checked through to the river and it looks like KQ6 2 5 no flush. Hey, I have the nuts here and it's just me and the button since the SB folded. I put out a min .02 bet just trying to get a curiosity call. Then I button pots it. I initially think I'm going to make some money here but after inspecting the board to double check that I can't be beat I figure we're just chopping; nonetheless, I re-pot back to him to allow him to make a mistake. He calls with top set of kings which he gave a free card to on the flop despite two hearts and an open ender possible. And another free card on the turn after a second diamond appeared and offered up my gutshot. Then he perked up on the river just in time to flush his money away.

Tactic: Steam play deterrent

I used to steam call way more than I should. For example, I hit top set on a K72 flop with two clubs. I pot it and get one caller. Turn is a 5 of diamonds. I'm still clear so I pot it again and villain calls again. River is the ten of clubs completing the possible flush. So I make a half pot sized bet in case he wasn't on a flush draw. Villain raises and then I dump in the remaining portion of my stack even though I'm way more sure that I'm beat than the pot odds I'm getting. Why call? Mostly just to be a donk and "punish" him for paying way too bad of a price to draw out by throwing chips at him. Whatever the suckout, unless I was too deep stacked I'd throw chips away. Paired board? My nut flush is still probably good, right? Nope. Four liner to a straight? But I had top set and the nut flush draw. I should have won that hand and you were playing crap that backed into the winning straight so I'll going to pummel you with my stack after you draw out. Just makes no sense. I know it at the time but for some reason the brain doesn't fully stop the hand from clicking the call button. True you do catch a bluff every so often but not nearly enough to make it an EV+ move. Terrible play.

After dumping enough money away on steam calls I started to do the following in order to help prevent steam calls or ill advised hero calls: I ask myself "how many better hands are there than the hand I have?" And I force myself to deal with real numbers. For example, my broadway straight is the nuts until the board pairs on the river and villain is now leading in to me. Instead of inventing hands that I'm beating like "he could be a donk who thinks trips are good here" I have to start listing all the hands that are beating me. Set of X, set of Y, set of Z, XY, XZ, etc. That helps me put in perspective just how far down the list my hand ends up being and makes it easier to fold. If I do end up making a bad call then after the hand I make myself go through the exercise again to reinforce the fact that this is a game of the nuts and to stop bleeding off chips in those situations. Now there are times where you just have coolers and top boat loses to quads. But the exercise works there too by telling me that that was a rare occurrence and that there was literally only one hand that I was losing to and many that I was beating. Performing the step of placing my hand in the list hands possible acts as a mechanical safety to prevent me from steaming off chips. Basically, before I push the button I need to remove the tag that says "You realize that any combination of an ace and K, Q, J, or T makes a straight here don't you? Do you really think your set is good here?" That extra step has helped me save a bunch of chips and has really helped to put my mind at ease when I fold the former nuts.

HOTD: Whoops...I mean...Yeah!

I am in the SB with A8KKss, a hand that I definitely want to see a flop with but I'm not going to go crazy with having run KKxx into AAxx with a frighteningly high level of frequency. UTG folds then hijack pots it to .07. OK, that's cool I'm in so I go to click the "call .07" button and move on to the other tables asking for my attention. By the time the action is back on me I'm first to act and I flopped top set but with a straight possible. I decide to just play conservative and check. Hijack seat makes it .74 to go, whoa, what? How did this pot get so big? Cutoff player repots and that easily has me covered. I re-check the board and realize that KJ8 does not make a straight possible so I'm sitting on the current nuts. I commit another .42 to the middle of the pot and we're all in going into the last two streets which come blank and blank so I triple up. Reviewing the hand later I can see that the cutoff re-potted the hijack seat and I must have clicked the "call xx" button the instant after it changed to .24 instead of .07. As it turns out the re-potter had AA33ss and I was a distant second place in the hand pre-flop. Hijack had AQTT and flopped an open ender. Better to be lucky than good I suppose. It turned out OK but I'm pretty sure that flat calling 1/3 of your stack in that situation is the wrong play.

HOTD: Boat, boat, quads

I limp in with JJ99ss to go set mining. Five to a flop of 676. Checks around, cool, free card. Three on the turn, checks around again. 9 on the river, hey, this must be my lucky day. Pot sized bet from SB, raise from cutoff. I'm on the button and smell something terribly wrong going on. Someone clearly was slow playing something. Maybe one of these donks thinks their straight is good but not both of them. I do a quick scan of my chip stack and I'm sitting over my standard buy in of .70 and think to myself that this is going to be high variance. In an effort to "control" the pot I just flat call the raise hoping that one or both of these guys has to realize that not all three of us could have it. But SB min-raises, cutoff re-pots, and I am just not good enough to fold top boat. Heck I'm not even good enough to fold bottom boat yet. So in goes the money. By the time the dust settles the cutoff shows 6622ss for the flopped quads. The idiot UTG guy who doesn't realize how vulnerable he was had 9877ss for the flopped overboat and is now in third place. I wish SB had defended his hand so I could get out. As is it was the most costly hand of the session for me. Well the read was correct but I just can't get away from that hand nor should I, I don't think. Just a cooler.

Hands by the numbers

Jason asked a question in the comment section of the last post where he was wondering where my volume of hands came from. The response is below:

Well putting in more hands when I am EV- is only drilling me further down into the hole. I need to get back to the groove I was in after I got my game straightened out (about hand 20,000) but before it went off the rails (about hand 40,000). Once I get that figured out then my grinding will be doing me some good. As to your question, my first hand was Jan 15th 2010 at 9:18:24 pm. So as of now I've been at it about 51 days and change. When Royal asked earlier HEM said I was doing about five hours a day though the real number is always going to be lower than what HEM says due to how it calculates session duration. I've been doing usually 6-8 tables when playing though I'll do as little as two tables while eating breakfast or whatever. I also play six max tables which go a lot faster then full ring. So working that out it comes out to somewhere between 200-300 hands/hour but again that is dependent on how HEM calculates it. That figure is how many hands/hour I get when playing. If you spread out all the hands over the entire day it would average out to about 54 hands/hour continuously or not quite one hand per minute, about the equivalent of playing a single table non-stop.

Bankroll discrepancies - I'm "missing" a few bucks

Is there an accountant in the house? I am having a difficult time sorting this out but I believe that Hold'em Manager's rakeback feature might be inaccurate, inaccurate to the tune of about ten bucks or so. Currently HEM projects that my total bankroll is $177.82. However, when I try to calculate my bankroll differently I come up with a vastly different number. The FTP cashier says that I have $166.49 currently and my rakeback.com's report says that I have $20.01 of rakeback that I have accrued so far since last Tuesday but has not been credited to my account yet. That was for all action up until midnight eastern last night. Since then I've only played 355 hands to the tune of a 4 cent profit, negligible. So in other words, if I don't play a single hand until after my rakeback gets added my total bankroll would be $166.49 plus $20.01 rakeback plus .04 for last night's hands. That equals $186.54, not the $177.82 that HEM claims. I will do more investigation but I am going to go with the hard numbers and not HEM's calculations for my official number. Likewise, that is how all bankroll numbers will be calculated for the April 1 milestone.

How does this happen? I've long wondered about how HEM figures rakeback and I'm pretty sure there are a couple things going on. First of all, 27% rakeback does not make for round numbers. My suspicion is that HEM might only hold whole penny values while FTP is calculating to the fractional penny. Over tens of thousands of hands (currently at 67K+) the accumulation of errors will add up to significant money. The other thing that I believe contributes to the difference is split pots. I don't know if it is dividing the rake and the rakeback properly between the players who split the pot or only by the person listed first. It is also possible that returned bets are being calculated in rake and rakeback. If I pot it for .20 and the person calling only has .05, the FTP HH says that .15 is returned while the HEM version of that same hand says that I "won" the .15 returned to me.

Furthermore, after completely rebuilding the HEM database with HH files directly from FTP (not the ones off of the local drive) I can take the raw total from HEM ($66.28) and add in all rakeback ($96.58) plus the four pennies from last night and get $162.90 which is still off from the $166.49 currently shown in my cashier window but by a more reasonable $3.59. That figure is close to what I get paid out to me each day for rakeback and is 20 cents off from the last day of rakeback that was added to my roll. Regardless of what is causing the issue, the numbers are not working out properly and I'm going to look into it more. Until then I've given myself a bonus in of $8.72 in HEM to bring the two numbers closer in line with each other until I can figure out a better solution. If you are using HEM to calculate your bankroll you might want to double check its figures. Again, only official numbers such as cashier amount and rakeback reports will count for the April 1 milestone.

My new adjusted bankroll tally is $186.54.

HOTD: Boat, boat, boat

I limp in the cutoff with AT74ss going flush mining with broadway possibilities. SB completes and BB checks, everyone else is out. Flop is 77T with two diamonds, not bad I have a boat. Two checks to me and I bet half pot trying to trigger someone with the case 7 into action. Flat call and another call. Turn is Ah which upgrades my boat to sevens full of aces and puts the second heart out there as well so hopefully one or both of them have flush draws. Checks to me again and I bet half pot again. Maybe I could have gotten away with a full pot there since it is the last street to draw at. Dunno. One caller. River is Th which completes a flush, double pairing the board and upgrading my boat one final time to tens full of aces. I'm no longer worried that SB was slow playing tens full on the flop. Checks to me again and I make one last half pot bet. SB shows K793ds so he actually did flop trip sevens but didn't go crazy with them. I was also in danger of him catching a king to trump my boat. After the turn though he was drawing dead. He did river his flush though which I think helped get me paid off.