pragueandpoker

I Suck At Live Poker

Apologies for the lack of content these last couple weeks. We're in the process of moving into a new place, which has meant sporadic internet access, and I've been all kinds of busy with other stuff too. I should have an ADSL line as well as much more free time after this week, and I plan to update a lot more frequently then.

 

So I finally made it to the Prague Poker Classic last night. This was actually my third attempt, having arrived last week to find the tournament was full. I don't really have anything but good things to say about the place, though I covered most of that in my last post. The venue is in a great location, close to the centre but on a peaceful street overlooking the river. The setup is very professional, as are the dealers. The beer is free, and they attract a laidback young crowd, I suspect largely comprised of students. My only real complaint is the advance registration process. I sent an SMS to the number provided, which apparently worked because my name was on the list when I got there, but I tried calling and texting all day to get some kind of confirmation and I got no response at all.

 

Monday nights is the 200kc double rebuy, which is a very low buyin - my beer tab would probably come to about that. I sat down with 1500 chips and rebought to 3000 straightaway, and was amazed to see only one other guy at my table do the same. That's normally a strong fish indicator, but the standard of play was actually pretty good - most of the guys were young LAG internet players who showed zero fear of flips and worse to stack up, so it's a mystery to me. Since I mainly play 08 I haven't followed NL MTT strategy for quite a while, so I suppose there could be some new wisdom on this I don't know about, but if so I can't imagine what it could be.

 

I arrived about an hour early, had a few beers and hung out upstairs. The tournament kicked off at 8, and I was basically card dead until the break. I don't need much to play during a rebuy period, but I wasn't getting interesting speculative hands either, just Q2, T4 etc. There was one vaguely interesting spot where I picked up a pot defending my BB against a mid position raise with J9x. Blinds were 75/150, he makes it 350, flop comes 4h5h6h and he fires out 600. I think he will have a hard time calling a raise against my table image with at least a heart, so I double and he folds. I feel like the min raise is about right regardless, as it's probably the strongest looking bet I could make, but I chose it also with my stack in mind, as had he played back I would have been reduced to 1450 and eligible to rebuy.

 

The very next hand someone min raises from early position, and with 4 callers I tag along with 8d4d from the SB. The flop comes AxQd2d with two diamonds, and three guys, all of whom have me covered, push all in. This is a ridiculous situation, and it does cross my mind that with three other players shoving on that board there is a reasonable possibility my flush draw isn't unique, but I'm getting such a good price there isn't really much to think about, so I call pretty quickly. They turn over AK, AQ, and Kd2d, and I'm pretty much drawing dead. I double rebuy, fold my way to the break a few minutes later, and take the 3000 add-on (this time everyone else does as well).

 

After the break blinds are 300/150 and I have 6000, and the table remains as aggressive as it was during the rebuy period. I limp connectors and low pairs a couple of times and the board blanks with betting behind me, and I'm down to 4500ish. 20 minutes or so after the break. I feel like I have a pretty nittish image, so I decide I need to steal a few pots if I'm going to get paid later. I make the decision to open the next hand that's folded to me with any two, and like clockwork half the table folds to me in midposition - only I don't have any two, I have JJ. I want to preface what follows by saying I think this is about the worst I have ever played a NLHE hand. It's truly remarkable how perfectly badly I played every single street.

 

SO I OPEN LIMP WITH JACKS. My logic, insofar as it went, is that the guy on the BB (who was the best player on the table) was raising out limpers quite frequently, and if he didn't, probably someone else behind me would on this table - but mainly I just had such a well-formed plan to play a trash hand here that I spazzed when I got a real hand and didn't know what to do, and being scared of a timing tell, threw in a quick call. Naturally all four guys behind me call, the BB doesn't raise, and I see a five-way pot with jacks. Flop comes 334, and the BB bets 1200, a little under the pot. Everyone folds to me, so I call - I don't love my hand here, but I'm not convinced he'd bet trips with 4 guys behind him.

 

The turn is a Q, which he checks. At which point I should be thankful I get to check behind, since either he has the trips and sticks around, or he doesn't and I'm not getting any value - but no, I bet 2000. I still don't know what my thought process was with this bet. I think I probably just wanted to find out straightaway where I was to put myself out of my misery, because I was so acutely aware that because of my preflop mistake he actually can have a 3. He instashoves, and I only have 1200 chips left - enter final mistake. On first glance it seems like I'm getting huge odds to call this, 1200 to win 10000. With the odds of spiking a jack thrown in there he only has to be bluffing a small fraction of the time for me to pick up equity from this call. But realistically, what can he possibly have that I beat? Essentially nothing. People do turn over completely bizarre hands from time to time, so I can't quite assign 0%, but this is about as close as it comes. Naturally I call, and he has 83. Obviously I didn't want to bust, but mainly I was just massively embarassed at how badly I had played the hand. Which is probably why I did make that last call - just so I could walk away.

 

I had a good night though on the most part, and hopefully next time I run into the guys that were on my table I can use the donkish image I have cultivated to my advantage. I got to hang out with Johann, a French guy who lived next door to us in our last place, who I first met when he randomly knocked on our door one night to say he was playing an online poker tournament, and his internet had crapped out, and could he use ours - naturally I sympathised! I also got to hang out with Miro, our new landlord, who is a very nice guy and a dramatic upgrade from out last landlord. He not only plays poker, but has a very natural poker IQ, loves to analyse hands, and understands the long-term skill aspect of the game. In the past I have never been able to tell my landlords that I get a large chunk of my income from poker, for fear they might think me a degenerate gambler and a delinquent rent threat, and it's a real relief to be able to be upfront about all of that. So all in all a good night, and I'll probably play again this Monday.

Prague Poker Classic

Apologies for not updating for a few days, I've been crazy busy. I tried to play live poker in Prague for the first time tonight, but unfortunately it all ended in failure. I wrote this summary of live poker options in Prague a few weeks ago, but it turns out I omitted the Prague Poker Classic. That's a pretty big omission, because they run regular cash games and offer a pretty strong tournament schedule, including a 200kc rebuy on Monday nights with a 15k guaranteed pool, which normally fills all 45 spots on offer. That's definitely the cheapest tournament in town, so if you're a lowroller or just dipping your toes in the local water, it's probably the best option around.

 

If you do want to play, remember to bring your passport. I showed up with a friend a full hour before kick off, but neither of us had thought to bring our passports, so they wouldn't let us register. We made a valiant effort to get back in time with ID, but it was a bust. The venue seems pretty nice - it doesn't look like a casino at all, which I like. They are on the river right next to Charles University, with a restaurant and bar attached, offering outside seating over the water. I got a good vibe from the place generally, with the possible exception of the woman handling registration, who responded 'passport' to every question we asked - I certainly didn't expect her to speak English for my benefit, but a smile would have been nice. That's about all I can say for now, but I will return passport in hand next week, and I'll do a full write-up then.

Chinese Poker Is A Waste Of My Time

Simba is one of the few sites around to offer Chinese poker, a game I consider highly addictive and moderately retarded. I keep hearing Chinese Poker described as the 'downtime game of choice for the pros,' which before I first played it led me to imagine that there would be a whole new world of rich and interesting strategy involved. I'm sure it's true that big name pros spend a lot of time playing Chinese, but I suspect the emphasis is firmly on 'downtime.' As far as I can tell Chinese essentially just amounts to pushing money back and forth. Assuming basic knowledge of strategy, Chinese is so dependent on cards that any edge has to be tiny, and the swings pretty severe. That edge is real, and it probably can amount to worthwhile long-term profit if you're playing for 2k a point like Ivey, but us mere mortals will probably have a better hourly rate scouring the sidewalk for change.

 

That's not to say Chinese isn't worth playing - it's a lot of fun. Small positive expectation for winners may make it a poor long-term investment, but that also means small negative expectation for losers, so it's hard to get beaten up while you're learning how to play. It's big on variance, so pretty cool winning (and losing) streaks do happen, and it's definitely 'friendlier' than other forms of poker - you can't bully or be bullied, and tilt just doesn't apply. In my own case I don't really view Chinese as a leak, more as something I do when I should be working. I'm not going to stop playing, but when I do it'll be to relax over a few beers.

Why Do I Keep Losing On Friday Nights?

I can't remember the last time I booked a profit on a Friday. I don't have Pokertracker to verify this, but I'm pretty sure I've finished down every Friday for at least the last two months. Which is wholly contrary to expectation, because Friday nights typically produce the softest games going. Two months of Fridays only amounts to 8-9 days, which is by no means a big enough sample to account for variance, so I could just be running bad. But this has been going on long enough now that it's starting to get statistically suspicious, and I have to ask myself whether I'm missing some way in which I should be better adjusting for the Friday night fishtank.

 

I don't feel like I'm failing to adjust. I tighten up against these types of players. I play lock hands aggressively and I seldom bluff. Essentially I just play solid and uncreative poker, which is probably why running a loss is becoming frustrating, because at no point in the week does the style of game I play feel more like going to work.

 

Weekends are still producing above average profit, which is in line with expectation, so I think my Friday results are probably just a fluke. But I don't want to assume that, so if anyone has any insight on how to better play these kinds of games I'd very much appreciate the feedback.

What is the point of LO8?

A good long-term return is fully achievable from PLO8, and I assume the same applies to NL08, though I've never played it. In fact I'm fairly sure potential returns are greater in PLO8/PLO than HE equivalents, if only because the online standard is lower. But when I think about LO8, it seems like the hands run so close, and the opportunities for picking up value become so few and far between, that any long-term edge must be erased by rake until you get up to very big games - and if the game is big enough that rake isn't a factor, then it's also big enough that you can't rely on your opponents making a lot of mistakes.

 

Fairly big LO8 games do run online with some amount of consistency, and I assume they have regulars. I had a hunt around on a few forums last night to see if I could find some bona fide online LO8 pros, since that would be the best kind of evidence, and I couldn't really find any. What I did find was this post on 2p2. A guy there data-mined Stars over a four month period and the results seem to show that only a very small edge (if any) is achievable in these games. Results improve shorthanded and heads up, which is to be expected, since with hands running further apart skill differential becomes increasingly important as more marginal hands play.

 

Folding equity is a huge consideration in PLO8 games, because when you're drawing to two pots with four cards you frequently need only a very small amount of it to make a +EV play - not to mention that kind of play banks calls when you are ahead. As I get better at PLO8 I find myself playing an increasingly LAG style. Whilst that needs (sometimes dramatic) adjustment based on what the other guy is doing, I think optimal shorthanded 08 strategy will typically look very LAG indeed. LO8 players, particularly full ring players, don't really have this available, so I just can't figure out where they pick up a worthwhile edge. For now I've decided LO8 is a mostly pointless game, but I want to be proven wrong and I'd love to hear from any successful L08 players out there.