From the Old Blog: Six Sigmas Straight to Hell
Photo - Morten A. Lines
(As time goes on I’ll be sharing some of my best content from my old hangout, This is Not a Poker Blog. Enjoy.)
Six Sigmas Straight to Hell
April 20, 2006
When dealt two cards in Texas Hold’em, your odds of having pocket Aces are 220:1. Once every 22 orbits, you should pick up Bullets.
I’m on hand 1,000 and I still haven’t seen them. I’ve been playing .50/1 NL for the last two days, and despite having tons of pocket pairs and AK more times than I can keep track of, AA has eluded me, and I’ve began to announce it to the table.
“We’re on 1,000 now boys, any minute now,” I type. Coyote, a solid player who won 5 buyins the night before, has been witness to this entire chain of events.
“Just wait, you’ll get it twice in a row to compensate,” he offers.
“Nah, just watch, I’ll raise and pick up the blinds,” is my retort.
Right now, I’ve been playing pretty tight, so there’s the fear that I might not be too far off. I’ve made a few blind steals and people have believed my continuation bets. I called Coyote’s raise on the button with QJs and after he bet out on a queen-high flop, I raised him a nice amount. He showed KQ and mucked, and I obliged and showed mine.
Just in case those Aces come, I reason.
Yesterday was another futile situation. Besides the AA drought, I must have had 26 pocket pairs and only one flopped set. However, I got my mileage out of it: 44 hit a 455 flop against KK and I doubled up. You better believe I almost broke my Caps lock on that one.
Hand 1,025 and I’m pleased to see a free flop in the BB with Q9. I’m even happier when the flop comes JT3, but there’s 4 people in the hand besides me so I’m forced to check. But everyone follows.
The turn is a 5, and puts a 2nd heart in the board. I wonder what’s going on and make a bet. 4 bucks into a 5 dollar pot. If someone raises me i’m done with it, if not I’ve built something nice to possibly hit on the river. Two guys come along, and now the pot is something worth caring about.
The river’s a glorious eight, but wait — It’s a third heart. God, now what to do? If i bet out, and I get raised, I can’t call. At this limit, someone chasing is more than conceivable, and the guy in LP i’ve seen make some really bad chases in the past. I check.
The more solid guy bets out 10 bucks, and LP raises up to 40. I swear audibly, almost waking Kori up in the process. I know I’m making a good laydown here, but I feel like a pussy. Fold. For some reason it doesn’t on the first click, and I slam my finger down on the mouse on the second try, which works.
The guy in early position thinks for a very *very* long while and calls — and LP shows TJ for a flopped two pair. EP mucks.
I look up and at that exact moment, Bill Gazes is on TV, watching the AIS crack his aces with a flopped straight and cheat him out of a few hundred thousand dollars. Despite the situation, it actually takes me a few minutes to admit that mayyyyybe Bill has it worse than I do, kinda sorta.
Well, this is prerecorded, so at *this* exact moment…
“I folded the straight.”
“Q9?” Coyote asks.
“Yep. Queen Freakin’ Nine.”
“Shoulda bet the river.”
“Thanks, Mr. Hindsight.”
A few minutes later I’m busy watching a guy four years younger than me take down a WPT title on TV, so I almost miss Hand 1,033: Pocket Aces. I quickly do the math in my headfigured it out later, there’s a .9% chance that you can go that long without getting Aces. But now, I have them, and I’m in the big blinds.
And there’s a fold.
And another fold.
And a few more after that.
And it’s folded to the button, who takes 15 seconds to decide that stealing isn’t a good idea.
And then there’s the whiny bitch dude who screamed for 20 minutes last night because someone hit his gutshot, and I haven’t let him forget how much of a whiny bitch he is. Perhaps he’ll take his revenge now. Perhaps I’ll receive that which I now desire most, now that I have aces: Action to go with it.
He folds, and I show my Aces to the table with an extreme amount of pride. Coyote laughs.
“Dude, you were right, you got the blinds.”
“Bow to the intimidation of my posted big blind.”
“Yeah, I read you for strength the way the animation did it.”
I played maybe an orbit before signing off, as I’d cleared my bonus.
Would you ever guess from the tone of this post that I was up for the last three days?
The State of the Poker Game
(Warning: The following post is heavy on poker content. You have been warned.)
From a more innocent time (Credit: Bill Rini)
It has been a frustrating year for poker. I’ve been playing along with my buddy Duke and doing nothing but losing. I’ve been concentrating on playing tournaments and SNG’s because I think it’s where I do the strongest, but I can’t shake the bad beats and seem to take them at the worst time.
There has seemed to be a few phases of this cycle of losing, which seem to mirror the 5 stages of grief:
1. Denial. “How the hell does he call there? 80% of his stack with Ace high and I’ve only showed down winners!”
2. Anger. Like the kind where my wife starts to question whether I actually enjoy playing poker because she hasn’t seen me celebrate a cash in a few weeks and I only seem to curse the cards I’m dealt.
3. Bargaining. Maybe if I only play *these* tournaments. Or am I not playing enough? Am I not paying enough attention? How about if I just play straight ABC poker because nobody’s paying attention anyways?
4. Depression. Straight ABC poker didn’t work. Clearly people can’t be on a cold run for this long, it’s obviously because I’m a donkey and shouldn’t be winning anyways.
5. Acceptance. Because online poker is rigged anyways.
Duke, bless his heart, has witnessed or listened to every bad beat that I’ve taken during this time and still offered words of encouragement or disbelief at my bad luck, while he himself has skyrocketed through an upswing the likes of which I’ve never experienced. At the beginning of all this I thought we were of similar skill level, and while he still believes it, I don’t. The worst feeling of all of this is that I have played poker and studied the game ravenously for five years now, and I seem no closer to any kind of breakthrough than I did when I first thought that starting a blog about the freerolls I was playing seemed like a good idea.
I’m starting to think that my primary weakness lies in the fact that when I first started to play, I played fearlessly out of ego or a simple faith in the mechanics of fold equity, and I lost a lot of money that way because I never slowed down when the signs told me to. Somewhere along the line I found the right balance, won a good bit of money, and then became far too conscious of the value of the chips in front of me and could not play the game the way I needed to. Now, my playing style is the very bad combination of understanding the math behind aggression, but being unwilling to carry through with it unless everything screams that doing so is a safe bet. The problem with this is that this becomes extremely predictable, and I get snapped off because everyone and their mom can see that I can make that move with any two cards.
Second, my hand reading ability is crap. It’s better than it used to be, but it’s definitely nowhere near the level that I should be able to conjure up when in a tough situation. I blame this on my multi-tabling, which pretty much demands an emphasis on playing the two cards in front of you rather than betting patterns of your opponents unless you’re able to take a copious amount of notes in the chaos.
I’m back to re-reading books that I’ve finished off in the past, hoping to reconnect with some of the advice that got me to where I was before. But any kind of tournament win would also probably do some good. The swagger from my game is currently missing in action, the kind of confidence that you have to have in your game in order to survive a large field. We shall see where things go from here, and I’ll be sure to share the good news should such a breakthrough occur.
Hell, you won’t be able to shut me up for a week after it happens.
We’ll all Say We Knew Him When!
Congrats to Garry Gates for taking down Pauly’s 5th anniversary tournament, its huge overlay and all. Garry and I spent a good amount of time together at the 2007 WSOP as reporters and had a brief lapse in maturity, taking photos of each other sitting at the final table while the 10 remaining players were on break.
This is the guy that beat your ass.
It’s my dearest hope that due to this tourney win, the next final table he sits at will have his name on it, and not Jerry Yang’s.
Go get’em, Garry!
When you Dream, do you Profit?
Wil was in an old-school mood last night, twittering out a request for runners in the 2+.20 donakement he was playing in on PokerStars last night, so I jumped on and immediately set up a last longer. Five minutes later, I was regretting said last-longer because my body suddenly demanded that I not only go to bed, but fall asleep right where I was because apparently the bed was too good for me.
Meanwhile, Aces got cracked by A8s when an extremely talented player raised 6x the big blind, called my large reraise, and then called an all-in with a flush draw. Fate decided to get the hilarity over quickly, putting the third diamond out on the turn. Crippled, I pushed with 66, got called by K9 (which was 2/3 of his stack), doubled, and then doubled again with QQ. All of this absolute madness netted me about 10 more chips than what I started with.
Wil busted about 45 minutes in, emailed me the bad news, and then had to ask for a reminder about what my Stars screenname was, a sure reminder that we haven’t played together in a very long time (we need to have more good times like this SNG, sir).
About 15 minutes after the transfer, I was out like a light.
I awoke the next morning, went to Stars, and sure enough, I had a bit more money in my account, but more than what Wil was supposed to send me. I fired up the tournament reporter, and this was the wonderful news it had for me:
PokerStars Tournament #98772416, No Limit Hold’em
Buy-In: $2.00/$0.20
1051 players
Total Prize Pool: $2102.00
[...]
197: XXSkullzXx (burlington), $2.94 (0.13%)
198: TheFilmGeek (Iowa City), $2.94 (0.13%)
199: master-dy (edmonton),
200: phrn68 (Clearwater),
Heh heh. I can make the money with my eyes closed, bitches.
So Long, and Thanks for all the HotChips
The Tiffany Michelle drama of this year’s WSOP has been documented by far better writers, but news that Tiffany is now officially a member of Team UB made me a bit sad. I held out hope that Tiffany was simply trying to keep everyone happy until after the WSOP, at which point she wouldn’t have to rush to make a huge decision for a long-term sponsorship deal. But now, the final nail is delivered, and any hope at real credibility is down the toilet in the eyes of many people in the poker industry.
I put it to you, dear readers — who is doing a bigger disservice… Tiffany Michelle’s boyfriend, or Michelle Wie’s parents?
2 Hands to Discuss, 998 to Ignore
Let’s just say that the 19,000 hands before this one made a perfect V.
Not much to talk about strategy wise overall, because I’m still taking it all in and formulating what is really changing my game (and what I hadn’t realized needed changing yet). But I wanna share two hands and get your honest opinions. No results so as to not color the advice:
HAND 1: Villian is 11/9/2.0 over 80 hands and hasn’t had to show a hand yet. I’m interested in feedback on all streets, including what to do on the river. What range do you have this guy on?
HAND 2: Aces stuck in a bad situation. Villain is 21/8 but only over a couple orbits. Seems solid. Do I lay this down on the river?
I have pretty well thought out opinions on both these hands, and I’ll post them along with the results after I get some feedback from readers. Thanks!
Thoughts on the WSOP and the edits of ESPN
It wasn’t until this year’s WSOP got ramped up that I realized how lucky I was to have covered last year’s main event and how badly I would kill to be back. I’ve found myself on the phone with more than one person either playing or covering the 2008 festivities, attempting to live vicariously in whatever way possible. Digging through boxes from our latest move (and last, for a good long while anyways), I found my notebook from the 2007 series and had a chuckle at my fervent notetaking that went to no real journalistic pursuit other than to try and record as much as possible for my own posterity.
I was working the event for Expert Insight, podcasting whenver possible. My only other real responsibility feeding random posts to Pokerati since they helped get me a media badge. With both of those jobs being something that could have been rather phoned in (and in the case of EI, the podcasting was literally by phone), you might snicker if I told you I was still pulling 14-16 hour days on the floor, killing my legs and enjoying every stinkin’ minute of it. Being right up against the rail, allowed more access than most, and answering to nobody but myself.
The list of anecdotes I could share here are long and distinguished: Picking Hevad Khan to follow on Day 2 and shadowing him all the way to 6th place. Covering the David Singer bustout incident and having long discussions with the Tournament Directors over the definition of “use of a cell phone”. Tracking down a rumor about John Duthie playing in a big cash game and making a 20k call with Queen high. Chatting with just about every poker pro I’ve ever followed or respected. Having more fun than I ever deserve.
While I’ve been falling into this deep pit of nostalgia, I found this hand on YouTube of the ESPN telecast and I had to recount it from my angle. First, watch:
Alright, so a couple things: First, I was on the media row in a special roped off area, kind of a moat between the players and the spectators behind us. Kalmar’s cheering section was directly behind me and they were already sauced. With all of this going on, I had a good view of all of this, and this hand was heavily edited down (as they usually are).
Kalmar had been starting to ease into the role of table captain, and he played the role well. Lee Watkinson had more chips, but his playing style was more laid back and allowing the action would come to him. The only two players with a similar chipstack were Jerry Yang (who was playing erratically) and the man everyone was scared of: Kenny Tran. Kalmar had position on him though, and he seemed to be enjoying himself a hell of a lot more than the rest of the table.
(Aside: I believe that Kalmar understands something about poker and readibility that few pick up on naturally: You give away tells when you break a pattern in your visible mannerisms, so it’s a matter of finding that noise of personality that you don’t easily break out of. Most people assume that sitting as still as possible will prevent giving away something, but for most, this is the worst mistake you can make, as ANY move from complete stillness can be a giveaway. Players like Gavin Smith know that their cheery, talkitive self is a far greater camouflage than willing every muscle in your body into complete submission of your conscious self. Kalmar also falls into this area.)
So, Kenny raised from the CO on a dead button and Kalmar had called from the SB, the standard “No, there won’t be any blind stealing today, thankyouveryMUCH–” swagger accompanying his chips as they went into the middle.
the flop came ten high with two clubs, and Kalmar took a few seconds to check. Kenny’s continuation bet came fairly quick, as did Kalmar’s call. Kalmar’s demeanor was more of curiosity, openly yet silently quizzing what Kenny was up to. And this is where the hand on YouTube kicks in.
0:18 seconds – Jon’s check on the turn is fun to watch after the fact because it’s almost oozing second level reverse-tell. It’s almost daring Kenny to make another continuation bet, like a more subtle version of Daniel Negreanu’s sheepish check with a set of Jacks in the billiards/poker PokerStars commercial. (No, this isn’t a shameless plug, I just need a frame of reference here.) Kenny hesitates on this second bet, and puts out something small enough that Jon can justify calling.
0:29 – I just hope that someday, I can count out chips as precisely and quickly as Kenny does on his turn bet.
0:35 – I don’t know if the 2nd draw coming in on the turn changes Jon’s decision from fold to call, but it certainly made his decision easier.
0:50 – This is where I get frustrated with ESPN’s edit of this hand. And I know that in the scheme of things that this hand was relatively minor in the story that was the 2007 WSOP, but it was a work of art, a hand that got seriously shortchanged in the end.
I can’t stress this enough – the dealer is shown dealing the river card twice. First from the overhead shot, and then you can see the dealer in the next shot burning and dealing the river. Kalmar makes the all-in bet the absolute instant you could see it was a club. And the pot count in the video is also wrong: Both players had about 9 million in front of them at the start of the hand, meaning that his bet on the river was more than what was displayed. About 4.5 million was in the middle when the river was dealt, and Kalmar’s river bet all-in was for another 6.25m.
Kalmar played the river perfectly. Once he instantaneously pushed, he worked Kenny from every angle possible, and Kenny was just tired/frazzled/frustrated enough to come along for it. First, Kalmar stood up, smiling at Kenny off and on, who didn’t really look at Jon too much, but glanced up enough to catch his half-cocky smirk. Kalmar then started to drink his water, which I’ve heard every poker player in the world talk about how that tell means one thing or another, though it’s about 50/50 on the subject.
Kalmar then calls the clock, and continues to drink his water. There’s almost glee in his face. Not so much that he’s putting the screws to Kenny, but I really believe it was because at this point he realized Kenny had top pair (the pocket 7’s comment makes it pretty obvious) and knew there was a very strong chance that he could induce a call. Once the clock was called though, it did all the work for him. With 4 seconds left, Kenny blurted out a call, and Jon’s scream of victory exploded throughout the Amazon room. His buddies went nuts, Kenny was humbled, and I turned to the reporter next to me with the realization that I had just seen a masterful play — I called it a work of art for days after the fact, and I still agree with that assessment, whether you think it’s hyperbole or not. Jon Kalmar had taken the best poker player in the room and outplayed him like it was the 2AM tourney at Treasure Island.
When you watch the World Series on ESPN, realize that there are hundreds of hands like these that either get butchered before broadcast or are cut completely. There’s just no substitute for standing a few feet away and taking it all in, notepad in tow.
Though I guess trying to blog about it a year after the fact counts for something.
No? Oh well.
DJ Geek
Please feel free to pass this link around… one of the voices is pretty familiar.
Self Pity, Please Ignore.
50 players left in a Party 180-player SNG, 18 pay. Blinds 100/200. MP raises to 800, I make it 1600, and he pushes. If i call and he loses, it’s 2/3 of his stack.
According to my records, I have cashed only twice in the last 40 MTT’s I’ve played. Both were in the bottom half of the money. The only final tables I’ve seen are at Murderer’s Row, and I didn’t get paid.
With all the success that everyone’s had, I can’t help but feel extremely inadequate.
-Chris
Absinthe Makes the World Spin Round
Ryan is one of the 18 left in Event number 1 at the LAPC. Play resumes tonight. Check for updates on his blog and cheer his ass on.