Monday, February 25, 2008

Had a good session last night.

After a good time on Royal's on Sunday, and me running pretty well too, I played a weekend session. I was in Bellevue for all of last week for a work function, and couldn't play a single hand of poker for the whole time. It was brutal. Then on the first part of the weekend I was too busy/tired to get online and play...which brings us to Sunday night.

I decided to play a little PLO8 just one table to knock some rust off, and I was watching a movie at the same time. It was a productive session, but unfortunately was cut off short when I made a nasty error and also got ~cold decked. The error: I had the nut low but NO high to speak of, and I was in position on an equal stack. He checked the river to me and for some reason I bet the pot of 34.00 into him. I was of course hoping he would fold and I was freeroll-bluffing, but instead he called, and I got quartered because he had one pair of 6's for the high and A2 as well for the nut low. The ~cold deck: I had A22x and pot bet the KK2 flop. Got a caller, and we got it in on the turn when the 5 peeled off giving his K5 a better boat. I don't regret it or anything, but that is a crappy spot to be in I will say. You just have no clue when they boat up or don't. I need to try to avoid these situations.

Now to my later session, all NLHE. I decided on 4 tabling as I needed to get warmed up, and also because I didn't want to have to pay such close attention as "Under Seige" was on TV. Truly horrific movie, but you can't NOT watch it when its on the tube.

I had a really solid session where I ran and played well, and made a tidy profit to show for it. I jammed in preflop with QQ on some shitty LAG player who had AK, and I actually held up. I had a few other unremarkable hands but generally ran well and finished strong.

I have been contemplating whether or not to keep running 8 tables or sticking to 4 for a while longer. I am comfortable at 8 tables now, but its getting to be a bit much with record keeping details and a total lack of hand histories and details. Also it does take all of my attention and that can be annoying if I get hungry or if something awesome comes on TV.

Also I am trying to figure out a better way to keep records. I am already like 1 month behind and I just don't see myself going through all of those pages of papers any time soon... Even though I might, I need to get a better system if I am going to be 8 tabling still. I also would like to post a little more often on this blog and playing 8 tables makes that hard too. Any thoughts on this?

8 comments:

Ryan said...

You could note your account cash at the start of a session, grab only the absolute top most interesting or swingy hands for posting, and then chart a start and end total bankroll...

jason said...

$1200 is a nice milestone.

Personally, I think 4 tabling is better than 8 for you. You seem to target different donk players and I can't imagine you can keep track of all the donks on 8 tables. At 8 tables, it would work great at microstakes as U are pretty much playing most all players the same. As the stakes get higher I think 4 tabling will work best, little boredom factor and better player trackin

Will said...

I know it's hard to fold a boat but one of the books I have on Omaha says that underboats are just a huge trap hand and a Twos full is worst of all since not only does Kxxx have three cards to boat up but any other pocket pair that hits the board will have a higher X's full of Kings as well.

In fact A22x against a King and random cards is only 55% to win. 55% with a flopped boat! That is how terrible the nut low boat is in Omaha. Two's full is not a cold deck, it's an accident waiting to happen. As you point out, there is absolutely no card that can come on 4th or 5th street that can make you feel good about your hand except the case deuce...and even then.

As for record keeping. First thing I do is put all old HH files into a subfolder in my Cake folder. I then open tables and not key hands in a new blog entry which auto saves for me. After my session, I open up all HH files and copy paste all text into Martin's HH processor. While that is running (it can take a while with large sessions) I check the cashier window to find my ending balance and update the info in my EditGrid. After the HH info is processed I copy out the links and paste into links for the blog and I will fill in the other pertinent information from the hand. After that's all good I push the button and I'm done.

Marshall said...

Ryan- Great idea, I think I will do that.

Jason- Good points, but it's actually easier than you think to track players even while 8 tabling. You do lose a lot of the detail, but when someone is really bad you notice it. But the concept of taking notes on players pretty much goes out the window, which makes me unhappy.

Marty- I agree that low boat sucks, that's why I put the ~ in front of cold deck. I know it wasn't some outstanding suckout or anything. Your pokertools stat is misleading though, as you don't account for the low at all, and that's not accurate. I ran it with the actual hands and it was a little over 60/40. Not exactly crushing, but a significant difference from 55/45. Regardless, the point stands that these boats are very vulnerable as well as being very difficult to play.. RE: record keeping; I need a much much more stripped down workflow to be realistic. Remember I am looking at 8-9 tables sometimes and all with 100-200 hands on a good session. It would take me hours to go through all of them after the fact.

Marshall said...

Also Marty, as a side note, do you actually post on your blog, or play poker online at all still? I haven't seen any updates in forever (like I am one to talk I know).

Will said...

The link to the 55/45 number was for Omaha hi/lo. I forgot to include the five as a side card for villain but the numbers still end up basically the same. Those are the best numbers I could come up with based on the info on the hand.

As for record keeping, once I pour the HH data into the processor it's all the same regardless of number of tables. I routinely blogged between 100-200 hands and the processor doesn't care if it came from one table, four tables, or eight tables. I would just do a search for "detroit442 wins" to find my big winning hands. And search for one of my hole cards on the hands that I lost. I asked Martin to add functionality to show the net gain or loss from a hand to make it easier to find the big hands but he's been lazy about it.

I have not played since cracking $100 though I did add another 87 cents or so in rakeback from Jan so I'm a little over my last post. Still resting on my laurels I guess. Actually wanted to break $100 so I could try other games like either limit HE, SnGs, or PLO/8 since I think those may be higher EV.

Oh, and I can't NOT watch Under Seige either. Can't believe Segal doesn't have an Oscar yet.

jason said...

Can't believe this but I actually have to agree with Martin on the flopped low boat thing. I will not fold a flopped low boat, but will likely just check call all the way. I flopped trip 4's on a board on 4 6 8 rainbow or 2 of one suit, I can't remember. I must have been in one of the blinds. I checked, someone bet out and I folded. Just not worth it to dodge all the straights, runner runner flushes, and I may be already playing for just half the pot. This is why I hate low pockets, except possibly heads up. Heads up if you flop trips, even low trips, you are usually good.

Another moron lost all of his chips on a 3 way all in (I was not in it) with flopped low trips. He was up against a made nut straight for one player, and the nut flush draw plus a good low draw from another player.

I'm always always folding low pockets except A22x A33x and low pockets I am stuck with in the blinds. I know you were playing A22x so no fault there.

Marshall said...

Ya if you guys couldn't tell from my tone, I was already not too pleased with the whole nut low boat thing.

Jase, you gave examples of flopped low trips/set, but we are talking about flopping a boat here.

I think I will take the check call route in the future, unfortunately this was 3 handed and I didn't feel like folding any boat I guess..