Running with Spades

Current Bankroll: $1 - 600K Play Chips

I played a $1 Turbo MTT (868 players, top 81 cash) over at Full Tilt tonight. Couldn't catch a hand and busted out pretty quickly in 560th. Here's a recap of the game if anyone's interested. Comments would be greatly appreciated.

A few hands in, ATo on the button, 1 limper so I raise it up to 3xBB, 1 caller. Board comes down 882 rainbow, and we both check it. Ten on the turn sets me up nicely and he checks it to me so I raise 400 (pot size). He comes over the top all-in for just another 200 so I pretty much have to call. He flips over K8o, nasty. I probably should have raised smaller on the turn to give myself a chance to get out of the hand if he re-raised, but then again, I had a real tough time giving him credit for the 8 after my pre-flop raise. Perhaps my preflop raise wasn't large enough...

Now sitting at just over 10xBB and I get KQo on the very next hand so I decide to push all in. No callers so I pick up the blinds.

KQo again the next hand, but this time I'm not quite as low in chips so I only raise 3xBB. Flop comes 366 rainbow. One other player and we both check it. Q on the turn gives me my hand so I raise the pot, he re-raises all-in and flips over QJo which makes me pretty happy until another six comes down on the river and splits the pot. Nasty.

Another couple rounds of the blinds and I'm sitting below 10xBB. It folds around to the SS who raises it up 3xBB. I decide to push with 39s thinking he may be trying to buy the pot and he didn't have me covered by enough to call if he doesn't have anything. Unfortunately he's holding KQs and insta-calls. Nothing on the board and I'm out.

Not quite sure if I could have played it better. Perhaps I was a bit aggressive, but given that it was a turbo tourney I think that is probably the style required to stay ahead of the blinds. Pretty much every hand was my usual style of play and it just didn't pay off a single time tonight...

Current Bankroll: $2 - 700K Play Chips

I haven't had hardly any time to fire up the poker tables in the past week, and have become really antsy to get some decent time at the tables in. I got a bit too impatient the other night and bought into the nightly 500K Play Chip $40 Freeroll at Full Tilt despite being way below the 2M Play Chip minimum that I set for myself as a rule to limit my buy-in for this tournament. I managed to cash in the tournament and get my real money bankroll back in the green, but it has put my play chip bankroll in some very sketchy territory. I'm going to have to really be disciplined and force myself to wait until I've built my play chip bankroll back up to 2M before buying into the 500K play chip freeroll again, so it could be a little while before I'm able to pick up a couple more dollars with the amount of time I've had to play lately.

I recently noticed that my bankroll graph had disappeared, and upon further investigation the table in my database holding the info seems to have been deleted. I didn't have a backup, and neither did my host, so it looks like the first month of my bankroll challenge has been lost in the cyber void. I guess it's not that big a deal since I haven't really gotten anywhere yet, but I still feel a bit sad about not having the challenge on the graph from the very beginning.

In more positive news, Burnley Mik is back with a new blog, Donkey Thrasher, as part of the new UK Poker Scene, a group of UK poker bloggers centered around the Raise the River community. These guys are always a great read, so the site is definitely worth a look.

I played a live tournament for the first time in quite a while tonight. It was part of the local free poker league, and there were about 40 players. I played a really solid, aggressive game that seemed to pay off as nobody really wanted to play ball with me. I made it to the final table with the second largest stack, but the blinds were already so high that people started dropping every hand. I ended up having to take a couple gambles which paid off nicely and gave me a chance to go heads up with close to even chips. My opponent didn't seem to have much knowledge of heads-up play and folded almost half her stack to me before winning a couple showdowns and then folding it right back to me. Finally her luck at the showdown ran out and the tournament was mine.

I can't say that I was too impressed with the overall play in the tournament, but it still felt good to play a solid poker game and come out on top. Playing live made me realize how much I miss the human interaction and the interesting psychology that is so much more relevant in live games. I felt like I was able to really get good reads on my opponents tonight and take advantage of their lack of reticence.

I'm definitely going to try to play more live games in the near future because, while it won't necessarily get me closer to my bankroll goals, it will definitely help to keep me focused and motivated on the game and should allow me to improve my skills much more rapidly than in online poker since you have to spend so much time just focusing on your game and not multi-tabling.

The other day I was taking a look at the odds of flopping no overcards with high pocket pairs and that got me thinking about what the basic odds are of flopping a set with any pocket pairs. I seem to remember someone once telling me it was about 1:6, but it never seemed that good in reality so I thought I'd actually do the math.

The odds should be 2:50 + 2:49 + 2:48 since those are your odds of hitting one of the two remaining cards on each card in the flop. That would give you about a 12% chance or 1:8.16 odds of flopping the set, not nearly the 1:6 that I had been thinking all along. That means that you have to make back more than 8BB every time you hit a set to make up for the cost of calling and folding the other 7 times.

With higher pocket pairs you can factor in the odds that you will have top pair on the flop, but even this doesn't increase your odds of seeing a nice flop very often with anything but the best pocket pairs.

Fortunately sets on the flop have a way of paying off quite nicely and so it is usually possible to play pocket pairs cheaply and see a decent return, but there really isn't much room for error, so don't go calling any raises with them because that will throw off your ratios enough that it will be hard to make back any losses.

I think I will be playing low pocket pairs less often when I am short-stacked in tournaments from now on because they just aren't worth the risk when you can't afford to lose many chips. I had always viewed low pocket pairs as a chance to hit big when you are really needing it, but with worse than 1:8 odds of actually hitting a set I'm not so sure they are worth the risk unless you can afford to lose those other 7 times.

In cash games and when you have a large stack in a tournament, low and medium pocket pairs are probably worth the investment if you can be frugal about it, but you still have to be careful with them though because the fact that they hit the set fewer than 1 in 8 times makes it harder than it looks to keep them in the green in the long run.

But pocket pairs are still your best bet preflop when you need to go heads up against an opponent for a good chance to double up, so they'll still hold a special place in my arsenal for those critical tournament moments.

Current Bankroll: $0 - 1M Play Chips

I took another shot at the real money tables tonight a bit earlier than scheduled. I haven't been able to work the nightly 500K Play Chip $40 Freeroll at Full Tilt into my schedule lately and was getting a bit antsy at the long wait. Things didn't go nearly as well as I hoped and I ended up busting out after 64 hands without winning a single showdown or pot larger than 5BB. I started out a bit too aggressive and lost some chips to stronger hands, but even after tightening up I couldn't seem to avoid some nasty situations that just ate up my bankroll. The final nail in the coffin was a J7o that had called my preflop raise and hit two-pair on the flop. I was too low in chips at that point to have much of a chance of getting away from my KJo especially with such a weak looking flop (J74 rainbow).

I can't say that I'm terribly frustrated with my play since it was mostly bad hits that took me out, but I am definitely disappointed with myself for not sticking to the original plan of waiting until I had a full buy-in before hitting the cash tables again. That combined with the fact that my play chip bankroll is not in a very good position either put me in a pretty nasty position right now. I'm basically back at square one with a long way to go to get back into things. I guess this is one of those critical times when you find out just how dedicated you are. Hopefully I can have the strength to force myself to return to the original discipline that I started this project with and which has carried me so far already. That's what I'll be focusing on for the next couple days anyway.