Change of Scenery

I've moved my blog over to wordpress because I am a constantly changing unsatisfiable prat. :)

Click here to view the new blog: awmaas.wordpress.com

Monthly Report - August 2009

August was a humbling month. Humbling in the sense that I was paddled in the ass several times despite playing really great poker all month. I'm running $12 below expected-value this month with the beats from my previous post. Hell, tonight alone I had my KK end up against AA preflop twice for my whole stack. The top graph is what the math says I should have won, the bottom graph is what actually happened this month.





But still, I stormed back tonight to make another last second save of the month. I went from being down $10 at the beginning of the month to winning enough money to buy a gumball from the crusty old machines outside Walmart. SUCK ON THAT POKER GODS.

Anyways, here's my results and new goals.

August Goals

1. 3k all the way.
2. Activate my recently acquired bonus from FullTilt and get back on that horse. NL5 can't be THAT different from what it was on Cake....right?
3. Put more effort into playing hands.

Results
1. Faaaaail only 2.2k or so. Disheartened by a 98% all-in that I lost on day one. Took a week off after that and wept softly in my closet.
2. Yep. Activated. Still runs through Sep 12th so I can clear some more of it. Did ok so far considered how little I played.
3. This one I am proud of. After taking those few horrible sessions right up the ass I got back on the horse towards the end of the month and playing solid as all hell and made it all back. Good confidence boost to salvage a shitty start to a month.


September Goals
1. Play 15 days 2-tabling this month to get a new $25 bonus Full Tilt is running. If things look up halfway through the month, try to hit the full $50.
2. I need to get continuation betting back up to where it should be. It's slipped the past two months when I get scared after taking a few beats. Stay aggressive!
3. Make up for the last two months of ass by putting in some serious volume. Hopefully goal 1 will help with that.

All in all, I'm still happy with how this month went. I've righted the ship on my lifetime graph and weathered a few beats pretty well. Hopefully this month I'll run hotter than Richard from Lost and skyrocket my graph to the promised land.

Bad Karma?

or "How I learned to stop worrying and love the river"

Well, hasn't this month just been shit-tastic so far! I've been playing better than I normally do and have been totally focused and making great plays....I SHOULD be up about $10-$15 this month already which would be a stellar start. But I've had some horrible luck. The following have all happened within the past 1500 hands.

AK vs AJ - Flop A92, all-in on the flop - Chance to win = 88.2%
Pot was $4.60 and he hit his jack on the river.

QQ vs A6 - Flop 6J2, all-in on the flop - Chance to win = 79.8%
Pot was $4.30 and he hit his ace on the turn.

67 vs 99 - Flop 568, turn 4 = straight for me - Chance to win on turn = 93%
Pot was $4.00 when I had the best hand. He catches a 7 on the river making a higher straight for him. Luckily like an idiot he only bet another .25 when he hit so I didn't lose much on the river.

Then the worst beat I've ever taken. I have to laugh at this one.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4588059

Click the "Show results" link at the bottom.

Runner-runner for a higher full house. At the time the money went all-in I had a 98.1% chance to win the hand. That's the biggest lead I've ever had where I end up losing. When the T hit on the turn I figured "Wow, nice try asshole" since that gave me a full house but was scary. Then the Ace hit. Ouch!

So I guess I'm happy that I'm playing awesome this month (my average pot equity when I get all-in is 83% this month, including an AK vs AK draw) but it sucks that I'm not winning the hands that I should. If I even win half of those hands I'm up for the month. Proof that poker still contains an element of luck. I know that over time I will beat these people by putting them in that same situation over and over but it stings when you lose big pots as big favorites that many times in a row.

Oh well. Time to look at funny pictures and stop venting.



Back to the grind!

Monthly Report - July 2009

July Goals

1. Tough with a few vacations this month but try to hit 3k hands again.
2. Try to get back to basics. I think I FPS'd* myself a bit this month.
3. Find out what the hell I'm doing wrong with suited connectors. I
   think I fear higher flushes WAY too much.

Results
1. Failed, but I was close. Lot's of vacation this month made it tough to play enough but I had about 2.5k hands.
2. I did get back to basics, but the tough thing is that when you play at levels where people will call you with ANYTHING, your winnings are highly dependent on your cards. I didn't hit very many big hands this month so I didn't get paid off.
3. I looked into this a bit more and I haven't hit many flushes or straights the last couple months. I'll have an open ended straight draw with a flush draw, get the right odds to chase and then completely whiff. So it's tough to win money with suited connectors when you don't hit any hands. :) Hopefully that will change next month but I'm not as worried about it anymore.

Summary - Quite the swingy graph

As you can see, frustrating for most of the month ending with the best session I've ever had. So I can't complain, but it was nerve racking for a bit there. And as I mentioned in my last post, my few big hands for the first half of the month seemed to be second best a lot. Still, I can't complain with a hobby that pays, no matter how little, and I knew going into this it would be slow going. This brings me up to five months straight with a small profit. That's the exact thing I wanted to see and I hope to keep grinding it up. Nothing much else to say about this month!

July Goals
August
1. 3k all the way.
2. Activate my recently acquired bonus from FullTilt and get back on that horse. NL5 can't be THAT different from what it was on Cake....right?
3. Put more effort into playing hands.

This month is dedicated to just getting back to playing a solid amount and shrugging off the craziness of last month. I think I was plotting out how much I had to play at a minimum to hit my goal for number of hands last month and it felt like a job instead of a game. It's supposed to be fun and I should be wanting to play more instead of fearfully holding on to winnings. I've more than shown I can beat these tiny levels so I need to just keep at it.

Here's to a better start to this month!

How to Fix a Losing Month

It's pretty easy. Just hit the nuts and win $40 in two hands. :D

Enough of the big boring informative posts! Days like today are why I enjoy playing poker and it's more fun to talk about them.

It's been kind of a lame month (poker wise) up until today. I was busy with travel and social life which was awesome but I had to scramble a bit at the end of the month to make anywhere near my goal for hands. To add to that, I have made second best hands a hell of a lot this month and was down over about 2000 hands.

I have AQ? Opponent has KK.
I have KK? Opponent has AA.

Sometimes you make the correct play and you lose in the short term. No biggie, but it definitely didn't spark my interest to try to play more in my already hectic schedule.

Then I played today....

And stuff like this happened....



KAPOW!

I love it. The money went all in AFTER the turn card so no I didn't suck out thank you very much. Notice the sidepot for a whopping grand total $24 pot pre-rake.

Then later ( I didn't screencap this one because I was too busy screaming with joy like a Southern Baptist) I managed to hit 4 of a kind aces when my opponent hit his full house. He kindly opened up his e-wallet and dumped the contents into my lap. Huzzah!

The reason those hands are so beautiful is because my opponent had an awesome hand worth going all-in with but I still have him beat. It doesn't matter if you have a royal flush unless your opponent has something good enough to call bets with. I could do no wrong tonight in that respect. All my big hands got paid off!

What an odd exciting night. It had been a crappy grind for the majority of this month but I'm back into the green! That makes 5 months straight where I've turned a profit.

Now it's off to the cabin this weekend for some R&R, but I'll hopefully have a proper monthly report up some time next week.

Until then, enjoy this video that sums up my night...on a much grander scale of course :)

My Bud the HUD

Well after several trips up north and a few Harry Potter screenings I finally have some time to write up another update! And considering I've had my new HUD program up and running for about a month now it's about time I show it off and explain how I use it.

So what is a HUD?

In general, HUD stands for Heads Up Display and in poker it refers to a program that overlays information about your opponents onto the tables you are playing at so you can make more informed decisions. It's kind of like a transparancy being plopped down over your computer monitor.

Support for different poker sites varies as certain sites openly allow HUDs (Full Tilt, Pokerstars) while others ban them from being used (Cake). As you play more and more hands with people, the stats will update automatically giving you a more accurate definition about your opponent's play.

Poker HUDs are extremely customizable allowing you to view whatever stats you want about your opponents. Here's what my current HUD configuration looks like.



You can see I have a small box of stats for each player sitting near their name on the table. I got this fantastic layout from a friend online. My stats for each player are as follows

NAME / A / B / C / D
E / F / G / H
I / J / K / L

A: VPIP - The % of hands where my opponent Voluntarily Puts money Into the Pot. Higher means a looser player who I will call with worse hands, lower means a player who only plays the cream of the crop so I should be careful.

B: PFR - The % of hands my opponent plays pre flop with a raise. This gives me an idea about how good of a hand my opponent needs to raise. So even if they play 100% of their hands preflop, if I know they only raise with aces and kings I can get out of the way.

C: Aggression factor - Basically it just tells me how often my opponent will bet or raise compared to how often they will just call. Good for sniffing out big hands from passive players.

D: Showdown % - When my opponent sees the flop, how often does he take the hand to showdown? Can tell me when an opponent is incapable of laying down a hand that they raises preflop with or let me know that I'm beat when someone calls a bet who usually never makes it to showdown.

E: Flop Cbet % - If my opponent raises preflop, how often will he bet the flop? Lot's of people (including me) will bet most flops if they were the original raiser preflop. This gives me an idea of how serious someone's flop bet is.

F: Fold to Cbet % - Related to E, how often will someone fold to another player's cbet. If this is high, I will bet the flop with almost any two cards because of the number of times I will win the pot from my opponent folding.

G: Steal attempts - Stealing the blinds is when you raise as the first person in at the cutoff or button position, often with less than desireable cards. Thus the name. How often does my opponent attempt this given the chance?

H: Fold to steal % - Similar to G. How often does this person give up their blinds to a steal attempt? I love when this is high. I'll raise any two cards and eat those blinds up.

I: 3bet % - When someone before them raises preflop, how often will this player re-raise? Not HUGELY important, but good to know whether the person is serious or not with their reraise.

J: Fold to 3bet % - Related to I, how often will they fold their original raise when you reraise them. Great for slamming the hammer down on loose annoying aggressive players. I prefer to just call preflop and let them bluff again on the flop before crushing them but hey it's still a good stat to have.

K: BB/100 - Big Blinds per 100 hands won (or lost). This is the yardstick of the poker world. You are striving to win about 10 BB per 100 hands in a cash game. So at my levels, that's about $1.00 per 100 hands. While 4 tabling at 60 hands per table per hour, that's about $2.40 an hour. Yay for half of minimum wage! Anyways, this stat lets me know who the fish are and who the sharks are. But there really aren't sharks where I play yet. Just fish and mentally incapacitated fish.

L: # of hands vs opponent - The higher this is, the more reliable my stats become.

So there you have it. Obviously I never want this to become a crutch that I rely on but it's great information to have when used properly. Also, it's not an automatic way to win. Hell, my winnings on Full Tilt have been crap compared to what I was doing on Cake which doesn't allow a HUD. The HUD can't protect you from constantly having the second best hand. :)

As for my play in general lately, this month has been pretty crap so far. I've lost most of my big pots and only won the small ones so I'm not experiencing quite the same success I had been in previous months but all is not lost! I still have half the month to play and hopefully I'll turn things around to show a respectable gain at the end of July.

Monthly Report - June 2009

I've been setting goals each month since I started so hopefully I'll stay diligent enough to post my progress up here on how each month went. Here are the goals I set at the beginning of the month.

June goals

1. Try to play 3k hands.
2. If HEM actually releases the next beta, buy the small stakes version.
3. Try to play a few tournaments on some of the older sites I have money on just to break up the cash grind.
4. Mix in some NL10 tables. Mandatory this month.
   

Results!
1. Over 4k this month. :)
2. Yep! The HUD is awesome for FT which again I need to write up a post about because it's so cool. Definitely worth the price.
3. Yep! I mincashed a Cellsino rebuy with huge layover. I lost a coinflip for either being chipleader or busto right after the bubble so I had a good shot at going really deep. I have to keep an eye out on Cellsino and Bodog and poach those tourneys.
4. Yep! I will admit I got hung up on building a roll on FullTilt trying out my new HUD playing NL5 but I did play NL10 for a good chunk of my hands this month and turned a small profit.

Summary - For the fourth month straight now I slowly won some more money with low volume. It's frustrating to not be able to put in 10-20k hands like some of the other guys I talk to online but I'm trying to stay patient. I was surprised at the difference between NL4 at Cake and NL5 at FT though. It really seems like the folks at FT are more willing to toss their stacks in. I'm fine with that and I was still playing well but the variance made my end of my month SO swingy. I had my biggest winning session and biggest losing session back to back to end the month so it's been a little crazy with ups and downs.

Regardless, I'll hopefully have bankrolls sufficient for NL10 on both Cake (already do) and FT (halfway there) soon and can stick to NL10 permanently after that. I was happy with myself that I hit all my goals again. I've been successful with that for the most part each month and I'd like to keep it that way.

July Goals

1. Tough with a few vacations this month but try to hit 3k hands again.
2. Try to get back to basics. I think I FPS'd* myself a bit this month.
3. Find out what the hell I'm doing wrong with suited connectors. I
   think I fear higher flushes WAY too much.

*FPS means "fancy play syndrome" where you out-think yourself against a really bad player when you don't need to.

On an odd note - I think Kristen may be some sort of lucky charm....or curse....not sure which yet. She sat and watched me for about 10 minutes last night. During the first 20 hands she saw, I had pocket aces 3 times, pocket queens once, AK once and I hit a set with a small pocket pair.

I've never gone on a heater of that magnitude before. All those things point to her being a lucky charm.....

.....but I didn't win anything more that a few small pots with those hands and when she left, I went completely card dead and ended up punting off two buyins with a bad string of luck.

Charm or curse? Maybe figuring that out should be another goal for me this month. :)

The Story So Far...

Here's my attempt at consolidating the first two years of my poker career into a brief history. Hopefully this will be the last big update to get all my backlogged info puked out so I can concentrate on smaller more fun updates from here on. I think I covered everything from the first day I put money online to the present. Enjoy!

Baby's First Deposit (July 2007)

Almost 2 years ago today I made my first deposit into a poker site. Since several of the major sites weren't accepting deposits for US players at the time I needed to take an odd approach. I signed up to www.Bodog.com (best known for their sports-betting) using phone cards purchased online. I had read a little bit online about basic strategy and had purchased my first poker book and was ready to take my first shot.

Playing small $3-$5 tournaments and .05/.10 cash games I ran about even over 6 months or so. I knew I was making mistakes and was getting frustrated with some of the results I had. I needed to stop jumping around from Sit-N-Gos (SNGs) to cash games to Multi-Table-Tournaments (MTTs) and just concentrate on one type of game that I liked. Between the frustration of not making any initial progress and the stress of buying a house I put poker on hold for a bit.

I Love 2+2 Publishing

After we got settled into our house, I revisited poker with new priorities: Take what I learned from my short break even stint and study a hell of a lot more before trying again. I bought SEVERAL poker books, most of them from 2+2 publishing, and read constantly. Various online reviews had recommended them as the poker bibles as opposed to many of the books you may see on racks at B&N saying "WINNING MILLIONS MADE EASY THROUGH POKER!" or other catchy crap. These were books written by pros with years of math and practice behind every tidbit of information they wrote. I encourage anyone interested to visit their forums. It's the premier poker strategy discussion forum on the web. I've learned just as much there as I have from books.

Here's the current collection
















While visiting these poker sites and forums, I started a business relationship with someone online who works as a poker affiliate. I was hired to design a website for him and the website revolved around his affiliate program reporting rakeback figures from various poker sites online. We've become great friends since then, but one of the bonuses at the time was his Canadian residency and willingness to help me transfer funds into some of the more popular sites online that I didn't have direct access to.
With new focus on my game and a much larger list of sites available to me I was ready to take my second shot.

The Experiment Begins (March 2009 - Present)

Four months ago I had my friend transfer money to a few poker sites in lieu of one of my payments from him for website work.

• www.CakePoker.com - A small site recommended by a few friends from the forums. The site has several gimmicky promotions and thus attracts HORRIBLE players. Even though the population is smaller on this site, playing here is basically the equivalent of printing money in your basement. It's where I play the majority of my cash games.

• www.FullTiltPoker.com - Probably the second largest poker site online behind Pokerstars. Great interface, tons of players at any time and fantastic promotions. Also, I can use my HUD on their site, but I'll save that topic for another post because it's so dang cool. I play here to mix things up, practice using my HUD and when Cake doesn't have a lot of tables running.

• www.bodog.com - I still had my original deposit on Bodog.com from my first shot. I play here very rarely now and use it to play in the occasional tournaments when the field looks juicy.

• www.cellsinopoker.com - This was for fun with some people I play with online. I only played a couple tournaments there and won some money but the majority of the players are from Europe so the tables are dead when I play during my prime time.

Following some advice from other players I set some goals for the first few months.

• Stick to cash games as my primary game
• Try to play 3,000 hands per month
• Post hand histories of difficultsituations for advice
• Don't tilt or be results-oriented
• Get comfortable playing 3-4 tabes at a time
• Maintain proper bankroll limits and move up in stakes when applicable

I've been quite successful with all of my goals thus far having played just over 11,000 hands now. The amount of money I'm winning isn't anything to write home about for now, but the consistency with which I am winning is. I've had several pros tell me already that being able to beat NL4 and NL10 as I am now pretty much means that I would be successful at any level up to NL100 since there's such a slow increase in skill level until you get up into the nosebleed limits.

Here is my current lifetime graph of winnings over time (click for big)


Like I said, the money's not much, but I love the consistency. Around 10,000 hands is the point where it's statistically improbable that any consistent winnings can be attributed to luck. I'm incredibly confident that I can beat these lower stakes and my first few shots at some of the next levels up have been met with similar success. The only thing holding me back right now is my bankroll, but I want to keep polishing my game up while it grows and also keep to the original plan of building my entire bankroll from a small deposit.

Currently I'm beating these levels at about 15 Big Blinds/100 hands. Playing 4 tables at once at 60 hands per hour per table makes me around $1.50 an hour. That's nothing. BUT! If I can keep moving up at this rate and stay successful, that hourly rate will increase each time I move up until it hits about $36 an hour at NL100.

I like the sound of that.

Online Poker F.A.Q.

I've fielded these questions a lot from a bunch of people that I've talked to about poker casually. Hopefully this answers a lot of common questions people may have about online poker or poker in general.

Isn't playing online poker illegal?
Short answer: Nope!

Long answer: In late 2006 the UIGEA title was passed into law contained within the Safe Port Act. It stated that it was illegal for financial institutions to transfer funds to and from internet gambling sites. In November 2008 the rules were put into place and the law went into effect days before the start of Obama's term.

Despite this:
- No off shore companies have been prosecuted because they lie outside the US's jurisdiction
- No players have been prosecuted because the act targets financial institutions and the law isn't defined well enough for any sort of conviction to be possible

So while this act has been translated by most to be "Internet Poker Is Illegal", the reality is "It Is More Difficult To Get Money To And From Poker Sites".

Luckily, through things like phone cards, player transfers from those outside the US, debit cards through payment processing companies etc, the direct tie from banks to poker sites has been removed and play has continued as normal, though with a smaller population.

Congressman Barney Frank currently has an online gambling bill waiting for approval which is currently backed by 30 other representatives. Many poker players have confidence that the dwindling economy could help have the regulatory bill passed since untold amounts of money could be made from the gov't taxing poker sites that operate within the US.

Not one single online poker player in the US has ever been arrested or harassed by the government and there are literally tens of thousands that play each and every day without fear.

How can you beat a game based on luck?
With games like craps, slots, roulette etc you are playing against the house. The house has a statistical edge which over time guarantees them a winning game. Players may win money in the short term but any long term expectations should be negative.

In poker, you are playing against other players and the edge is up for grabs. While there is a factor of luck in poker, the vast majority of your success or failure is based on decisions that require skill.

What does my opponent have?
Do I have odds to call this bet?
How can I maximize the gain of this hand?

By consistently playing better than other players, I ensure myself the same kind of edge over other players that the casino has. While I may lose over the short term, I know I will win in the long term.

And I have. :)

What sites / stakes do you play at?
While I have bankrolls on 4 sites now, the main ones I play at are Full Tilt Poker and Cake Poker. I play cash games mostly with the occasional tournament to break things up.

Full Tilt has a huge player base and allows something called a HUD which allows you to keep details stats on all of your opponents to help influence decisions during play. I play .02/.05 or .05/.10 no limit holdem at this site.

Cake Poker is a smaller site but the players are horrible on it so it's worth the wait. I play very similar stakes here of .02/.04 and .05/.10 no limit holdem.

The X/Y values are the small blind (x) and big blinds (y) during that cash game. The buyin for these games is 100 times the big blind. So I am usually sitting with between $4 and $10 when I sit down at these tables.

It doesn't seem like much, but I've started at the very bottom and even then it can add up quickly since I play 3-4 tables at a time during a session.

What prevents the online casino from cheating?
Two things.

1. They have no reason to.

The casino makes it's money without actually playing against you. This is called "rake". In cash games, the casino takes a small (usually about 5%) percentage out of every pot as their fee. In tournaments, the same kind of percentage is taken out of the tournament buy-in to act as income. Online casinos are making BILLIONS of dollars a year off this money alone so the consensus is that there is no need to do anything underhanded to make more.

2. They get caught if they do.

There have been times where players have outed either bots or disgruntled former employees who decided to write code that allowed them to see other players hole cards. Poker players by nature take ungodly amounts of statistics against all players they play against. There was actually a story recently on 60 minutes about a site called UltimateBet.com which had one of these cheating employees. Several players compiled tons of reports showing that there was no statistical way this player could be acting the way they do and making the kind of money they were without being able to see their opponents cards. The code was fixed, funds were reimbursed to the players who were taken advantage of and everything went back to normal.

So in short, I feel more safe playing in an online casino than I do going to one in Vegas.

What does "Nit" mean?
A nit is someone who plays really tight poker but used in a derogatory manner to describe someone who never has the balls to gamble on big hands or make huge bluffs. That's me. I play squeaky tight poker with the "when in doubt, fold" motto. Brave? No. Profitable? Yes. :)

I hope this helps clear up some misconceptions about poker and gives you some more info about it's workings and history. If you have any questions feel free to add them in a comment and if it's a juicy one I can add it to the FAQ.

The McFarland Nit - Alan's Poker Diary

Hurray for the first post in my blog!

For the past year or so I've been studying poker and playing it online for real money. It has always been an interesting game to me and as many of you know I love logic problems, probability, applied math and game theory.

So last year I began what I'm calling an "experiment" of trying to build a bankroll up from a minimal deposit by consistently beating different stakes and hopefully one day have a roll large enough to play in some of the bigger tournaments or at least make some decent extra income.

I've created this blog for three main reasons:
- To keep myself motivated to play poker and continue to improve
- To keep friends and family updated on my poker progress
- To occasionaly use as a dumping ground of random junk on my mind when I'm bored

For those few of you that read this, I hope it gives you some insight into this self-imposed fun challenge of mine.

Hopefully tonight I'll have my first real update posted along with a sort of FAQ to handle the usual "OH GOD POKER IS THE DEVIL" questions.

Thanks for reading, and here goes nothing...